Australia's share market has ended in the green, as major companies — including Wesfarmers, Telstra, Origin and Whitehaven — post results.
The ASX 200 defied sentiments on Wall Street and Europe, and at one point during Thursday afternoon trade was up 0.8 per cent.
It ended the day with a softer gain of 0.2 per cent, at 7,296 points.
Some of the top movers were stocks in healthcare, real estate and commodities. The big four were all up with gains of between 0.3 and 0.8 per cent.
Wesfarmers had lost 7.2 per cent off its stock after posting its company profits.
One of the first to post results, Wesfarmers has taken a hit from COVID-19 supply-chain woes and curtailments.
The owner of Bunnings, Kmart and Officeworks saw a 14.2 drop in first-half profit, to $1.2 billion.
Its Kmart Group lost about a quarter of its store trading days in the first half, seeing its pre-tax earnings tumble 63.4 per cent to $178 million.
Wesfarmers paid an interim dividend of 80 Australian cents per share, compared with 88 cents last year.
Telstra lost 4.2 per cent after it posted a 14.8 per cent drop in earnings.
The telecommunications company said it took a hit as it continued being impacted by NBN works and "one-off" receipts.
Moody's vice-president, Ian Chitterer, said Telstra's results signalled "an improving credit outlook".
"Fiscal 2021 looks to have been the turning point for Telstra’s credit profile," he said.
"Even if the company hits the low end of its $7.5 billion-$8 billion underlying EBITDA target for fiscal 2023, we expect its debt/EBITDA to be below 2x. This is supportive of its credit profile.”
Origin and Woodside post results
In stronger news, Woodside's results show it had almost tripled its profits.
This was as the oil and gas producer saw a surge in energy prices. The rise of costs for fuel, among others, have been a key driver pushing up inflation in Australia.
Moody's senior vice-president, Matthew Moore, described the results as "in line with our previous expectations".
"Woodside benefited from strong gains in realised pricing in the period and increased trading activity, which more than offset lower production levels and slightly higher unit costs.
"As a result, the company's revenue almost doubled, while EBITDA more than doubled."
Its stock ended up 4.2 per cent by market's close.
Meanwhile, Origin has announced that it is closing Australia's biggest coal-fired power generator earlier than expected.
It made the announcement while posting results showing it is expecting earnings to be higher in the 2022 financial year, from $1.9 billion to $2.3 billion.
Its share price ended the day up 1 per cent.
Australia's biggest casino operator, Crown Resorts, has posted a half-yearly loss for the third time in a row.
That's after ongoing COVID-19 restrictions on gambling and entertainment.
The company recently backed a $6.5 billion offer for Crown from private equity firm Blackstone.
Crown lost 0.7 per cent in today's trade.
Wall Street gets Ukraine-Russia jitters
Meanwhile, the Dow closed 0.2 per cent down, while the Nasdaq fared only slightly better, with a loss of 0.1 per cent.
The S&P 500 was up marginally, by 0.1pc.
All had pared losses in their late trade, after the release of minutes from the US Federal Reserve.
The minutes showed that, while the central bank intends to begin raising interest rates to combat inflation, it will make such decisions on a meeting-by-meeting basis.
"There are a lot of crosswinds going around with Russia-Ukraine tensions but, from a domestic macro environment, the key variable driving equities is whether the Fed will increase [interest] rates by 50 basis points in March," said Huw Roberts, head of analytics and Quant Insight in London.
At 7am AEDT, the Australian dollar was up 0.7 per cent, to 72.03 US cents.
ABC/Reuters
