Medibank Private's has suffered a $1.6 billion drop in its market value after the insurer warned that the massive hack of its customer data was even worse than expected.
In a statement, the company said the hacker had access to all Medibank, ahm and international students' personal information, along with a significant amount of their health claims data.
The company's share price dropped 18.1 per cent on Wednesday afternoon, to $2.87 (its lowest level since April 2021).
It was also the wost performing stock on Australia's benchmark stock index, the ASX 200.
One reason for the aggressive sell-off was that the firm's shares had been in a trading halt since last Wednesday (October 19).
While news about the severity of its data breach continued to worsen in the past week, shareholders were unable to buy or sell Medibank shares – until today.
Before last week's trading halt, Medibank's market capitalisation was $9.5 billion. But after today's aggressive sell-off, its value has sunk to around $7.9 billion.
Medibank also provided a gloomy trading update, confirming it had withdrawn its outlook for policyholder growth "given the uncertain impact of this cybercrime event".
The company also said it did not have cyber insurance, and estimated its first-half earnings would fall by $25 million-$35 million.
However, Medibank warned these costs could rise if customers or regulators took legal action against.
"These non-recurring costs do not include further potential customer and other remediation, regulatory or litigation related costs," it said.
ASX rises for third straight day
Despite Medibank's torrid performance, the Australian share market rose for its third day in a row.
The ASX 200 closed 0.2 per cent higher at 6,811 points.
The benchmark index lost most of its momentum after Australia's September quarter inflation figures came in in hotter than expected.
The market had been up as much as 0.7 per cent, but wiped out most of those gains, in the space of two minutes after the ABS released its inflation data.
Software company ELMO was today's best performing stock, after its share price surged 40.3 per cent to $4.63.
This was after the cloud-based software company said it had agreed to a near $500 million takeover from Los Angeles-based K1 Investment Management.
Some of the other stocks which posted strong gains were Costa Group (+10.8 per cent), GUD Holdings (+5.4 per cent), Ramelius Resources (+4.8 per cent), Nufarm (+4.5 per cent) and Alumina (+3.9 per cent).
On the flip side, coal miners Whitehaven Coal (-8.1 per cent), New Hope Corporation (-7.1 per cent) and Coronado Global Resources (-4.5 per cent) suffered heavy losses, along with lithium producer Pilbara Minerals (-7.1 per cent) and Coles (-2.7 per cent).
Inflation and Aussie dollar jump
By 4:10pm AEDT, the Australian dollar was steady at 64 US cents, after jumping 1.3 per cent overnight. It was the local currency's strongest level in more than two weeks.
In economic news, Australia's cost of living has risen at its fastest pace in 32 years.
The consumer price index (CPI) jumped by a higher-than-expected 7.3 per cent over the past year, the ABS revealed in its latest figures (for the September quarter).
This led to three of Australia's major banks revising their forecasts on the Reserve Bank's peak cash rate — or estimate of how high the RBA will lift rates.
The RBA has lifted rates for six consecutive months, taking the nation's cash rate to 2.6 per cent in October.
ANZ expects the cash rate to peak at 3.85 per cent by the middle of next year.
"We have upgraded our RBA cash rate forecasts on the back of the upside surprise in the [third quarter] CPI, adding a 25bp [basis point[ hike in December this year to take the peak to 3.85 per cent in May 2023," ANZ economists Catherine Birch and David Plank wrote in a note to clients.
"A 50bp rise in November is possible, but we think the RBA will prefer to hike more frequently than shift back to 50bp, given the reasoning behind the decision to go 25bp in October."
NAB is not expecting the central bank to be as aggressive, and forecasts the cash rate will peak at 3.6 per cent by March, next year.
Commonwealth Bank was the most dovish forecaster, and has tipped a peak cash rate of 3.1 per cent in December.
Coles warns of inflation and climate change risks
Coles has flagged climate change as its next big operational challenge on Wednesday as floods pushed up prices in the first quarter, lifting sales revenue but squeezing the farming supply chain.
The commentary shows one of the country's biggest companies acknowledging that extreme weather events will likely become more common as the planet warms.
Coles said supermarket sales rose 2.3 per cent in the three months to the end of September.
It was helped by price inflation of 7.1 per cent, nearly double the previous quarter's 4.3 per cent.
Australia's second largest supermarket also warned that prices would rise further due to flooding.
"We're very alert to the [fact] that the climate is changing, and we're doing a lot of work around how do we secure supply better, to manage our way through these various things that will ... continue to happen over the next 10 years," Coles chief executive Steven Cain told analysts on a call.
So far, most of the disruption brought by floods was related to access to farms rather than destroying entire crops, but Mr Cain said it was not clear what the quality of the fruit would be.
ANZ hit with $25m penalty
ANZ has been fined $25 million by the Federal Court for misleading its customers.
The court ruled that the bank failed to provide agreed benefits to certain customers with offset transaction accounts.
The lawsuit was filed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which argued the country's fourth-largest lender failed to provide fee waivers and rate discounts to at least 689,000 customer accounts for about 20 years.
The accounts, offered under ANZ's "Breakfree" package introduced in 2003, provided fee waivers, interest rate discounts on home loans, credit cards and transaction accounts, and other benefits in exchange for an annual fee.
ABC/Reuters
