Earnings season insights - Part 2

-- | 18/09/2018 Text size Decrease

Glenn Freeman: If we can talk about some of the specific sectors I know you mentioned resources was one that performed very well in terms of it's earnings growth which is tended to move up and down. It's not going to keep going that way indefinitely. But health care was another one that you referred to that was bit of a mixed bag there. Can you just talk us through those? Peter Warnes: Well, Glenn I mean in resources what was happening there was a continuation of what happened in 2017. The bulk commodity prices say that of iron ore and coal both metallurgical and thermal coal stayed up as did alumina prices. So, the big bulks BHP, Rio did very, very well, but they were well anticipated, they rewarded shareholders, record dividends, record free cash flow, balance sheets in great shape, capital management was at the fore. And given that it's volatile industry, that's exactly what they should be doing. I mean when things are good they should pay it up. And then – and sit and trim sales when things get little bit rough. The health care space was a mixed bag as you said, I mean CSL shot the lights out and there is no doubt now as far as I am concerned it’s the number one major company in terms of the management team. It’s the best managed major company we have listed. It's now in the top 5 by market cap and is not there by accident. You know it’s a global player, it's got 35% to 40% of the markets in which it participates in, in the global sense. Human body does need blood. But they are also in the area of vaccinations and diversifying into that space. And their R&D is throwing up some very, very interesting potentially big winners. And so, it's no surprise at what it's done. On the flipside you had Ramsay Health Care which has kind of been a market favorite for quite a while. It stumbled again domestically because their private health care insurance numbers are under pressure. And things aren’t going all that well for them in both the UK and France. So that disappointed and the market has marked it down with it's probably overshot on the downside. But can it recover, yes it can. Will it recover in the next year, possibly not. And so you've got to be just a bit cautious there. But I mean the three big companies they are in international market. CSL, Cochlear, ResMed all did very well, they are global players and focus by those companies was excellent. Freeman: Without going to too much detail I know there was some movement upwards in terms of the fair value estimates from our analyst. And there was some on the downside as well. The full data obviously spelled in our Earnings Insights that’s now available to our subscribers. But just in general terms what could you say there. Warnes: Well, there was a couple of sectors that really did do better than probably the market was looking for, strange enough leisure and gaming did very well as a group. Crown did well, and Star Entertainment did well because of VIP came back here and started throwing money at roulette and all other things they play. And the house was winning. And Tabcorp was better because of the synergies coming out of Tatts. Now as a group it was – they did well. Strange enough small retail did okay despite the problems with the household consumption both Breville and Super Retail Group were better than expected. Elsewhere there was a couple of reasonable results in non-bank financials. Computershare was a strong result. Link was a good result. So, it was a fairly mixed bag. But overall as I said quite big disappointments, they were there James Hardie and Adelaide Brighton in building materials, but then Boral shot the lights out. Energy was very good both Woodside and Santos have performed very strongly. They have delivered what we expected because again the oil prices are sticking around at $75 Brent and that's terrific when your cash flow breakeven for like Santos' 36 and now with Quadrant down to 32. They are going to continue to do very well and the world needs energy. Freeman: Great, thank you very much for your time today, Peter. Warnes: It's a pleasure Glenn.