Ding, ding'tis the sound of spring... a poem, by ClarkKentGood...

Ding, ding
'tis the sound of spring
... a poem, by ClarkKent

Good evening my esteemed friends.
What a day!
I am in a creative mood today my friends, so I decided to kick things off with a little poem. What a gem!

Have you closed the books for the month of August? I have. It was a good month. A good month.
Dividends have started to trickle in to the bank accounts. Soon to become a torrent.
Isn't it great, my friends, when you go about your daily business and you get a Netbank notification on the phone saying that another dividend has hit the bank account? Ding, ding, 'tis the sound of spring.

The ASX August reporting period has come to an end, my friends.
Isnt it a great time of year to follow the reporting and see who's doing what and how companies are performing?
Which companies impressed, which ones disappointed?

At a high level, looking at the ASX 200 only (although I look at approx 400 companies this time of year) :

75% beat on revenue
46% beat on profit
57% increased dividends



As expected, real estate, energy and materials were the worst performers.
I must point out that the "profit" numbers represent the unvarnished statutory profits, none of these one-off, underlying profit adjustments.
As such the numbers are conservative. For example, Woolworths' did not drop profit by 80%, they just came down from the massive gain they booked from the Endeavour demerger. (a bit like the 29billion gain UBS booked yesterday on the CS take-over)
The property sector took a massive devaluation hit though, which is real.
Obviously the numbers need deeper study.

The following table shows the details: (184/200 are showing, 6 report in September, the remainder are miners on 4C ASX reports)
The Yellow rows are half year reports.
Some reported back in MAY
22 companies report in USD (can you believe it?)
14 are incorporated in New Zealand