The ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) is currently down 0.5% as Melbourne is headed for stage 3 lockdowns again after an increase of COVID-19 cases.
The lockdown will be for 6 weeks so that Victoria can get the spread of COVID-19 under control.
Afterpay (ASX: APT) completes institutional capital raising
The buy now, pay latter ASX share announced it has successfully raised $650 million through the fully institutional placement it outlined yesterday.
Afterpay said it was strongly supported by existing and new shareholders at the placement price of $66, which was much higher than the underwritten floor price of $61.75.
Co-founders of Afterpay Anthony Eisen and Nicholas Molnar have both successfully sold 2.05 million shares at $66 per share. They won’t sell any more shares until at least after the 2020 AGM.
The Afterpay share price is down 1.7%.
Select Harvests (ASX: SHV) doesn’t impress
The nut producer said it has completed its 2020 harvest, the entire 2020 crop has now been delivered to the Carina West processing facility.
With 60% of the crop processed, the company estimated that the crop volume is 23,000 MT. In 2019 the total volume was 22,690 MT. So that’s an increase of approximately 1.4%.
Select Harvests described its crop quality as good, however a portion of the crop has been impacted by late harvest rains and wet storage conditions. But the wetter conditions have thankfully reduced water prices. But this has also hurt the demand for almond hull from the stockfeed industry.
The Carina West Processing Facility continues to be more productive after the investment in new sorting technology.
The Select Harvests share price is down 3% in reaction to this news.
Splitit (ASX: SPT) announces a big June quarter
Splitit announced that in the June 2020 quarter its merchant sales volume grew to US$65.4 million. This was an increase of 260% compared to the June 2019 quarter and an increase of 176% compared to the first quarter of 2020.
Gross revenue for the quarter was US$2.4 million, up 460% on the June 2019 quarter and up 246% from the previous quarter.
Splitit said there are now 1,000 merchants signed up, this is an increase of 104% compared to a year ago. Total unique shoppers grew 85% to 309,000. Interestingly, the average order value grew to US$893, up 44% from a year ago.
Some of the recent new merchants include Purple, Daily Sale, Quiet Kat, Dreamcloud and Bedmart. Splitit has also been working on new partnerships, some of the latest ones are: Mastercard, Finance for Group and Blue Snap.
The Splitit share price is up around 13%
Northern Star’s impressive update
The Northern Star share price is up more than 4% after giving a June 2020 update.
Northern Star said that its cash, bullion and investments rose by 40% to AU$769.5 million at 30 June 2020 compared to March 2020.
The company said that its balance sheet was now net cash positive, with corporate bank debt of AU$700 million.
Northern Star generated underlying free cashflow of $217.9 million in the June quarter after selling 262,717 ounces of gold. This took total sales for FY20 to just over 900,000 ounces with 905,000 ounces of gold produced.
The gold miner said that as a result of this update, the company will pay its FY20 interim dividend of 7.5 cents per share on 16 July 2020, totalling AU$55 million. The dividend was initially postponed due to COVID-19. The company expects to resume normal dividends too.
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