As we get into the closing minutes the S&P/ASX 200 is down 11.7 points to 6646, a drip of 0.2 per cent.
Volumes are standard for a Wednesday at around 520 million. The market is sluggish with 128 companies in the red and 66 in green (the rest unchanged).
A company called Atrum coal has just jumped 8 per cent to 33.5 cents after 42.7 million shares traded at 30 cents. This matches the amount held by Lenark Pty Ltd.
CSR has received a 'first strike' against its remuneration report after 34 per cent of shareholders voted against the resolution at today's annual general meeting.
Two other resolutions, the re-election of Matthew Quinn and approving performance rights to the incoming managing director, were both carried with more than 96 per cent votes cast in favour.
CSR shares are currently down 1.5 per cent to $3.99.
Proxy advisory firm Ownership Matters recommended voting against the report. It is understood they were concerned that bonuses were awarded at target for the year ending 31 March, when total shareholder return fell 33 per cent and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation declined 17 per cent in the same period.
Utilities are the worst performing sector on the S&P/ASX 200 today, down 1 per cent compared to a fall of 0.1 per cent in the S&P/ASX 200.
Within utilities APA Group is down 1.7 per cent to $11.27, AusNet Services is down 1.7 per cent to $1.91, Spark Infrastructure is down 1.2 per cent to $2.49, and AGL Energy is flat at $20.14.
The financial services sector is down just 0.3 per cent but has taken the most points away, while real estate and communications are down 0.6 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively.
Bank of Queensland just emailed to say its not just Virgin Money offering 2.99 per cent interest on home loans.
"Bank of Queensland is introducing a new market leading three year fixed home loan interest rate of 2.99 per cent, per annum," the company says. It will offer the rate to new customers borrowing over $300,000 and repaying the principal and interest.
"We want to help more Australians achieve their dream of owning their own home or expanding their property portfolio. I'm proud that BOQ is leading the way offering customers the lowest rate in the market," group executive of retail banking, Lyn McGrath, says.
Get ready to start hearing "Does your mortgage interest rate start with a two?"
Tilt Renewables is up 3.1 per cent to $2.33 this afternoon after telling the market it might sell its largest asset, the five-year old Snowtown 2 windfarm in South Australia.
Snowtown, also known for a grisly 1990s series of murders and a subsequent film, has two windfarms with the #2 farm consisting of 90 turbines with a long-term offtake contract in place "for all electricity and renewable energy certificates produced, providing price certainty out until 2035", Tilt says. In the past two years it has constructed the Salt Creek Wind Farm and started building the Dundonnell Wind Farm with most of future production in long-term offtake contracts.
"Considering the strong revenue contracting position and the near-term investment options potentially available from Tilt Renewables' high quality development pipeline, this is an appropriate time to consider strategic options from the existing asset base, including changes in ownership," Tilt says. It is being advised by Lazard.
There is no certainty of a transaction, but consider Snowtown 2 to be on the market.
The S&P/ASX 200 is trading just in the red at 6651.5 points, 6.5 points lower than yesterday's close.
There have been some big mid-afternoon moves in Nine Entertainment Company (which publishes this blog) with a block trade of 6.02 million shares trading at 1.54pm at $1.89, with the demand pushing the shares up to $1.94.
On the other hand, Bellamy's has fallen from $7.84 at 12:58pm down to $7.57 without any company news. This morning fellow dairy company Fonterra revealed Australian milk production has fallen 14 per cent from April 2018 to 2019 and its milk collection in May is 31.4 per cent lower than the previous year.
"Fonterra's shares of monthly collection continues to reduce due to poor seasonal conditions and high input costs, leading to an increase in cow cull rates, farm exits in key regions, and declining share in a highly competitive market," it told the market this morning.
Sandfire Resources is up nearly 5 per cent today to $6.59 after announcing a deal to buy Botswana-focused copper miner MOD Resrouces for $167 million. Morgans analyst Tom Sartor says the firm "have long been averse to the uncertainty in how Sandfire would replace the depleting Degrussa [copper and gold mine in Western Australia] asset with alternate sources of earnings".
Mr Sartor says Sandfire's stable cash generation from Western Australia will deplete towards 2022 and its new mines in Montana and Botswana are riskier. However, he upgraded it from a 'reduce' rating to a 'hold'.
