Around the Traps ... with THE FERRET 08:05, Friday, 26 May 2006
Sydney - Friday - May 26: (RWE Australian Business News) - *************************
When companies realise profit is going to be down they will likely provide a range of figures for the expected result in their ASX announcement, but most of them will neglect to include the comparative figure from the year before.
They obviously don't want to dwell on the bad news.
NATIONAL CAN (NCI) has gone the other way.
In a terse statement yesterday it said that as a consequence of stronger-than-expected trading in the second half, full-year after-tax profit for 2005/06 is now expected to exceed $13.5 million.
With a result like that you would think the company would have been mighty proud to say that this is up $8.7 million last year, making this year a rise of 55 per cent.
EPS will be better than 20c a share.
Despite that National Can fell 2c to $1.60 yesterday.
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Some shareholders of ANVIL MINING (AVM) must have heard the drum beats early.
The shares rose as much as 17c on Wednesday in heavy trading.
Yesterday the company announced it had approved the $35 million Stage I development of the Kinsevere copper/cobalt deposits in the Congo following the completion of the feasibility study early this month.
The shares edged up to $1 at first but later slipped to 95.5c, down 1c.
*****
Sentiment changes rapidly on the stock exchange.
Punters heeded the ACCC's accolade that the AUSTRALIAN STOCK EXCHANGE (ASX) and the SYDNEY FUTURES EXCHANGE (SFE) "earn very high returns on capital, well above what is generally found in competitive markets" and pushed the prices of both up further yesterday morning.
ASX hit $31.85 yesterday morning to give it a total two-day rise of $2.60 and SFE $16.10 for a $1.26 rise.
But the profit-takers struck before the morning was out and ASX fell to close at $29.90, down $1.48 on the day and SFE closed down 62c at $15.28.
*****
The oil price spiral upward has been matched by a QANTAS (QAN) spiral downward.
It's slid slowly from a high of $4.22 a bit over three months ago to $3.23 yesterday.
Charts enthusiast Antony on the email says the stock is below the $3.20 support level ... whatever that means.
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You get to learn a lot of useful stuff from the ASX comoany announcements list.
Such as JV GLOBAL (JVG) revelation that the market survey commissioned by AC Nielsen India had been completed and that the results were most encouraging - including the fact that the all-India Market for door frames is estimated to be more than $1.2 billion a year.
*****
DIAMOND ROSE (DRN) had no explanation for the price rise from 4.5c to 6.9c in two days, when queried by the ASX, but it kept on rolling along in continued heavy trading.
The shares went on to hit 7.5c before running out of puff and back to 6.9c yesterday.
Somebody must think they know something.
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