The Australian sharemarket enjoyed its best week since early July, with a solid rally on Friday powered by National Australia Bank, Afterpay and Mesoblast.
The S&P/ASx200 Index added 35.2 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 6126.2 points on Friday. It gained 2 per cent for the week.
National Australia Bank rallied 1.2 per cent after it announced a 7 per cent fall in cash earnings to $1.55 billion, slightly weaker margins, and an 8 per cent fall in the value of deferred loans in an unexpectedly strong third quarter result.
NAB CEO Ross McEwan elected not to raise COVID-19 provisions of $807 million made in April, after Commonwealth Bank also decided to hold firm with its forecasts for losses to flow from the virus crisis when it reported full-year numbers on Wednesday.
Commonwealth Bank fell 0.9 per cent. Westpac gained 0.5 per cent, and ANZ added 0.8 per cent.
Afterpay rallied 6.3 per cent to a record high of $75.80. The ‘buy now, pay later’ provider was boosted by better economic data in the US, where it is rapidly growing its business.
Mesoblast soared 39 per cent after A US healthcare Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) meeting has voted eight to two in favour of a Mesoblast drug to treat transplant rejections in children.
The strongest performer over the week was Treasury Wine Estates with a gain of 17.6 per cent.
The company said there were promising signs in June of a sales recovery in China, where there was a rebound of 40 per cent as the country’s economy returned towards normal after the tough COVID-19 lockdowns.
The company announced on Thursday that it had suffered a 21.7 per cent drop in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, the agriculture accounting standard SGARA and material items to $533.5 million.
Another top performer was AMP, which rallied 10.2 per cent after unveiling a $544 million capital return.
AMP confirmed that underlying profit for the first half of the calendar year was $149 million, down 40 per cent on the first half of 2019 or 52 per cent if the contribution of the recently offloaded life insurance business is counted.
