Australian Business News

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.