Meanwhile, Credit Suisse/Jarden analysts say Sandfire has been forced to look beyond the low risk Australia to materially higher risk opportunities in North America (Black Butte) and now MOD in Botswana.
"Sandfire is transitioning from a 5 per cent robust, highly cash generative Australian copper mine to two smaller, lower grade, higher risk development opportunities, in remote offshore jurisdictions," the analysts write.
"While MOD's T3 copper project may be delivered seamlessly on schedule and within budget, this would be unusual for any project. We have observed too many enthusiastic Australian juniors being blinded by offshore opportunities to support an enthusiastic assessment of SFR's move. At the highest level, SFR is seeking to transition from the high quality 5 per cent copper Degrussa orebody in Australia to a materially lower quality and scale 1 per cent Copper opportunity in Botswana. We do not believe that it is appropriate to attribute full value relative to the risks involved."
The chairman of building products group CSR has warned that more manufacturing industries will leave Australia because of high gas and electricity prices, which is a huge hindrance to local manufacturers paying the same gas price as Asian rivals with no gas reserves, the Financial Review's Simon Evans reports.
John Gillam, the former boss of hardware giant Bunnings, became chairman of CSR last year and said more needs to be done on energy reliability and affordability, alongside the impact of carbon emissions and climate change. CSR shares are underperforming today with a 1.8 per cent fall to $3.98.
"Gas consumers in Australia now pay as much for gas as our Asian neighbours who have no local gas reserves," Mr Gillam told shareholders at the group's annual meeting in Sydney. "This market inequity greatly hinders all parts of manufacturing".
CSR makes building products such as Gyprock plasterboard, PGH bricks, Hebel precast concrete blocks and panels, and Bradford insulation and storage battery products.
The company has a 25 per cent stake in the Tomago aluminium smelter in Newcastle, with a workforce of 1,000 people. The Tomago smelter accounts for about 12 per cent of electricity consumption in NSW each day. CSR's aluminium business was hit with $61 million in higher electricity costs in 2018-19.
Shares in AMP are up 1.7 per cent to $2.06 today, up from $2 on Tuesday, but reporter Sarah Danckert says that it's not a good time to be an AMP shareholder.
The beseiged wealth manager has been hit with another class action, this time from Slater and Gordon over AMP's alleged charging of its superannuation excessive fees on some products.
Slater and Gordon on Wednesday filed a class action in the Federal Court. Its action follows hot on the heels of a similar class action filed by Maurice Blackburn in early June.
The Slater and Gordon case alleges trustees of AMP's super entities paid too much to related AMP entities. AMP was roasted during the royal commission over the returns of its cash-only investment products and its integrated model of only using AMP entities to conduct often very expensive administrative services.
The case claims compensation for this conduct dating as far back as 1 July 2008.
AMP is currently in the midst of working through its remediation of customers charged fees for no service.
ANZ Bank is the final big four banks to cut interest rates on savings accounts in response to this month's official reduction, announcing a 0.2 percentage point cut. That is larger than the 0.18 percentage point reduction ANZ made to its mortgage rates this month in response to the RBA's move, but it is also a smaller move than the 0.25 percentage point reductions from CommonwealthBank and National Australia Bank, which passed on the RBA cut to borrowers in full.
The banking sector is in the doldrums today with the big four banks taking 8.4 points away from the S&P/ASX 200 index, which is currently down 7.93 points at 6650.
On Wednesday ANZ said it would cut rates on the ANZ Progress saver to 2.2 per cent, while the base rate on the ANZ Online saver will fall by the same amount to 0.5 per cent, matching the other big four. mRateCity said ANZ had the highest rate of the majors for a "conditional rate" product – where customers need to meet conditions on monthly deposits or withdrawals to get the rate.
However, ANZ had the lowest "introductory rate" product of the big four, RateCity said. At the time of ANZ's cut, ANZ chief Shayne Elliott said depositors were being "forgotten" in the debate about rates.
Meanwhile, Bank Of Queensland's Virgin Money has slashed its three-year fixed rate mortgage for owner-occupiers paying principal and interest to 2.99 per cent, which it says is market-leading.