Weekly Wrap: Tech Stocks Surge as ANZ Faces Backlash Over Redundancy Missteps
The Australian share market is refusing to say die, losing a few points on Friday but just clinging on to a weekly rise and a monthly improvement as well.
After the ASX 200 index lost 6.9 points, or 0.1%, to finish at 8973.10 points on Friday, it remained up 0.1% for the week and 2.6% for the month.
That means the index has now risen for four weeks straight and is up an impressive 25% since hitting its lows back in April.
A day of mixed fortune with tech dominating
It was a bit of a day of mixed fortunes, with five of the 11 market sectors falling, led lower by real estate, financials, health care, industrials, and a slight fall in communication services.
Heading in the opposite direction was a 3% rise in information technology and gains for energy, consumer staples, consumer discretionary, materials, and utilities.
The improvement in technology stocks was dramatic, with the 17.4% rise in NextDC (ASX: NXT) to $16.50, a great example as investors liked the company’s capital efficiency plans that mean there is no short-term pressure to raise more equity.
Most of the big banks took a hit, with sector leader Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA) down 1.8% to $170.30 and Westpac (ASX: WBC) shares off by 1% to $38.61.
ANZ forced into early redundancy talks
[ANZ (ASX: ANZ) shareholders only faced a marginal 2c a share fall to $33.67 after new chief executive Nuno Matos personally apologised to 300 senior managers, many of whom first learned they were losing their jobs through an automated email describing the process to return their company laptops.
The mistake forced ANZ to bring forward planned face-to-face redundancy meetings with its senior management teams and led to no shortage of angst among staff as the bank begins a radical restructure.
National Australia Bank’s (ASX: NAB) also fell 0.4% to $42.79.
With company results continuing to roll through, investors marked down shares in Virgin Australia (ASX: VGN) by 1.2% to $3.45 on concerns that it might not beat analysts’ earnings expectations this year even after annual earnings rose 28% in 2025.
Go Harvey Norman
Shares in Harvey Norman (ASX: HVN) jumped an impressive 11.5% to $6.89 after its profit unexpectedly rose 39% to $753.1 million.
An even better performer was shipbuilder Austal (ASX: ASB) which saw a share surge of 15.1% to $7.77 as its order pipeline reached a record and it also reached a strategic shipbuilding agreement with the federal government.
Not so lucky were shareholders in conveyancer PEXA (ASX: PXA) who saw their shares fall 9.3% to $15.34 after the company’s $41 million profit came in well below consensus estimates.
Boss Energy (ASX: BOE) rose 7.7% to $1.95 after the uranium miner produced positive cash flow of $17.4 million from its first full-year production results from the Honeymoon and Alta Mesa uranium operations.
Cettire (ASX: CTT) gained 5 per cent to 31.5¢ as the luxury online goods company increased its emphasis on profitability as it struggles to deal with the impact of US tariffs.
Celebrating its first year on the share market, baby food company Bubs Australia (ASX: BUB) rose 9% to 18¢ after hitting a maiden after tax profit of $5.5 million.
The week ahead
It will be a busy week for economic releases in Australia with the main attraction the national accounts out on Wednesday.
Most economists are tipping economic growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will rise by 0.4% in the June quarter, taking the yearly rate up 1.7% from 1.3% in the March quarter.
In the US there is a holiday shortened trading week and the economy is expected to add around 90,000 non-farm jobs, leaving the unemployment rate steady at 4.2%.
The coming week will be a big one for the Australian market with more than 80 companies paying out dividends worth around $700 million.
This is a two-fold test because many companies will struggle to hold their share prices after trading without their dividend and investors may also choose to plough their dividends back into the market or instead save them if they’re feeling less confident in the direction of the market.
Earnings results will also give way to the start of company annual general meetings, which are useful for monitoring how the companies are trading in the new financial year and management’s view of the company’s outlook.