This was published 4 years ago
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The ASX200 marked the Black Friday sales with its third consecutive week of declines, dropping as much as 2 per cent after a fresh COVID variant of concern sent a shudder through global financial markets and local travel stocks.
The ASX 200 closed 1.7 per cent lower, down 128 points to 7,279.30, with all sectors in the red and only 14 stocks finishing the day higher.
Energy was the worst hit, down 4.6 per cent, with falling oil prices also playing a part as governments release emergency oil reserves to cool the market.
Woodside Petroleum dropped 5 per cent to $21.60, while Santos finished 4.8 per cent lower.
Cardiac imaging startup Artrya was up as much as 11.5 per cent on its offer price in its first hour on the bourse.
The Thorney and Regal-backed medtech raised $40 million to list on the ASX with shares at $1.35 each. The stock hit a high of $1.50 on listing and was trading at $1.48 just after 3:30pm.
The company is looking to commercialise an artificial intelligence-driven tool for detecting coronary artery disease, which can lead to heart attack if left untreated.
Artrya’s listing wraps up a big week of biotech floats, including pacemaker startup EBR Systems and Paul Hopper’s radiopharmaceuticals startup Radiopharm Theranostics.
Radiopharm shares are down 33 per cent on the company’s offer price of 60 cents, while EBR Systems is just below its offer price of $1.08, trading at $1.06.
The ASX200 is marking the Black Friday sales with its third consecutive week of declines as a fresh COVID variant of concern sent the market sharply lower in afternoon trading.
The ASX 200 was down 1.9 per cent this afternoon with all major sub-indexes in the red but energy and travel stocks were leading the charge.
Energy was the worst hit, down 4.5 per cent, as oil prices continued to fall in response to emergency oil releases by governments designed to cool the market.
Woodside Petroleum dropped 4.8 per cent to $21.66, Santos was down 5 per cent to $6.48.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has released new guidance for financial institutions to protect their businesses against the financial risks of climate change.
The guidelines are not prescriptive but rather aim to provide banks, insurers and super funds with assistance in how to minimise the three types of climate risk - physical risk (extreme weather damage), transition risk (losses from policy change) and liability risk (increasing climate litigation).
APRA chair Wayne Byres said the decarbonisation transition created financial risks that businesses needed to be prepared for.
“Recent developments, including the Australian government’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, underscore the trajectory the world is on in response to climate change,” Mr Byres said.
Health funds know that in this era of on-demand consumerism, younger Australians are often far from enchanted with the world of insurance.
Quarterly data from the Australian Prudential and Regulatory Authority (APRA) highlights the challenge that insurers face in courting young adults. In the June quarter, for example, the number of insured Australians went up by more than 65,000, but the number of insured people aged between 20 and 24 saw a net decrease of more than 5000.
Yet the fight for young members is key to maintaining the viability of the private health sector. Chief executives say they know this cohort wants more flexibility and personalised services, and is willing to give up some personal data to have products shaped to individual needs.
Trying to reach out to Millennials, the sector is now rushing to respond.
Australian investors shouldn’t expect a repeat of the mammoth payouts they received in the 2021 financial year, with post-COVID market volatility and weaker iron ore prices likely to make companies more cautious on dividends.
With research from asset manager Janus Henderson this month highlighting that Australian payouts grew four times faster than the rest of the world, hitting a record of $41.9 billion in the third quarter of 2021, experts are warning of a more subdued outlook for the 2022 financial year.
The dividend bonanza has been driven predominantly by miners and banking giants, with Melbourne-headquartered iron ore giant BHP set to dole out close to $19 billion to Australian investors in 2021.
But Morningstar head of equity research, Peter Warnes, told the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that companies are likely to hang onto their cash reserves in fiscal 2022, as the pandemic’s aftershocks ripple through the global economy.
Local prescription software startup MedAdvisor will double down on capturing US market share as pharmacies emerge from the COVID crunch.
The company, which held is AGM this morning, has recently inked a deal with Walmart to provide its medication reminder tools across its pharmacy network.
Chief executive Robert Read told this masthead the pharmacies in the region were now more open to digital initiatives.
“There’s no doubt that COVID has been a massive distraction in the US, particularly in the pharmacy market. Their pharmacies have been set up to be vaccination centres and a lot of initiatives have been sidelined,” he said.
“A lot of people are realising they have to get back to what they need to do…to remind people to come back for their boosters and back for medications.“
Medadvisor has also recently launched $US3 million pilot in the US to reach out to patients in areas of low COVID-19 vaccination to encourage them to book in.
Shares have dropped 5 per cent this morning to 38c.
Shares of artificial intelligence crowdsourcing provider Appen have dived again after Macquarie took the lack of guidance from the former tech darling as a sign that another downgrade is in the works.
The stock dropped below the $10 mark, down as much as 15 per cent to a low of $9.90 this morning after Macquarie raised the prospect of Appen’s major tech customers becoming less reliant on its services.
Macquarie lowered its price target to $9.50 with an Underperform rating.
“The exponential increase in demand for annotation has resulted in bigtech companies revisiting their annotation strategy. Some companies will continue to use external annotators, but others are looking to develop their own crowdsourcing solutions, minimising their reliance on external annotators,” says Macquarie.
Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is forging a new future for the owner of the controversial Carmichael coal mine as a green energy powerhouse.
But it was not enough to prevent the conglomerate’s flagship Adani Ports from being dumped from four climate-related MSCI indexes due to its links to the Queensland coal mine.
“Adani Ports will be removed from the MSCI ACWI IMI Climate Change Indexes following the November Semi-Annual Index Review,” says a MSCI spokeswoman.
“In September 2021, MSCI revised the ESG Controversy Assessment for Adani Ports and as a result, the company does not meet the eligibility criteria for the index. Adani Ports will be removed from these indexes effective December 1, 2021.“