ASX News Live | ASX Sinks; Dubber Plummets 25% as CFO Resigns, Tyro Upgrades Guidance

Fintech Tyro Payments (ASX:TYR) provided a Q1 update on Monday and raised its FY23 guidance on record transaction value growth and a cost reduction initiative.

For the quarter ended September 2022, TYR reported $10.4 billion in transaction value, up 59% on the prior corresponding period.

Tyro also launched a $11 million cost reduction program.

TYR expects $5 million in savings to be realised during FY23 via retrenching headcount and featuring more offshore contractors while stemming ‘discretionary expenditure’.

TYR expects the cost reduction program to improve the FY23 EBITDA range to between $28 million and $34 million (previously $23 million to $29 million).

Year to date, TYR shares are down 50%.

Source: Tyro

I read the most extraordinary comment last week. An American writer wrote ‘some see the UK moving to third world status’.

It’s extraordinary to me that the once mighty Great Britain, which became the world’s richest and most powerful country through innovation and industrialisation, could be viewed in this way.

I love England. But it can’t be denied the UK runs at a trade deficit, current account deficit, and a budget deficit. Its North Sea oilfields are in decline.

British banks finance property transactions, not innovation and development.

The pound’s status as a reserve currency is based on history, not strength.

In other words, Britain is sliding into long-term irrelevance the same way the oil industry is.

Countries like India and China will quite rightly argue why on Earth they should give two hoots about a pissy little country off the coast of Europe with 2 cents to rub together and populated by a bunch of old fogeys drinking tea.

The future is in Asia, and Australia is well-placed to be part of this shift.

https://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/my-advice-to-biden-stick-it-to-the-saudis/2022/10/10/

The market believes it has found the central bankers’ pain threshold. We now know when exactly central banks will change their mind about tight monetary policy. What it takes is trouble in the government bond and currency markets.

So now, the bailouts are back and it’s boomtime for stocks.

Cue a face-ripping rally in just about every asset for two days.

But the hope didn’t last long. The issue with crises in currency and bond markets is that they’re temporary and don’t bring down inflation if you resolve them.

We’re back to where we were before the crisis in the UK. With inflation too high and central bankers on the warpath.

Unless there’s a meltdown in government bond markets every two days, what prospects does the stock market have of rising?

What we need is the sort of ‘pain’ that actually brings inflation down. Not just tumult in currency and government bond markets.

Historically, this tends to mean unemployment or a crisis in the property market and banking.

Sure enough, mortgage pain is surging around the world. Credit Suisse is wobbling. And the US jobs market recently weakened, if from a very tight level.

So things might be looking up…or is it down? Is down up, at this point?

Welcome to the bizarre world of central bank-controlled markets…

There’s a bizarre irony here. Two, actually. Well, two I’ll mention for now…

First of all, if central bankers act to prevent a financial crisis from unfolding, as they have in Japan and the UK, then we may never get the drop in inflation that such a crisis tends to cause.

If a financial crisis in currency and government bond markets is so dangerous that it cannot be allowed to take hold of the economy and financial system, then how is it going to bring down inflation?

Such a crisis should, for example, force austerity on governments. If they can’t borrow cheaply, they need to cut borrowings. Less government spending has a deflationary effect, which would solve our inflation problem.

But if the central bank is back in the government bond market at the slightest sign this might actually happen, then why cut government spending and borrowing?

Heck, the earlier and worse your signs of an imminent sovereign debt crisis, the faster we can get back to printing unlimited amounts of money again because the central bank will be forced to finance it.

This incentive is especially bad in the Eurozone, but let’s not go there today.

The Bank of England’s about-face and the Bank of Japan’s pre-emptive strike on the bond market are so important because they give away the level at which central banks change their mind about loose monetary policy. How much pain it took.

https://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/loose-monetary-policy-is-only-one-crisis-away-but-how-bad-a-crisis-does-it-need-to-be/2022/10/08/

Yet more bad news out of Europe…

Last week it was Credit Suisse.

