Reporting season: All the latest news from companies releasing financial results to the ASX today

A fall in home prices is making financial conditions in Australia more restrictive, according to a senior Reserve Bank official, helping efforts to reduce aggregate demand and cool the economy.

“The housing market appears to have softened by somewhat more than the recent increase in interest rates would imply, contributing to financial conditions potentially being a bit more restrictive than otherwise,” Reserve Bank assistant governor Chris Kent said in Sydney.

Kent said that the housing price drop was due to interest rate hikes, a reaction to rapid growth in previous years and changes to housing tax breaks in the May budget.

“All else equal, these changes will tend to reduce the extent to which monetary policy needs to constrain the growth in aggregate demand to help bring inflation back to the RBA’s target,” he said.

In addition to higher interest rates, reduced tax breaks for investors, a higher cost of living and households’ already heavy debt burden are putting pressure on prices.

Prices fell in June and July by the most since December 2022 as rising interest rates and tax changes hit demand.

Kent said the tightening this year was working as intended, with restrictive monetary policy slowing aggregate demand and helping bring inflation back toward the RBA’s target.

“The growth of aggregate demand appears to be slowing. This is intended and is needed to bring inflation back to target,” he said, a few days after the bank decided to keep rates on hold after hiking three times this year already.

Although the bank’s forecasts on Tuesday were that inflation would now slow back toward the target band, after the meeting governor Michele Bullock adopted a hawkish stance, signaling that further tightening may still be necessary if prices rise faster than forecast.

Asked about that, Kent pointed to high economic uncertainty and said risks to the inflation outlook were “very much to the upside”.

He added that “a lot of things still have to go right” for inflation to slow as forecast, including the Strait of Hormuz reopening reasonably soon.

Bloomberg

The Australian share market has fallen further into the red, dropping 0.5 per cent to 9159.3 points at 10am.

A 15 per cent surge in the price of takeover target Cleanaway’s stock and a 10 per cent rise for market operator ASX Ltd (despite a dire financial report) couldn’t ease the bleed this morning.

Only three of the market’s 11 sectors - utilities, IT and consumer staples - held their ground.

Telstra’s 4.6 per cent dive led losses for the telco sector, which was down almost 3 per cent.

Monadelphous has picked up $110 million worth of work in the resources sector.

The engineering contractro will construction of a well pad, gathering systems and brownfield facility upgrades for Santos associated with the APF tie-In project in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Work is expected to be completed in 2028.

Melchor, Monadelphous’ civil business, has secured a contract with Pilbara Ports associated with the Utah Ring Road reconstruction project at the Utah Bulk Handling Facility in Port Hedland.

Work will due to start immediately and be completed in the first half of 2028.

Monadelphous has also secured a 12-month contract for the provision of services at Glencore’s Murrin Murrin nickel operations in the Goldfields.

The contractor’s shares were up jus under one per cent in early trade to $31.96.

Telstra boss Vicky Brady has copped a more than $600,000 penalty for an outage in July that left up to 25 million people without phone coverage.

Telco’s annual report — released on the same day the company posted a full-year net profit of more than $2 billion — said the chief executive would lose $607,000 in short-term incentive bonuses.

The cutback came after the board reduced her individual performance multiplier by 20 percentage points, reducing her bonus to just over 70 per cent of her maximum.

But with other bonuses and fixed pay of almost $2.5 million, she still took home $6.83m — up $600,000 from a year earlier.

ASX Ltd’s full-year profit missed estimates and costs grew ahead of incoming chief executive Anthony Attia’s arrival at the Australian exchange next month.

Net income fell 3.5 per cent to $484.9 million in the 12 months through June. That compared with the $509.3m average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Total expenses jumped 21 per cent.

The results serve as a starting point for Euronext veteran Attia when he takes the helm at the exchange on September 1. He’ll need to execute a strategy overhaul to regain the trust of investors after years of technical failures in ASX’s markets infrastructure and regulatory scrutiny. The stock has fallen more than 40 per cent from a peak in 2021.

The last year has marked a “reset” for the exchange, said interim chief Darren Yip in the statement. “Meaningful progress has been made in our transformation and there is more to do,” he said.

The exchange operator remains under close watch by regulators and market participants. Traders are waiting on an upgrade to its clearing and settlement systems after years of glitches and an outage in December 2024, with completion expected in 2029. TMX Group’s purchase of Cboe Australia could also challenge ASX’s trading turnover dominance.

ASX declared a final dividend of $1.047, down from $1.121 a year ago.

