Posts Tagged ‘Suncorp’

ASX Company News: Suncorp Earnings Hit By Christmas Earthquakes and Hailstorms

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Suncorp Group Limited (SBK)  provided preliminary estimates of the financial impacts of the recent Melbourne hailstorm and Christchurch earthquake.

Both events occurred over the Christmas holiday period, impacting claims lodgement and assessment. Therefore, the expected financial impacts may vary as claims are finalised.

The Melbourne hailstorm on 25 December 2011 caused widespread damage across residential areas in the city’s northern suburbs and is expected to cost $200 million to $250 million. Suncorp’s reinsurance arrangements provide protection should the cost of this event exceed $250 million.

Around 28,000 claims have been received across Suncorp’s personal and commercial insurance brands to date, with about two-thirds of these being for damage to vehicles and the remainder for other property damage.

The Christchurch earthquake on 23 December 2011 is expected to cost between A$10 million (NZ$13 million) and A$20 million (NZ$26 million).

Suncorp expects its natural hazard costs for the six months to 31 December 2011 to be in the range of $360 million and $420 million. This is $120 million to $180 million above the $240 million natural hazard allowance for the period.

Group chief executive Patrick Snowball said the priority at this stage was assisting customers and Suncorp’s major claims event capabilities had been activated to ensure this occurred.

Additional claims and assessing resources, including mobile customer response teams, have been mobilised and mass assessment centres have been set up to fast-track the process of repairing hail damaged cars in Melbourne.

www.suncorpgroup.com.au

http://www.traderdealer.com.au/Fundamentals/SUN

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ASX Company News: Suncorp Announces Queensland Flood Impact

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Suncorp (SUN) provided an update on the tragic storms and flooding that have devastated large areas of Queensland.   Group CEO Patrick Snowball said the thoughts of all Suncorp people were with those Queenslanders who have been impacted and the Group stood ready to support its customers as they commenced the process of rebuilding.

The Group said its comprehensive reinsurance program would limit the cost of claims relating to storm and flood damage in Brisbane and areas of south-east Queensland since 8 January to between $70 million and $90 million.  It is also likely to incur additional reinsurance costs of around $120 million to reinstate multiple covers for the remainder of the financial year.

Releasing an update on the cost of natural hazards for the six month period to 31 December 2010, the Group said it had received approximately 2,500 claims from the first weather system that impacted Central and south-west Queensland from 25 December 2010.  Based on preliminary estimates, Suncorp expects the pre-tax cost of this event to be between $130 million and $150 million. This cost will be included in the Group’s half-year result to 31 December 2010.

As a consequence of the Central and south-west Queensland weather event, as well as other natural hazard events during the course of the first half, the Group expects to have eroded between $220 million and $240 million of retained costs under its aggregate reinsurance program.

The aggregate reinsurance cover, along with the Group’s property catastrophe program, will limit the financial impact of any further natural hazard events, including the current weather system impacting Brisbane and south-east Queensland, over the remainder of the 2010/11 financial year.

www.suncorp.com.au

http://www.traderdealer.com.au/Fundamentals/sun

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Suncorp Sells LJ Hooker

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Suncorp (SUN) today announced it has sold Hooker Corporation Limited (HCL) to a company led by Leslie Janusz Hooker, the grandson of the business’ founder, Sir Leslie Hooker.   Suncorp will realise approximately $82 million from the sale of the HCL business,  which includes the LJ Hooker real estate franchise business and the LJ Hooker mortgage broking business. This is comprised of $67 million cash for 100 percent of HCL and approximately $15 million cash from pre-completion dividends.

Suncorp Group Executive for Strategy and Corporate Services Stuart McDonald said the transaction represented an excellent outcome for Suncorp shareholders and the LJ Hooker business. Suncorp is to be commended for expanding the LJ Hooker network over the past     decade, and I thank them for taking care of the business. “This expansion wil continue under my leadership, especially in terms of our international representation, given LJ Hooker already has a growing presence in the Asia Pacific region and my own extensive business experience in Asia, especially China.”

A one-off accounting profit of approximately $50 million before tax will be reported in  Suncorp’s financial results for the half year to 31 December 2009.

www.suncorp.com.au

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ANZ, NAB front-runners to buy Suncorp assets

Monday, July 6th, 2009

The Australian is reporting today that the ANZ and NAB are the most likely candidates to buy Suncorp’s banking assets, worth $7.7 billion.

If this is the case, the buyers may be up against some opposition from the ACCC, which is thought to be uncomfortable with the prospect of more regional banks being taken over by the big 4.

If the major banks are excluded from the race, Suncorp may have to mark down its asset values in order to find a buyer among the regional institutions.

Last week Suncorp appointed Patrick Snowball as its new CEO, and became the first Australian bank to stipulate that its CEO must buy shares in the company. Mr Snowball will have to buy $500,000 worth of Suncorp shares at his own expense.

ASX Code: SUN
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Suncorp Bank of Qld merger talks

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

The Bank of Queensland has been scouting for potential merger opportunities recently, and according to the Herald Sun, is in talks with Suncorp s banking business, with a view to create a fifth force in the Australian banking market.

The two parties are thought to be discussing options for generating value for both sets of shareholders.

