Coles, Afterpay updates help Australian sharemarket overturn early losses

Positive updates from Coles and Afterpay have helped the Australian share market erase early COVID-related losses.

Coles, Woolworths, Afterpay and CSL helped pull the ASX out of the red. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

The Australian sharemarket managed to climb higher on Wednesday after a bumpy start triggered by overseas COVID-19 fears was overcome by a string of positive company trading updates.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index closed 0.1 per cent firmer at 6058 while the All Ordinaries Index rose 0.2 per cent to 6262.

Overseas investors are worried rising coronavirus cases in the US, Europe and the UK will trigger severe lockdown measures, and have already prompted curfews in countries including Italy, Spain and France.

Other uncertainties include the US stimulus bill looking increasingly unlikely to pass before the Presidential election on Tuesday.

“It wasn’t looking good early on but we managed to turn around that loss,” CommSec analyst James Tao told NCA NewsWire.

“Certainly Afterpay had a lot to do with it, adding six points to the ASX200.”

The buy-now-pay-later market leader booked a 115 per cent surge in underlying sales to $4.1 billion in the September quarter, up 9 per cent on the record set in the previous quarter. The number of active customers globally soared by 98 per cent to 11.2 million.

Afterpay shares jumped 7.28 per cent to $102.97, not far from its all-time high.

A Coles trading update helped lift the market. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dan Peled

Other news pushing the market higher came from supermarket giant Coles, which reported a 57 per cent surge in online sales in the September quarter, contributing 6 per cent of overall supermarket sales.

Coles shares added 2.73 per cent to $17.68.

Woolworths also gained ground, putting on 1.85 per cent to $39.07.

The biggest company on the ASX, biotech giant CSL, appreciated 0.84 per cent to $294.43.

“Those companies played a big part in overturning the losses,” Mr Tao said.

Another strong performer was vitamins giant Blackmores, which reported on Tuesday it had agreed to sell Global Therapeutics to McPherson’s for $27 million and was chasing expansion in the fast-growing pet health category.

Blackmores shares leapt 13.66 per cent to $72.48.

Super Retail Group, which owns brands including Supercheap Auto, Rebel and BCF, jumped 4.84 per cent to $11.70 after reporting triple-digit growth in online sales for the financial year-to-date.

BCF owner Super Retail Group is enjoying strong online sales growth.

ANZ fell 1.74 per cent to $19.16 after reporting expectations its second half cash profit, due to be revealed on Thursday, would be hit with an after-tax writedown of $528 million.

The writedowns include remediation costs and accelerated software amortisation, reflecting the increasingly shorter useful life of various types of software.

The announcement prompted investment bank Citi to downgrade its full-year cash earnings forecast for ANZ by about 12 per cent and its dividend assumption to 38 cents per share.

Commonwealth Bank eased 0.44 per cent to $68.45, National Australia Bank retreated 1.1 per cent to $18.88 and Westpac declined 1.35 per cent to $18.31.

BHP dropped 0.49 per cent to $34.77 and Rio Tinto gave up 0.39 per cent to $91.94.

The Aussie dollar was fetching 71.44 US cents, 54.73 British pence and 60.64 Euro cents in afternoon trade.