The coming week will be the busiest week of the Australian June full year and interim profit reporting season, with 90 major companies due to report.
They include BHP Billiton with its full year earnings plus a demerger proposal, which will dominates market chatter this week.
Stockland, IAG, Toll Holdings, Coca-Cola Amatil, Origin and AMP are also down to report (CCA and AMP are interims and won’t be good news, especially CCA which has already warned of lower profits).
The AMP’s Chief Economist Dr Shane Oliver says while consensus earnings estimates for 2013-14 are for 12% growth and for 2014-15 are more modest at +5%, a few companies are doing better.
"While it’s dangerous to draw any firm conclusions early on given the tendency for well performing companies to report up front, the results to date have been reasonably good," Dr Oliver wrote at the weekend.
"50% of companies have exceeded expectations (compared to a norm of 43%); 72% of companies have seen their profits rise from a year ago (compared to a norm of 66%)."
He said 63% of the companies who have reported so far have increased their dividends from a year ago (up slightly from around 62% in the last two years) and 59% of companies have seen their share price outperform the market on the day they released results.
The key themes of this reporting season have been continued strength for resources (notably Rio, and BHP this week). As well, banks doing well (with good results from CBA, plus updates from the Westpac and NAB this week after weaker than expected figures from the ANZ on Friday).
Dr Oliver said in his weekend note that, "ongoing cost control making up for still soft revenue growth and strong growth in dividends.
"The bottom line is that Australian earnings look to be on track to have increased by around 12% last financial year, with a 28% surge in resources’ profits, a 10% rise in bank profits and a 3% rise in profits for the rest of the market," he wrote at the weekend.
His scorecard so far in the current reporting season:
Source: AMP Capital
So among those major companies reporting this week will be:
Today: Newcrest, Stockland, Aurizon and Ansell. NAB third quarter update.
Tuesday: Amcor, Arrium, GWA Limited, Hills Limited, Investa Office, Invocare, Macmahon Holdings, BHP Billiton, QBE Insurance (interim), Insurance Australia Group, Oil Search (interim), Sonic Healthcare, Tassal and Toll Holdings.
Wednesday: Woodside (interim), Ausenco, Wesfarmers, APA Group, Bega Cheese, APN News & Media (interim), Challenger, Charter Hall, Fletcher Building, Mount Gibson Iron, Southern Cross Media, Seek, The Reject Shop, Paperlinx, Brambles, AGL Energy, Fortescue & Coca Cola Amatil (interim). Westpac third quarter update.
Thursday: Asciano, CFS Retail Property Trust, ASX, AMP (interim), Sydney Airport, Tatts Group, Mirvac, Origin Energy, Treasury Wine Estates, Transpacific, Paladin and Super Retail Group.
Friday: Santos (interim), Telecom NZ, Sims Metal, IOOF, QUBE Holdings and Federation Centres.
