Australian Stock Market Report – Afternoon 8/16/13

Afternoon Market Report

Australian stocks came under selling pressure on Friday, despite a strong rise on the Chinese share market. Another triple digit loss on Wall Street overnight impacted sentiment, while profit taking also seemed to be in vogue.

The Australian share market rose a little under 1.2 per cent over the course of the trading week.

It has been a busy week on the reporting calendar.

Today, energy company, Santos (STO) announced an 11.3 per cent rise in 1H13 underlying profit to $251 million. The result was driven by higher natural gas prices, which rose by 11 per cent over the half. This helped offset a slight fall in both production and sales volume. A 15 cent per share dividend was declared, to be paid to eligible shareholders on 30 September. Santos shares rose 3.78 per cent to $14.54.

Also today, the ANZ Bank (ANZ) released its third quarter trading update. Cash profit was up 11 per cent on the nine months to June to $4.8 billion, however investors appeared concerned over margin pressures particularly in ANZ's Asia business, sending its share price down today.

Good news for Australian and New Zealand media conglomerate APN News and Media (APN). Statutory net profit came in at $12.8 million for the six months to June 30 2013, up from a loss of $319.4M in the prior corresponding period. Last year's result was impacted by a write-down on the value of APN´s New Zealand publishing business. No interim dividend was declared in keeping with APN's cost cutting theme. APN shares rose strongly today, finishing higher by almost 21 per cent at $0.35

Institutions have taken up Domino's Pizza's (DMP) entitlement offer which raised $137 million. The retail entitlement offer opens on Tuesday with an offer price of $10.20 per share. DMP shares rose nearly 12 per cent today to $12.88

On the market overall, a total of $1.9 billion shares changed hands, worth $ 5.3 billion 427 were up, 463 were down and 333 were unchanged.

At 4.30pm AEST the SPI Futures were up 0.3%

The Australian dollar ended the day's trade at US 91.75

Ahead tonight, housing starts, building permits, and the University of Michigan confidence index are released in the US.

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