Leaders

And that’s a wrap. Reporting season is over. And to describe it in one word, the February 2021 reporting season was ‘pleasant.’ There weren’t too many surprises on the downside, winners exceeded losers, and the themes were as expected. However, prices moved well in advance of results. This meant that despite a significant number of…

Mark Arnold and Jason Orthman stood at the podium to collect three awards at last Friday (Feb 26) afternoon’s annual Morningstar funds awards, including the main prize, that of Fund Manager of the Year. But they didn’t quite scoop the pool. They were on stage four times but had to make way for T.Rowe Price…

The SEEK Limited (ASX: SEK) share price will be on watch this morning after the employment business announced it was selling down its stake of Zhaopin. Zhaopin is a Chinese employment business that SEEK owned a major stake in. What did SEEK announce about Zhaopin? SEEK plans to sell down its stake in the Chinese business from…

Upcoming floats for February The IPO market is still running hot, with a handful of initial public offering (IPO) hopefuls hitting the boards this month – and some recording stellar price increases. Following-on from the strong IPO momentum from late last year, 2021 is shaping-up to be another cracking year, assuming volatility remains muted. From 1 December 2020…

The most-quoted man in finance, Warren Buffett, recently released the quarterly update of portfolio holdings for the US$570 billion ($730 billion) Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. There is little doubt that Berkshire (NYSE: BRK.A) was incredibly busy during the final quarter of 2020. Most interesting was the decision of management to request that the US Securities and…

Afterpay this, Afterpay that… what started five years ago as a small payments platform quickly became one of Australia’s most valuable and iconic companies. Afterpay listed at $1.00 only a few years ago (April 2016), and on today’s numbers is worth a staggering $41.7 billion at $150 a share. That is an astronomical gain of…

BARD1 Life Sciences (ASX: BD1) – Earlier in the week, the Inside Investor team published an article on BARD1 Life Sciences (click here) and its meteoric rise following a positive announcement on ovarian cancer detection. Shares have risen from 74.5c on the day of the announcement to $3.20 at the time of writing. That’s a…

Unlike their counterparts at the big end of town, the trustees of SMSFs were given a glowing endorsement by Senator Jane Hume, the assistant minister for superannuation, at the SMSF Association annual conference this week. Her conference speech on the first day of the two-day virtual event (February 16) probably would have drawn rapturous applause…

Telstra (ASX: TLS) – Shares closed the day +2.5 per cent on the back of a reasonable result and a series of amended growth targets. CEO Andy Penn delivered a result which was in line with guidance despite a fall in underlying earnings of 14.2 per cent to $3.3 billion. Similarly net profit fell 2.2…

Dusk Group (DSK: ASX) is a specialist retailer operating solely within the Australian market. Dusk is best-known for its scented candles, however its range includes diffusers, essential oils and other fragrance-related homewares. Historically, niche homeware retail segments have been largely a cottage industry with a long tail of small boutique merchants fulfilling demand. Dusk is…

AGL Energy Limited (ASX: AGL) has just revealed a painful writedown; so is it a defensive ASX share idea? The AGL writedowns AGL announced today that it intends to recognise accounting charges of almost $2.7 billion after tax for its December 2020 result. The energy business explained that these charges reflect $1.92 billion in provisions for…

As we switch from 4G to 5G and smart devices begin to communicate with each other, data usage and consumption is expected to increase some 300%-1000% compared with 4G. And with extra data comes the urgent need to build data centre infrastructure to house, capture and analyse it. According to research house Gartner, Australian data…