ASX set to unwind Friday’s gains, Aussie dollar spikes
Freedom Foods facing legal action
By Sarah Danckert
ASX-listed health food distributor Freedom Foods has been hit with legal action in California after a key supplier alleged the company withheld payments for a well-known almond milk brand to fund dividend payouts to shareholders.
Freedom Financing, a wholly owned subsidiary of the $1.2 billion listed group was last month sued by Sacramento-based Blue Diamond, US court documents lodged in December, and obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, show. Blue Diamond, a co-operative of more than 3000 almond farms, produces the Blue Diamond Almond Breeze milk range.
The almond milk products are available at Woolworths, Coles and Foodworks in Australia as well as other outlets. The Almond Breeze brand is also popular in cafes. Freedom Foods, which counts the billionaire western Sydney-based Perrich clan as its majority shareholder and three members of the family as directors, has had a distribution contract with Blue Diamond since 2011. Blue Diamond sells over $US1.5 billion ($2.18 billion) in almonds globally each year.
However, Blue Diamond alleges Freedom’s subsidiary Freedom Financing stopped paying Blue Diamond the full amount of its invoices from July last year.
Sarah has more here.
Supermarket checkouts to checkout?
By Dominic Powell
A leading executive at Coles says Australian supermarkets could be checkout-free in 10 years as innovation in retail technology and an increasing focus on costs quickly make the traditional purchasing experience redundant.
The $20 billion ASX-listed retail giant’s head of commercial and express, Greg Davis, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that customers would later this decade be able to shop and leave the supermarket without going through a checkout.
“I have no doubt in the next 10 years, customers will be able to take the product off the shelf, put it in their basket, walk out and have it all paid for,” Mr Davis said.
Coles is aiming to use technology to strip $1 billion from its cost base by 2023 through an initiative it has dubbed “Smarter Selling”. It is also battling fierce rival Woolworths and insurgents such as Aldi for a greater share of the $100 billion-a-year grocery market.
Dom has more here.
Market wrap
ASX futures down 52 points, or 0.8 per cent, to 6817.
- AUD +0.6% to 69.01 US cents
- On Wall St: Dow -0.5% S&P 500 -0.3% Nasdaq -0.3%
- In New York: BHP +0.3% Rio +0.3% Atlassian -1.1%
- In Europe: Stoxx 50 -0.2% FTSE -0.1% CAC -0.1% DAX -0.1%
- Nikkei 225 futures -0.6%
- Spot gold +0.7% to $US1562.34 an ounce in New York
- Brent crude -0.6% to $US64.98 a barrel
- US oil -0.9% to $US59.04 a barrel
- Iron ore -0.5% to $US93.92 a tonne
- Dalian iron ore flat at 659.5 yuan
- LME aluminium +0.1% to $US1806 a tonne
- LME copper +0.3% to $US6198 a tonne
- 2-year yield: US 1.57% Australia 0.81%
- 5-year yield: US 1.63% Australia 0.87%
- 10-year yield: US 1.82% Australia 1.25% Germany -0.20%
- 10-year US/Australia yield gap: 57 basis points
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Stocks in Europe and North America finished the trading week on a negative footing. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index shed just over 0.1 per cent while the benchmark S&P 500 in the US dropped just shy of 0.3 per cent. In Wall Street trade, the losses were sustained primarily in the financial sector and ahead of a week highlighted by earnings reports from some of the United States’ largest financial institutions.
US nonfarm payrolls data highlighted Friday’s trade. The data disappointed slightly, showing US jobs grew by 145,000 last month versus a consensus estimate of 162,000. The wage growth component of the data release was perhaps a silver lining for market participants. It showed hourly earnings grew at a modest 0.1 per cent last month against the 0.3 per cent forecast, reassuring traders that inflation risk remains low in the US economy.
The soft US jobs data weighed on risk appetite on Friday. It was generally responsible for the dip in US equities and saw a marginal play into safe-haven government bonds. The US dollar also suffered, dipping roughly 0.25 per cent post-release as traders increased expectations slightly for US Fed interest rate cuts at some point this year. That dynamic supported a brief jump in the AUD above 69 cents. Gold prices also gained 0.65 per cent.
Source: Thanks smh.com