The week before, UK pensions fund bailouts amidst a plummeting British pound.

This week?

A pivotal moment in the energy-driven German economic slowdown.

And as I’ll explain shortly, the start of a chain reaction potentially leading to the break-up of the euro currency.

Big call, I know!

But if I’m right about this, the future will look very different. Not just for Europe but the entire world of money and markets.

(All this feeds into my new ‘Bitcoin to US$1 Million’ timeline. If you’ve not tracked through it with me yet, you can watch the whole thing here.)

Let me explain more…

Big consequences

OK, so what’s gone wrong this time?

This chart explains it:

What you’re looking at is Germany’s trade surplus about to go negative (black line).

That means it’ll be importing more than it exports. Which essentially means it’s turning into a net spender rather than a net saver.

Why does that matter?

Well, German savings basically help fund their more debt-laden Eurozone neighbours. Countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece.

In good times, this works out OK for all sides.

The payoff for Germany’s ‘generosity’ is that they get the benefits of a weaker currency (than, say, the Deutsche Mark would be), which helps make their exports competitive.

Meanwhile, their less fiscally responsible neighbours can use Germany’s strength (as a guarantor of last resort) to keep their own borrowing costs down.

This chart shows this might be all about to change…

https://www.moneymorning.com.au/20221010/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-euro.html

Pot stock Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH) is reinventing itself as Melodiol Global Health as founder Adam Blumenthal resigns from the board of directors, effective today.

Blumenthal was on the board since 2015 but will be replaced by Ben Quirin. Quirin most recently held the role of regional managing director at Canopy Growth, a cannabis company.

Creso noted that Canopy Growth was, in the narrow time period of April 2019, the largest cannabis stock by market capitalisation, reaching a peak of US$24.95 billion.

Since then, however, Canopy Growth’s market cap has shrunk 94%, now trading at a valuation of US$1.85 billion.

On the name change, CEO Will Lay said the rebrand reflects the “global ambitions of the organisation” as CPH seeks to “combine traditional plant-derived remedies with modern scientific expertise”.

Creso Pharma $CPH is reinventing itself as Melodiol Global Health as founder Adam Blumenthal resigns from the board of directors. #ausbiz pic.twitter.com/W9toCSjYbJ

— Fat Tail Daily (@FatTailDaily) October 10, 2022

The Reserve Bank of Australia is trialling a new, programmable currency.

How you can prepare yourself for the potential impacts of the new Australian ‘e-dollar’?

Fat Tail’s editorial director Greg Canavan goes through some of the ways you can prepare in the following presentation.

Archer Materials (ASX:AXE) is currently one of the top performers on the All Ords after releasing a chip update.

The semiconductor developer announced that for the first time it was able to use metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chip tech to detect quantum information in Archer’s CQ qubit material.

In Archer’s words:

“CMOS is the predominant technology used in designing chips in the semiconductor industry and it is broadly used today to form integrated circuits in numerous and varied applications. Processors, memory, and sensors are among many electronic devices that make use of this technology. The use of CMOS technology in the semiconductor industry is expected to continue in the long-term therefore, it is important to demonstrate the functional incorporation of the 12CQ qubit material with CMOS devices.”

AXE CEO Dr Mohammad Choucair described the detection of quantum information as a “step-change technological achievement in advancing Archer’s CQ quantum chip development.”

 

Australian lithium developer Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) has awarded Primero a five-year operations and maintenance contract for CXO’s dense media separation (DMS) plant at Finniss.

The contract’s value is about $60 million over the five years.

Primero is a wholly owned subsidiary of fellow ASX-lister NRW Holdings (ASX:NWH).

CXO thinks Primero will be operationally ready by December, with first spodumene concentrate production slated “in the new year”.

Core CEO Gareth Manderson said:

“The O & M contract award to Primero extends the relationship Core has with Primero from beyond the Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) contract. Significantly Primero are not only building the projects DMS facility, they now back their workmanship through the O & M.”