It's reporting season for ASX-listed companies

Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) report their financial results to shareholders at least twice a year, within two months of the end of their balance sheet date. 

This August Reporting Season, we will see around 170 companies of the top 200 releasing their full-year or half-year results in the coming weeks. This is an exciting time for analysts, traders and investors to review earning reports, and forecasts about how they should expect the company to perform in the short term and long term. 

On Monday, the ASX trading platform was buzzing from all the announcements coming from NAB and Westpac and others. NAB is buying Citi’s consumer banking business and Westpac is selling its domestic life insurance business to Japan’s Dai-ichi Holdings for $900 million.

As a matter of fact, investors were a bit overwhelmed and had quite a busy day.

Winners

Stock prices of NAB went up more than 1 per cent, CBA also gained 1.5 per cent and Westpac with 1.2 per cent. 

The insurance and finance company – Suncorp reported a profit of $1b thanks to low interest rates and higher insurance profits. After revealing its earnings, Suncorp gained around 8 per cent – ASX 200’s biggest gain. 

Insurance rivals IAG and QBE also gained 4 per cent each. 

The freight rail transport company Aurizon reported lower earnings from coal freight because of COVID-19 and China’s ban on Australian iron ore. Their share price has been unaffected by this and still rose 1.3 per cent. 

Losers 

Transurban – the operator and developer of urban toll road networks – reported a statutory net profit of $3.3b but its West Gate Tunnel Project faced a cost blowout of the same amount. The company’s share price lost more than 2 per cent yesterday. 

Investors are also pulling out from gold miners. Gold prices dived on Monday morning upon concerns surrounding a pullback in stimulus by the US Federal Reserve. 

News Corporation share price went down 7.8 per cent. 

The ASX 200 ended the day flat. You can see that investors are being quite cautious in this period, nervously waiting for more clarity. The widening coronavirus lockdowns and the uncertainty around the spread of the Delta variants had in a way dampened the sentiment of investors to make more judgement calls.