Advantages:

  • Suncorp could use an ASX listing to separate its banking and insurance businesses
  • A merger would remove competition for Queensland banking
  • Both banks can improve their credit ratings, leading to lower fees on government wholesale funding guarantees
  • The combined level of deposits and loan assets would be roughly level with St George Bank

Suncorp Metway
ASX Code: SUN

Bank of Queensland
ASX Code: BOQ

Charts from the Market Analyser.

To read the full Herald Sun article, click here.

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Satyam Fraud to Hit Australian Companies

Friday, January 9th, 2009

It looks like several major Australian companies may be caught in the fallout of India s Satyam Computer scandal.

Telstra, Qantas, Coles, NAB and Suncorp are among many local companies which may be adversely affected by the fraud which is being referred to as India s Enron .

The Age is quoting a Qantas spokesman as describing any risk to business as manageable , while The Australian believes the affected companies have vowed to take action .

The future of a $75 million software laboratory at Deakin University s Geelong campus is also uncertain, as are 2000 jobs which the eight-year project has created.

Stocks for your watchlist:

TLS: Telstra
QAN: Qantas
NAB: National Australia Bank
SUN: Suncorp Metway

Further Information:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24889073-643,00.html

http://business.theage.com.au/business/world-business/qantas-dodges-indian-software-scam-20090107-7bx4.html

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24889172-664,00.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/08/2461447.htm

Reuters News Feed through Market Analyser

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Thursday 25th September 2008 Cube Morning Wrap

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Presented by Michael Hevern
Cubefianacial

Click here to watch the presentation.

or

Click here to download the mp3 audio recording (910Kb).

Transcription below:

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Good Morning and Welcome to Cube Wrap for Thursday, the 25th of September, I’m Michael Hevern for Cube Financial.

The information provided within this presentation is general advice only and you should consult the services of a financial professional in order to ascertain whether the information is applicable to your investment strategies and risk profile. Again, it is general advice only.

Once again we saw the DOW drift down. It is looking to test the lows of last week. All eyes will be on the DOW to see though it does not reach that level.

We see in the new group being put before Congress and suspected it is taken a while to see through. The DOW was down 3% for the session. So, S&P 500 down 1.2% and the NASDAQ up 0.1%.

It saw some gains in the NASDAQ with the Apple up 1.5%, Microsoft up 1.1% and Cisco up 0.3% on the session. Of interest, with the ASX, ADRs for BPH down 1% and the RIO of 0.6%.

We saw James Hardy down 3.5% gave back most of the gains it has had for the last few days. ResMed up 1.5% and the banks, ANZ and NAB up 4.9% and 6.3%. That made a bit of the catch up for out market on the trading session yesterday.

We will see that in the UK, the market there was drifting down as well. You can trace 50% of that spike up for the last week and again all eyes will be checking whether it can hold. Initially, the current level, which goes back to July and the spike down from last week, still above that 5000 mark it’s been pressing by week oil price and commodities were down as well. We saw in Japan, the market was up slightly which is a bit of a surprise given that we did have the whole day on the previous session. Other sovereign funds actually stepped into the market a bit early and if the rescue proposal can come into provision in the US, it might be a good time to start picking up assets and market based prices. We will see that Hong Kong was up 0.5% and Chinese shares were up slightly up 0.7% on the session.

In the commodities, we saw oil drift back a dollar to 107, still above the 100 dollar mark a day, the oil was down that did impact on price obviously. In the gold market, we saw gold up over 895 dollars on the oil price and the weak US dollar. Rest of the commodities was down generally with copper down 1%, lead down 0.3%, zinc up 1.1%, aluminum and nickel down 0.3% and 0.05% respectively. We saw a sell off in the stock commodities as well with Wheat down 2.7% and Corn up slightly 0.4%.

In our market, we see that the ASX is set open high again today. The market is trading around the 5000 mark in the all ords and just below that in the ASX 200. We do not really have a lead from the US those with convictions and this is the low time to pick up stocks. We are closing the gaps that we made last week and stocks like RIO has closed the gap. NAB has recovered quite considerably from last week’s sell off and it is starting to get on the right of the broken shares as well and they are saying that they are not likely to have to raise small capital short term and they are looking to sell off assets into the plan if and when it does appear, SPI was down 34 point.

Elsewhere on the ASX there are rumors that the short selling ban will be lifted sooner rather than later. Financials likely to consolidate on the market.

RIO and BHP likely to weigh just stock prices of the weaker commodity prices. The ADRs were, BHP was down 1%, RIO up 0.2%, gold stocks were likely to offer support mostly and Newcrest in the last couple of weeks and you expect to be the consolation around these levels.

Today the giants continues to confound the retractors with the evening DOW up 25%, profit up 25%, and they have also increased the dividend. So an excellent report there. Sum has been placed on the radar by Deutchse Bank, they have upgraded to buy given the considerable sell off that that particular stock has suffered in the last few weeks saying that the current evaluations pay on the banking units around that 5 times of earnings and the insurance part of this is trading around 30% discount to that of IAG. So, obviously fundamentally that should bode well for the Suncorp network price.

ASX will open lower today, but those with the conviction that we are seeing a bottom here will be looking to buy into this market, look for stocks with cash on the books and low debt and good possibilities going forward.

Should you have any questions about the information provided, please call the equities and options desk or CFD trading advising desk on the numbers provided, and trade carefully.

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