The company in February forecast reduced payouts for the next few years to fund a $150m capital charge imposed by the nation’s financial watchdog.

Origin Energy full-year profit beat analyst estimates, as the uptake of electric vehicles and home batteries in Australia accelerated.

Underlying profit fell 22 per cent from a year earlier to $1.16 billion, slightly above analyst estimates. Net income rose 6.3 per cent to $1.57b.

Australia’s world-leading energy transition is increasingly being driven by households embracing rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, the large-scale build-out of renewables and grid infrastructure faces rising costs, lengthy approvals and regulatory uncertainty.

“Flexible generation and storage will become more important as more renewable energy enters the system,” chief executive Frank Calabria said.

“We are focused on making it easier for households and businesses to electrify, manage energy use efficiently and bring together products like solar, batteries, electric vehicles, broadband and orchestration services.”

EQT Infrastructure has offered to buy Cleanaway Waste Management in a deal that values the Australian listed firm at about $6.9 billion.

EQT proposed to buy all Cleanaway’s shares for $3.13 each in cash - a 32 per cent premium to the closing price on Wednesday. The Cleanaway board said it will recommend shareholders vote to accept the offer and it will give EQT up to nine weeks of exclusive access to its books to agree to a binding deal.

Cleanaway is a leading waste management and resource recovery firm with more than 10,000 staff, helping businesses and councils to turn waste into valuable resources. It has the nation’s largest network of collection and recycling treatment facilities, according to its website.

EQT Infrastructure is managed by Sweden’s EQT AB, a global private markets firm which has about $333 billion in total assets under management. The proposal from EQT follows an earlier offer at A$3 per share, the statement said.

EQT is also seeking to buy Australian investment management firm Perpetual.

It last month sweetened its offer to around $2.6b. While Perpetual rejected the bid, it said it will engage with the Swedish firm to seek a better price.

Bloomberg

Australia is at a critical moment in its digital future as the artificial intelligence boom grows, the nation’s biggest telecommunications company says.

“We must position ourselves to drive and participate in the value created by AI and the digital infrastructure boom, with sovereign capability and assets working in our national interest,” Telstra boss Vicki Brady said.

“We also understand Australians are concerned about the impact AI could have on jobs and society.”

Ms Brady is expected to expand on her comments during an earnings briefing later on Thursday.

Telstra posted a net profit of $2.4 billion, up 2.7 per cent, for the 2025/26 year, despite flat revenue growth of $22.9b.

Underlying earnings, before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, came to $8.3b, which was in the middle of its guidance range.

Telstra declared a final dividend of 10.5c, taking the total for the year to 21c per share, in line with expectations of a 10.5 per cent increase in its payout to shareholders.

It also announced a second on-market share buyback of up to $1b after completing a $1.25b share sweep in June.

Read more here ..

Three days, three big contract wins.

Not content with picking up $406 million of underground mining work in New Zealand on Tuesday or being named preferred $140m contractor at Medallion Metals’ Ravensthorpe gold project yesterday, the group revealed this morning that it has secured $50m of road works in NSW.

Subsidiary Decmil will undertake an early works package that will pave the way for major construction on the Elizabeth Drive and Mamre Road upgrades and Archbold Road extension in western Sydney.

The works include widening Mamre Road to two lanes in each direction for about 600m, reconstruction of Bill Anderson reserve carpark and construction of a local road between Clifton Avenue and Salisbury Avenue at Kemps Creek, and extension of 550m of Archbold Road.

Macmahon’s shares are up a staggering 60 per cent for the past six months but off 2 per cent for the past five sessions.

They will open trade today at $1.02

Treasury Wine Estates has confirmed a well-flagged full-year loss of more than $1 billion as it offloads wine brands in Australia and puts the broom through its Americas business to adjust to a changing retail landscape for liquor.

Its flagship Penfold brand helped TWE just beat guidance for earnings before interest, tax and significant items of between $480 million and $490m, with thefinal figure coming in at $492.3m.

But adding back in hefty writedowns saw it post a net loss of $1.08b.

TWE on Monday slashed the value of its troubled US supply chain again by $558.4m as it grapples with declining wine consumption.

That was on top of the $687.4m of writedowns to the Americas business announced in December.

“F26 was a year of decisive action and significant change for Treasury Wine Estates,” said CEO Sam Fischer.

“While our financial performance reflected evolving market conditions and the proactive measures to ensure brand and channel health, we made substantial progress towards reshaping the business for long-term success.

“Penfolds, once again, proved it is a global luxury wine brand that transcends the wine category.”