The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX:XJO) went up by 0.8% today to 6,123 points.
There were a number of important announcements today. I'll start with the biggest movers:
Treasury Wine Estates Ltd (ASX: TWE)
The Treasury Wine Estates share price fell 14.3% after news from China.
According to the company's announcement, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has initiated an anti-dumping investigation into Australian wine exports into China.
The ASX 200 business said that it will co-operate with any requests for information received from Chinese or Australian authorities.
China is one of Treasury Wine Estates biggest export markets and the company thinks of China as a priority market.
Monadelphous Group Limited (ASX: MND)
At the other end of the performance table the Monadelphous share price rose by 19%.
It released its FY20 result showing that revenue increased by 2.6% to $1.65 billion.
The ASX 200 company achieved earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $92.1 million with net profit after tax (NPAT) of $36.5 million.
The engineering businesses finished with a cash balance of $208.3 million. Management said this balance sheet will allow the company to invest in suitable business opportunities aligned to its new markets and growth strategy as they arise.
Management believe that the resources sector is expected to provide a steady flow of opportunities over the coming years.
Cochlear Limited (ASX: COH)
The Cochlear share price went up by almost 10% today after reporting its FY20 result.
Cochlear announced that its FY20 sales revenue was down 6% to $1.35 billion. Underlying earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) dropped 42% to $206.9 million due to the rapid fall in sales in the second half which was a consequence of COVID-19-related surgery deferrals.
The underlying net profit also fell by 42%, to $153.8 million.
However, Cochlear announced a statutory net loss of $238.3 million for the year due to $416.3 million of patent litigation expenses and $24.2 million in innovation fund gains after tax.
The ASX 200 company's management couldn't provide a forecast for FY21 revenue due to COVID-19 uncertainty.
Netwealth Group Ltd (ASX: NWL)
The Netwealth share price went up by 8.5% today after reporting its FY20 result.
Netwealth reported that its total income rose by 25.5% to $123.9 million. Netwealth's EBITDA grew by 24.8% over the year to $64.8 million. Underlying net profit after tax grew by 21.7% to $43.8 million. Statutory profit came in at $43.7 million.
The board of Netwealth decided to declare a final dividend of 7.8 cents per share.
A major part of the growth this year came from the increase of funds under administration (FUA). The FUA rose 35% to $31.5 billion. There was record FUA net inflows of $9.1 billion over the year.
In FY21 the ASX200 company expects to continue to benefit from the significant changes currently reshaping the industry and it remains positive about the future and market share growth.
Netwealth is estimating that FY21 FUA net inflows will be $8 billion.
Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC)
The big ASX bank released its FY20 third quarter update today.
It said that it generated unaudited statutory net profit of $1.12 billion for the quarter to 30 June 2020. That was up from the quarterly average profit of $595 million from the FY20 first half.
Unaudited cash profit was $1.32 billion. Again, this was up from the FY20 first half quarterly average of $497 million.
During the quarter Westpac recognised an impairment charge of $826 million, further increasing its provisions and provisioning cover. The net interest margin fell to 2.05% for the third quarter because of lower interest rates and the common equity tier 1 (CET1) capital ratio was 10.8% at 30 June 2020.
In a blow to income-focused investors, the Westpac board decided not to pay a dividend for the first half of FY20. The bank wants to retain a strong balance sheet amid the ongoing uncertainty.
