Steve Daghlian

Now, cut its full-year guidance, basically weaker pathology volumes.

higher labor costs.

This is all weighed on its performance.

It also mentioned that labor costs could be impacted to the upside in the fourth quarter by close to $2 million because of a ruling from the Fair Work Commission with some findings there around gender-based undervaluation, which basically could just mean higher costs for the group as well.

It also pointed out that no new funding for pathology was announced in last night's federal budget as well, which it said was a concern because wages have been lifting and they're not getting the support that they require.

So Helios is one of those stocks that has really struggled post-COVID when they were carrying out millions of those PCR COVID tests.

That was a big driver of earnings, but since then, it's had a pretty rough time on the market.

Let's look forward as well because tonight we do have a weekly update on crude oil inventories in the United States, something that has a habit of sometimes moving around oil prices.

Outside of that, we've got President Trump arriving in Beijing tonight ahead of

He's meeting with China's President Xi on Thursday and Friday.

So that will be interesting.

And tomorrow, we've got a bunch of earnings locally as well from stocks like Grain Corp and also Xero.

So there'll be two to watch.

And also, I would suggest you could check out our equity market strategist, James Gruber's reel, which he recorded earlier in the day, which gave a bit of detail on the budget as well.

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Aussie stock slipped for a third day as Australia braces for tonight's federal budget.

Good afternoon, I'm Steve Daglian.

It's Tuesday the 12th of May.