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That's a wrap from us today at Markets Live! Thanks again for reading along, and for dropping us a comment if you managed.
Alex Druce will be back tomorrow to do it all again.
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Listed property giant Charter Hall has emerged the victor in the battle for the sale and leaseback of the David Jones flagship store in Sydney's Elizabeth Street, worth about $450 million.
In a late statement from the owners of the assets, the South African-based Woolworths, it says discussions with Charter Hall are ongoing and remain incomplete, with any potential transaction subject to completion of confirmatory due diligence, negotiation of definitive agreements and any requisite third party approvals.
The deal is consistent with Charter Hall's $8.5 billion sale and leaseback strategy which included the Aldi distribution centre, among others.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, David Jones has decided to only sell the Elizabeth Street property and will look at the David Jones Bourke Street Mall property in "due course".
The owners appointed UBS to conduct the sale process in July with the hope of garnering up to $1 billion for the two assets. The 9-storey Elizabeth Street store has undergone about $200 million renovation in the past couple of years.
David Jones has a long term lease in the property.
Surprise earnings upgrades provided a safety net for a stumbling ASX on Wednesday, after a COVID-19 vaccine setback rattled Wall Street.
The S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.3 per cent lower at 61792, snapping a seven-session winning streak. The index traded in a range of just 24 points with financial and material sectors weighing on gains in the healthcare, consumer, and information technology sectors.
Chief investment officer at Burman Investment, Julia Lee, said the ASX put in a strong result despite US markets closing 0.6 per cent lower after Johnson & Johnson announced it was pausing clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine due to an unexplained illness in a study participant.
“We need a vaccine for borders to reopen and trade to open,” Ms Lee said.
The ASX 200 finished 16.5 points, or 0.3 per cent lower on Wednesday to close at 6179.2.
The fall snapped a seven-session winning streak for the local bourse, with the major banks and miners weak.
The biggest movers on Wednesday were:
CSL shareholders have voted in favour of all motions at the company’s 2020 AGM, including signing off on more than $9.5 million worth of long term incentive performance share units for chief executive Paul Perreault.
Perreault took home a whopping $US28 million in realised remuneration in 2020, the majority of which was the value of long-term incentives that vested during the year.
The company’s 2021 grant of performance units to Perreault will be equivalent to 400 per cent of his base salary, $US1.7 million, which converts to just over $US7 million or $AUD9.5 million.
It would be paid subject to performance hurdles on four dates between now and 2024. Shareholders voted in favour of the motion by 76.3 per cent - though this meant 23.6 per cent of votes were cast against the incentives plan. Milford Asset Management senior analyst Marissa Rossi said the fact that CSL was able to tighten its 2021 profit forecasts showed conditions were better that the “worse case scenario” envisaged in August at the company’s 2020 financial results, but that collection of plasma was still a challenge for the business.
“Taking this into account, to achieve F22 consensus earnings requires CSL to release finished goods inventory to make up for lower collections, or for plasma donations to rebound strongly, boosted by the end of US fiscal stimulus and higher unemployment post COVID,” Rossi said.
A question mark is hanging over Virgin Australia boss Paul Scurrah's future following its takeover by the American private equity firm Bain Capital, with a key union fearing he is about to depart the airline.
A spokesman for Bain, which bought Virgin in a fierce auction after it went into voluntary administration in April, could not immediately confirm Mr Scurrah's continued role when contacted on Wednesday afternoon.
The Transport Workers Union said it had suspended negotiations with Bain over a new enterprise bargaining agreement while it sought confirmation about any changes to the airline's management.
The union movement has been concerned Bain would put its adviser and former Jetstar boss Jayne Hrdlicka in charge of Virgin and turn it into a low-cost carrier at the expense of jobs and industry competition.
The chief executive of supermarket giant Coles has backed an NSW-style approach to managing the COVID-19 crisis in Victoria, saying reopening the economy with low but well-managed case numbers would be the best way forward in the long term.
Steven Cain, who heads up the $24 billion grocer, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that while he admired the work done in Victoria to suppress the second wave, states such as NSW had done a "very good job" at managing the virus while still keeping things open.
"If we can do as good a job as NSW appears to be doing over a longer period of time, then that appears to be the best of both worlds," Mr Cain said.
"The virus is contained, the vulnerable are protected but more business is able to be done."
Performance is always relative, isn't it.
Chief investment officer at Burman Investment, Julia Lee, says the S&P/ASX 200 is doing quite well compared to markets currently open around Asia.
The ASX 200 is down 0.1 per cent, but the mainland China CSI 300 index is down 0.6 per cent and the Hang Seng is down 0.3 per cent. However the Nikkei is up 0.2 per cent.
"I think it's a pretty good result for the Australian market given the falls we have on Wall Street overnight," Ms Lee said.
Cleanaway Waste Management chief executive Vik Bansal says he has the unwavering support of the company’s board, but has apologised for his behaviour in the face of whistleblower complaints alleging he behaved in a bullying manner towards staff.
“I now recognise that my determination to turn around a struggling business and drive a high-performance culture led me to sometimes behave in a manner inconsistent with the values I aspire to. I am sorry for that and have resolved to improve,” Mr Bansal said on Wednesday.
He was speaking at the $4.6 billion ASX-listed waste giant’s virtual annual general meeting, where the topic of his behaviour was also addressed by the company’s chairman Mark Chellew, and one disappointed shareholder.
Mr Chellew told investors that while Mr Bansal led Cleanaway with a passion and dedication that had driven exceptional returns to shareholders, the board took the allegations of misconduct against him seriously.
Yesterday I got the chance for a video call with Trevor Gurwich, senior portfolio manager for New York-based American Century. He manages the international opportunities fund and global small cap fund. It currently holds four Australian stocks; NWR Holdings, Seven Group, Saracen Minerals, and Temple & Webster.
It did hold Afterpay, but had to sell out because the market valuation became too big for his small cap mandate of companies under $US15 billion.
Instead, he bought into Temple & Webster around March or April. The stock was trading under $4 until May, and hit a high of $14 last week.
"What we noticed globally is that there has been a distinct trend for people to be sitting at home, looking around, and saying ‘my goodness, I need a new bookshelf, I need a new light, I need to redecorate my home because I am going to be nesting around here’," Mr Gurwich explained. In the US, furniture company Wayfair is up 1,130 per cent since March and his team looked for similar opportunities around the world.