ASX closes flat as property drags
Make us a preferred source
Make us a preferred source on Google
The news: The Australian sharemarket finished flat on Monday. The benchmark ASX 200 closed at 7,665.1, up 0.09%, with six out of 11 sectors finishing in green.
The numbers: The worst performing sector was AREITs (2.48%), followed by IT (-1.09%), and healthcare (-1.03%).
Lendlease, the worst performing stock overall, dragged the property sector as it was down 14.51% by market close. The company reported a $136 million loss for the first half of the financial year on the back of lower property valuations and heft redundancy costs. Citi analysts said the earnings results were a miss and that FY24 guidance was lowered. Citi said the miss was driven by weakness across the board with its development segment the key driver.
GPT Group was also down 4.84% after recording a profit loss. However, analysts said GPT’s results were more resilient than investors were expecting.
The best performing sector was communication services (0.74%), followed by financials (0.73%) and materials (0.5%). The big four’s were all up with Westpac gaining the most at 2.61%, followed by Commonwealth Bank (0.67%), NAB (0.06%) and ANZ (0.05%).
Earlier today, Westpac posted a net profit reduction of 6% but analysts said the positives of the results were around FTE reductions, a stable core net interest margin, and “slightly better” than expected credit impairments.
Sayona Mining gained the most by market close at 16.36%, followed by the A2 Milk Company (12.08%) that posted a 15.6% profit lift due to growth in its Chinese market.
The Australian dollar is higher buying US65.44 cents.
The context: Tuesday will see the Reserve Bank of Australia publish its monetary policy meeting minutes while the Australian Competition Tribunal will hand down its decision on whether it will allow ANZ to acquire Suncorp Group's banking arm, after the competition regulator rejected ANZ’s bid in June 2023.
Earnings season continues with BHP, Centuria Capital, ARB Corp, Megaport, Netwealth, Perpetual and Sonic Healthcare posting results on Tuesday.
