The ASX begins the day poised to rise, after Aussie shares tumbled to their lowest level in five weeks. Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole address proved to spell disaster for Wall Street – with the intention to slow down inflation being the core emphasis of the speech last Friday. Twitter’s share price continues to drop despite a long-awaited announcement.
Data from AMP reveals quarterly capital expenditure data showed a fall in total actual capital spending in the June quarter by 0.3%. Today’s capital expenditure data included a forward looking component of spending intentions for the 2022/23 financial year. Spending plans were revised up to $146 billion, an 11.7% increase on the last estimate (taken over April/May).
As indicated in AMP’s capital expenditure research, business investment plans have been holding up notably well against the backdrop of macroeconomic volatility from high inflation, soaring commodity prices, supply constraints (both in product and labour markets) and rising interest rates. Similarly, business confidence has also held up over this period (while consumer sentiment has tanked) and the latest June half reporting season in Australia showed that earnings growth is also still holding up. However, the risk is that business investment plans get downgraded over coming quarters as business confidence moves down alongside consumer sentiment as consumer spending starts to weaken and businesses readjust their spending plans lower.
July data from SMI indicates total July ad spend is back $27.9 million from last year’s record July total. Excluding the media most affected by last year’s Olympic broadcast (Metropolitan TV and their related Pure Play Video or Streaming Sites), the market instead shows growth of 2.8%.
Following a volatile night of trade on Wall Street, the ASX is still expected to open positively today. According to the latest SPI futures, the ASX 200 is expected to open 22 points or 0.3% higher this morning.
Read on for a wrap of notable movements in media and marketing companies.
Twitter:
- Twitter has announced it will launch an edit button for its paid subscribers in the coming weeks. Subscribers who pay $US4.99 ($A7.36) per month for Twitter Blue will soon be able to edit their tweets “a few times” within 30 minutes of publication, Twitter said in a blog post.
- Twitter’s stoush with billionaire Elon Musk continues – with the recent ‘edit’ button announcement proving to be a notable irony, given that the day Musk disclosed a 9% stake in Twitter, his poll asking his followers whether they wanted an edit button resulted in over 70% saying yes.
- Musk has recently subpoenaed a Twitter whistleblower, one of the latest developments in the ongoing legal battle.
- Despite the release of the long-awaited feature, Twitter’s share price has today dropped to $38.62 USD, a drop of −0.13
- In the last month, TWTR’s share price dropped by -2.36 USD
News Corp:
- News Corp continues to stridently defend its lawsuit against independent Australian publisher Crikey.
- NWS stocks trade at 25.26 AUD today.
- News Corp stocks haven’t seen a huge decline in the last 5 days – the drop currently sits at -0.49 AUD
Dentsu:
- Wendy Clark is expected to step down as global chief executive of Dentsu International.
- Under Clark’s leadership, Dentsu International reported 8.4% organic revenue growth in the first six months of 2022, following a 9.7% increase for the whole of 2021.
- Dentsu’s share price sits at 4,465 JPY today.
- In the last month, Dentsu shares have fallen by -150.00 JPY
WPP:
- WPP this morning announced its acquisition of Newcraft, a data-first European e-commerce consultancy based in the Netherlands.
- WPP’s weakest market in its recent earnings was Australia, with the company reporting H1 revenue up 10.2%.
- WPP’s share price trades at 725.00 GBP today, continuing its decline in value by −19.40 GBP
- WPP stocks haven’t performed particularly well in August, with the company seeing a total decline of -154.20