ASX Extends Rally as Wesfarmers Surges to Near-Record High

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Welcome to Equity Espresso’s Daily Market Recap.

The Australian share market rose again Friday, making four days out of five where it traded in the green, with the ASX 200 index adding another 42 pts, increasing by 0.55% to 7,629.0. For the week, the index gained 0.7%.

All 11 major sectors closed higher, with Discretionary (+1.99%) stocks leading the pack. Retail conglomerate Wesfarmers (+2.75%) finished close to an all-time high share price at $68.31. Aristocrat Leisure (+2.31%) and The Lottery Corp. (+1.66%) also rose.

The Real Estate (+1.55%) sector was the next best performer, with Goodman Group (+2.71%) shares continuing their upward trend. Aussie Technology stocks followed the NASDAQ’s positive night, with Wisetech Global (+1.16%), Xero (+1.29%), and NextDC (+1.85%) all seeing gains.

In company news:

• Block (+9.83%) shares rose after it lifted its full-year profit guidance while also saying it would invest 10% of gross profit from bitcoin investments back into purchasing the cryptocurrency.

• Macquarie Group (-2.22%) shares dipped after net profit fell by 32% to $3.5 billion in FY24, slightly below expectations due to less asset sales and weaker commodity prices. The bank also cut its dividend from $4.50 to $3.85 per share.

• Telix Pharmaceuticals (+2.97%) continues to trade at all-time highs and today announced it has completed the acquisition of QSAM Biosciences and its bone cancer drug Samarium-153-DOTMP in a $US33.1 million deal.

Wall Street

A bumper session on Wall Street sent stocks soaring, led by better-than-expected earnings from Apple. The company rose 6% in after-hours trading and reported earnings of $1.53—slightly ahead of expectations of $1.50 per share. The NASDAQ (+1.51%) was the best-performing indices, with Nvidia (+3.3%) and Amazon (+3.2%) also rising. The S&P 500 (+0.91%) and Dow Jones (+0.85%) trailed behind.

Nine of the 11 major S&P sectors finished the day in the green, with Technology (+1.64%) and Consumer Discretionary (+1.58%) companies leading the charge, while Materials (-0.51%) was the worst performer on the day.

Qualcomm (+9.74%) was one of the big movers during the session. It reported $2.44 in adjusted earnings per share, beating analysts’ expectations of $2.32. Adjusted revenue was $9.39 billion ahead of expectations of $9.34 billion. The company called out the strong demand for “premium tier” or “AI-powered” smartphones that require the most advanced chip as a key driver for the better than expected earnings. In after-hours trading, Apple (+6.03%) shares spiked after it announced a $110 billion share repurchase, beating estimates for both revenue and earnings.

S&P500 Sector Performance

Economic Data

• Australian Home Loan values for owner-occupied housing grew by 2.8% month-on-month to $17.48 billion in March 2024, beating forecasts of a 1.0% increase.

• U.S. Initial Jobless claims were unchanged at 208,000 for the week ending April 27, remaining at the lowest level in two months and below market expectations of 212,000.

• U.S. Trade Balance was almost unchanged at a $69.4 billion deficit during March, compared to $69.5 billion in February, as the goods deficit increased by $0.8 billion to $92.5 billion.

Quick Singles

🌎️ Around The Globe

• Exxon’s $60 billion takeover of Pioneer has reportedly been approved by regulators. However, current Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield has been barred from joining the combined company board while he faces price-fixing allegations against him.

• Johnson & Johnson plans to pay nearly $6.5 billion over 25 years to settle all pending and future U.S. lawsuits against it, which allege that some of its talc-based products caused ovarian cancer.

• Anthropic, the maker of the AI chatbot Claude AI, has launched an iPhone app. that will act as a chatbot and allow users to upload photos straight to the app. for “image analysis.”

• Google has introduced a new Chrome shortcut that lets users initiate Gemini conversations directly from the browser's address bar.

• Microsoft is partnering with Brookfield Asset Management, where it plans to invest more than $10 billion to provide power for its artificial intelligence operations at data centres.

• South Korea's antitrust regulator will fine food makers and suppliers who don’t notify shoppers that they’ve reduced the size of the products. Companies could face fines of up to 10 million won (US$7,300).

Markets

ASX Company Movers

Commodity Prices

Bonds

Forex

ETF Watch

Global Health Check

A Little Extra

📉 Going Down?

Top-10 shorted stocks on the ASX - as of April 29

📂 Broker Reports

1. Helloworld Travel (HLO) - Upgrade to Buy from Accumulate (Ord Minnett)

2. Matrix Composites & Engineering (MCE) - Downgrade to Speculative Hold from Speculative Buy Bell Potter

👨‍💼 Director Transactions

What are the insiders doing? (On-market trade only)

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