The Australian sharemarket climbed on Thursday, extending its longest winning streak in more than a month, as investors digested one of the busiest days of the corporate earnings calendar.<\/p>\n
The S&P\/ASX 200 Index added 79.20 points, or 0.9 per cent, to 9086.20, finishing short of its record close in October. It earlier touched 9118.30 which was an intraday record.<\/p>\n
Equity investors appeared to shrug off the jobs data, which showed unemployment held at 4.1 per cent. This was better than expectations for a tick up to 4.2 per cent. Bond traders have now priced in another interest rate increase from the Reserve Bank in June.<\/p>\n
Price action on the ASX is being dominated by the higher oil price and one of the busiest days for earnings results this month.<\/p>\n
Global X investment strategist Marc Jocum said a strong mix of corporate earnings momentum and resilient macroeconomic data fuelled sentiment with over 70 per cent of stocks in the green underpinned by the major banks.<\/p>\n
\u201cRising interest rate expectations following January\u2019s jobs numbers provided a clear tailwind for bank net interest margins,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jocum said that this reporting season had been particularly volatile with more than half of ASX 200 stocks moving more than 5 per cent on the day of their results.<\/p>\n
The banks pushed the total return for the financials this month past 8 per cent on Thursday as Westpac rose 2.7 per cent to $41.89, National Australia Bank 2.4 per cent to $48.28, ANZ 2.1 per cent to $40.07, and Commonwealth Bank 0.7 per cent to $178.19.<\/p>\n
Medibank Private bucked the trend, falling 5.6 per cent to $4.52 as the insurer\u2019s underlying profit of $298 million missed expectations due to weaker private health insurance results and higher acquisition and lease interest expenses.<\/p>\n
Energy was the strongest after oil prices rose the most since October to above $US70 per barrel after media reports triggered concern about a US-Iran military conflict. Woodside Energy rose 4.5 per cent to $27.10, Santos 5.6 per cent to $7, and Beach Energy 2.7 per cent to $1.13.<\/p>\n
Materials stocks also rebounded from a bout of profit-taking, led by BHP, which firmed 1.8 per cent to $53.23, and Rio Tinto, up by 2 per cent to $168.55 before its results were published after the close.<\/p>\n
Wesfarmers weighed on consumer discretionary, falling 5.6 per cent to $84.24 on concerns about its second half outlook. Compounding the negative sentiment was Lovisa, which dived 12.8 per cent to $27.04 as statutory results fell short of market expectations, despite underlying earnings beating consensus.<\/p>\n
Stocks in focus<\/p>\n
Hub24 surged 14.2 per cent to $98.45 after its profit of $68 million, up 60 per cent year-on-year, came in 9 to 13 per cent ahead of consensus.<\/p>\n
Zip Co crashed 34.4 per cent to $1.85 as cash EBTDA of $124 million fell short of expectations and activity in the US slowed.<\/p>\n
Sonic Healthcare rallied 9.9 per cent to $23.34 as the pathology giant reported better than expected activity in Australia and Germany, and reaffirmed its earnings guidance.<\/p>\n
Telstra gained 3.6 per cent to $5.14 after the telco bumped up its share buyback to $1.25 billion and delivered a 9.4 per cent rise in interim net profit to $1.1 billion. The group narrowed its underlying earnings guidance to between $8.2 billion and $8.4 billion.<\/p>\n
IPH advanced 12.7 per cent to $3.81 following a 10.5 per cent rise in net profit to $41.2 million for the first half, as growth in Canada and Asia offset softer conditions in Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Lifestyle Communities dived 7.1 per cent to $5.33 after its profit fell to $15.8 million for the first half, as lower new home settlements and reduced deferred management fee revenue weighed.<\/p>\n
NRW Holdings rocketed 8.7 per cent to $6.12 as it upgraded its full-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation guidance to a range of $275 million to $285 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian sharemarket climbed on Thursday, extending its longest winning streak in more than a month, as investors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-291136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}