Share (Stocks) Trading News

Australia's second largest beer manufacturer, Lion Nathan (LNN), reaffirmed its annual profits forecast on escalating sales of its beers including XXXX Gold and Tooheys Extra Dry. Chief Executive Officer, Rob Murray's efforts have finally started to pay off in three years. For past three years, he had posted little or no profits at all since past three years and pushed all money towards advertising, marketing and promotion of its brands. read more

Macquarie Group (MQG) announced a solid start for the current fiscal year; however, it cautioned that it would be difficult to repeat last year's performance owing to the ongoing credit crisis round the globe. The market gave a sigh of relief on firm's sound footings and the same reflected in its share prices as well. read more

Sydney based property investor group, Mirvac Group (MGR), announced that it expects to slash its dividends to its shareholders by 39 percent. Owing to the ongoing credit crunch in the global market, the company announced that the shareholders shall get a dividend of 20 cents a share in the fiscal year ending June 2009 as compared to last fiscal when they received 32.9 cents a share. It also announced that it expected a drop of nearly 24 percent in its earnings in its current earnings in the current year. read more

Australia's biggest retailer, Woolworths Ltd., met its full year profit forecast even as the country reels under rising fuel prices and escalating borrowing costs which slowed down the fourth quarter sales to just 7.5 percent. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) is expected to grow faster than sales as net profits seem to fall in the growth range of 21 percent to 25 percent. The retailing giant marked rise in total sales for 53 weeks ended June 29 to $47.035 billion or 10 percent higher. On normalised basis, that excludes extra trading week in the year, the sales were up by 8.7 percent. read more

Allco Finance Group has reached a refinancing agreement with its syndicate banks on the new senior debt facility which would see the asset manager to bring down its debt to $400 million in next one year. Allco has not only gained support of its bankers, but it shall also be working on two new investment funds housing up to $1 billion in aviation and shipping. read more

Troubled Centro Properties Group has decided to go ahead with its sell-off of its US properties to reduce its debts. It has announced that it shall sell 29 of its 31 properties in Centro America Fund (CAF) at a 10 percent discount of its book value. Centro America Fund (CAF) is a wholesale fund managed by the Centro Group where Centro Properties held 46.65 percent stakes. Centro Properties has decided to go ahead with its plans to sell its assets to a private real estate investment advisor in order to provide liquidity to the balance sheet and pay down its outstanding indebtedness. read more

Toll Holdings, the largest shareholder in Australia's second largest Airline, Virgin Blue Holdings plans to scrape its majority stakes in the airlines. Virgin Airlines is also Australia's biggest freight carrier owned by Virgin Group. Toll shall offload its holdings via a special dividend scheme according to which Toll shareholders shall get one share of Virgin Blue for every Toll share they own. read more

GPT Group was the overall worst performing stock taking in a 36.58 percent decrease. Among the worst performing stocks for the week 28 of 2008 on the Australian sharemarket were a mixture of real estate business and property management companies: GPT Group (GPT), Mirvac Group (MGR), Stockland (SGP), Macquarie DDR Trust (MDT). These worst performing stocks for week 28 of 2008 recorded losses above 17.39 percent and all of these companies were real estate companies. read more

Perilya (PEM) was the overall best performing stock taking in a 20.96 percent increase. It was a mixture of toll road development, infrastructure services, steel manufacturing, and mining companies who were among the best performing stocks for the week 28 of 2008 of the Australian sharemarket: Transurban Group (TCL), Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI), BlueScope Steel (BSL), Perilya (PEM), Macarthur Coal (MCC). These best performing stocks managed gains above 10.04 percent by the end of the trading week. read more

The stockmarket value of Ten Network (TEN) share prices have nearly halved this year. Thus in order to savage the sagging share prices, it shall buy back up to 10 percent of its shares. Such a drastic move shall cost $150 million to the company as it plans to acquire up to 92.2 million of its own shares. The share prices witnessed a rally of 6 percent as soon as Ten began its debt-funded buy back plan. read more

Australia's largest speciality clothing retailer announced a slash in its expected profit margins for the next year. Just Group Ltd. (JST) projected earnings per share to fall between 29.2 cents and 30.6 cents in the financial year ending July 31. This was a 12 percent cut in its 2008 forecast when it had projected bullish earnings last month itself. read more

Allco Finance (AFG), struggling fund manager, announced that its bankers have granted further extension on its senior debt facility of up to $1.5 billion. It further added that its talks with its bankers continue on a positive note. AFG has agreed for an extension for $250 million bridging facility as it received an extension of deadline till July 31. Banks have granted the new deadline to the company to sort out its refinancing while they still continue to call shots inside Allco. read more

A consortium of 25 banks has agreed to continue providing $2.8 billion loan to Babcock & Brown. The company shall completely overhaul its business model along with reducing its dependence on balance sheet. The company shall also avoid any fire sales in coming times. read more

Lend Lease plans to expand its business in retirement homes. As Australia's population is moving quickly into the grey region, the company sees growth prospects in the business. It plans to takeover Babcock and Brown's listed funds to break away B&B Communities (BBC) from its parent company. Lend Lease was listed as one of the prospective buyers of 6.18 percent substantial stake for Babcock and Brown Communities, which owns substantial number of retirement homes and aged-care facilities. read more

It was officially revealed today that Rudd government has officially prohibited any move by China's state owned Sinosteel to acquire stakes in Murchison Metal. The Foreign Investment Review Board would delay its decision for 90 days about Chinese take over bid on West Australia's mining company. Rudd government is planning for new regime that would limit foreign stakes in Australian companies or their take over. read more

The British Gas giant, BG Group, is back with its offer bid price of $15.50 a share for a hostile takeover of Origin Energy (ORG). Its offer had been earlier rejected its offer stating that the sale price has to be "a lot more" that $15.50 a share price. This time the BG has offered the price directly to its shareholders. It had earlier offered a price of $14.70 a-share price but had revised it by 48 percent to $15.50. read more

What can be termed as one of the biggest achievements, Rio Tinto has bagged a record 86 percent hike in iron ore contract prices. The hike includes freight premium with China's biggest steel maker, Boasteel. Shipping iron ore from China is cheaper than from Brazil. This has led to higher iron ore contract price between Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton against Rio de Janeiro based Vale. read more

Anglo Swiss Global miner Xstrata has decided to match the rival bid for Australian listed Indophil Resources Limited. It has currently placed its bid for $1 per share as the take over bid for INdophil Resources. The Crosby consortium led by Hong Kong bank currently leads the take over proposal with its $1.28 per share bid. Xstrata had announced on Friday that it shall not lift its bid of $1.00 per share but now seems to have quickly changed its mind and decided to match the $488 million take over bid for the giant underdeveloped copper mine in Philippines. read more

Transurban (TCL) Chief, Chris Lynch has introduced a new cost reduction programs and reinvented new means to finance its debts and increase the cash flows. According to Lynch, the 2009 distribution costs would be funded on the basis of cash flows only. The payout would not be funded by debt accumulation at the cost of company assets. read more

Cazaly Resources share prices soared at the Australian stock exchange after its announcement to team up with Fortescue Metals to mine the iron in Pilbara region in Western Australia. It has obtained the documents for renewal process of the land by Rio Tinto under the Freedom of Information Act. It now claims that there are several defects in the renewal process that leaves the land open for rights to occupancy. However, Rio Tinto has strongly objected to any such allegations. read more