AU Morning Wrap: ASX Added 0.4%, Buoyed by Utilities and Real Estate

A volatile week on Wall Street ended with major stock indexes higher despite lingering fears about the health of the banking system.

Bond yields fell as investors piled into Treasurys, gold traded near record highs and on Friday investors loaded up on safe-haven stocks in sectors such as utilities, healthcare and consumer staples.

"Things are starting to follow the recession playbook," said Bill Callahan, investment strategist at asset manager Schroders.

Premier Investments rose 0.2 per cent to $25.39 after posting record first-half sales and dividends.

Bank of Queensland climbed 1.1 per cent to $6.47 following the appointment of Patrick Allaway as chief executive. All four major banks advanced.

Ampol dropped 1.4 per cent to $29.82 after warning that an outage at its Lytton refining operations could hit its earnings by up to $50 million.

Mr Allaway will take on the role of CEO until December 2024.

Revenue dropped 3 per cent to $NZ769.8 million, while EBITDA lost 25 per cent to $NZ51.5 million.

Synlait's full-year net profit guidance range was set at $15 million to $25 million.

Ampol expects the FCCU to return to service in early May after completion of repairs and attainment of steady state operations.

During this time, the refinery will continue to operate, producing diesel and jet, with the impact largely limited to the production of gasoline.

Ampol does not anticipate any disruption in supply to customers.

The impact of the outage on EBIT is expected to be within the range of $30-$50 million, including the cost of the repair and lost opportunity cost from sale of gasoline at higher product cracks.

All Nitro shareholders who accept the Potentia offer will now receive the additional 3¢ per Nitro share uplift in the cash consideration.

While InvoCare said it would not give the private equity firm full due diligence access, it had offered limited access to non-public financial information on a non-exclusive basis to determine if TPG could formulate a revised proposal.

The company delivered record first-half global sales of $905.2 million, up 17.6 per cent from the year earlier period.

Premier declared a record interim dividends of 70¢ a share, made up of an 54¢ fully franked interim dividend and a fully franked special dividend of 16¢. The total interim dividend was up 52.2 per cent.

Premier Investments' decision to increase its total first-half dividends by more than 50 per cent to 70¢ a share boosted chairman Solomon Lew’s personal dividend to $36 million.

Lew owns 51,561,400 shares, or 32 per cent, in Premier Investments through Century Plaza Investments.

An interim fully franked ordinary dividend of 54¢ was declared, in tandem with a special dividend of 16¢, taking total dividends for the half to 70¢, up 52.2 per cent. This will be paid on July 26.