I'm not sure if I mentioned or not, but I'm on holiday this...

I'm not sure if I mentioned or not, but I'm on holiday this week. RP and I are basically in the middle of nowhere until this coming Sunday when normality (whatever that is) will be restored. I went into the local town (Hicksville) to pick up some provisions only to get a couple of SMS alerts re CNP and CER which then resulted in a search for a very slow internet connection, downloads, etc.

Anyway, we have known all along that this half would bring property revals, etc. I haven't done the calcs but we might reasonably expect somewhere in the region of 6-10% markdown on property values. I reinforce that these are non-cash. Centro is an operator of centres which means the critical points are whether rents are being paid and bills including interest are being met. From my numbers and what I have seen briefly looking through the filing this is definitely the case.

As a comparison: If the value of your investment property drops, you are less worried if you have a high quality tenant, contracted for 5-6 years who is paying rent which increases every 12 months.

So, in a nutshell we are in a very jittery market which is over-reacting to bad news and being neutral on good news. The press will probably put some crap spin on the release but at the end of the day, I'd wait until the final results come out next week to hear the truth. Remember we were told that CNP made a distributable profit last half (they didn't make a distribution) and CER both made a distributable profit AND made a distribution. We also know that asset sales are progressing well.

I have to go... apparently we are going for a bush walk.