Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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They say it's all in the numbers, and today we've got quite a few of them. What do the latest employment numbers tell us about the state of the Australian economy? And what to make of tech giant Nvidia's quarterly profits, streaking well past the expectations of Wall Street?
And with Joe Longo's last day as chairman of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, ASIC, where do things stand with the superannuation scandal that coloured the last year of his tenure at the regulator? Welcome to ABC Business Daily.
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I'm Daniel Ziver.
And I'm ABC business reporter Nassim Khadem.
Well, if you're a fan of people talking over each other, you've got an absolute cracker today because we are both here in the Melbourne studio.
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Chapter 2: What do the latest employment numbers reveal about the Australian economy?
So seasonally adjusted takes out, you know, the erratic movements in the numbers. So it would take out the oil price shock impact of these numbers. Long term, that's really the figure they look at, the seasonally adjusted figure.
There's another thing, though. These are backwards looking numbers. So I mean, like this looks back and that's great. It tells us a little bit. But what should we be mindful of when we're looking at employment?
So, you know, as I said, going forward, you know, the impact of the oil price shock on the numbers, if the Reserve Bank keeps hiking interest rates, which is what most economists are now expecting, you know, what happens if people start losing jobs and can't pay their mortgage? We'll have to kind of keep an eye on the numbers. And, you know, what happens?
Do you see more forced house sales now as a result?
Well, another big number, the Silicon Valley-based tech giant NVIDIA, whose chips have become essentially essential to the AI industry, has released eye-watering quarterly profits. That exceeds the expectations Wall Street had for it. A huge portion of its revenue came from data centres. These are truly mind-boggling figures. What do you make of it?
It truly is, Dan. So the revenue came in at $81.6 billion, which was well above Wall Street's $78.9 billion estimate. The profit was $58.3 billion, up 211% from a year earlier. Again, you know, up topping expectations by analysts. And let's just compare this to three years ago when the company's quarterly profit was $2 billion. So it is a massive increase.
Nvidia's chips are now essentially a big part of AI projects.
Well, this is the thing, right? We always talk about in the gold rush, yes, there's lots of people panning for gold, but the people who really make the money sell the shovels. And these guys sell the shovels.
Exactly. And all the big companies in the AI space, OpenAI, SpaceX, Meta, Google, Gemini, they're all relying on NVIDIA's products and NVIDIA's evolving its products. And you and I were talking earlier, Dan, its market cap, incredible, $5.4 trillion market cap.
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Chapter 3: What impact does rising unemployment have on inflation concerns?
And another interesting thing that's happened is Interprac, which was one of the licensees. So they're the ones that licensed the financial planners to be able to give advice. And those financial planners were luring people over to to invest their money in these schemes.
Now, Interpac's actually gone to court and it's stopping that one of the investors, so she, her name's Melinda Key and I've reported on her before. She was, she had a determination from AFCA, which is the financial complaints body that people can go to to try and get compensation. to pay her super money back, $380,000 worth.
So Interbrack's now gone to court and is delaying her enforcing her Africa determination, which is, it's legal, but it's quite an extraordinary thing to see. So there's a lot more to play out. And, you know, Longo's exit today comes amid a lot of focus on this particular issue. And this is an issue, Dan, that we'll be talking about on the program, The Business Tonight on ABC TV or iView.
I think, as we have to say, like all good court reporters, the case continues. I was lucky enough last week to be emceeing the National Conference of the Financial Councillors of Australia. And Joe Longo gave his last speech there and I interviewed him afterwards. He was very emotional. He choked up when he was talking about his staff.
And as he wrapped up, there was a standing ovation, which is something I think that regulators don't often get to experience in their life. But I guess if you're going to get one from a crowd of people who deal with clients suffering from structural failures in the financial system, this is probably the guy who's done quite a lot to assist them for getting a better deal.
Yeah. And look, for years, ASIC has had a really bad rap in the media that it's not the tough cop on the beat. And I think ASIC's really trying to prove with all these court cases, particularly with this particular one, because it's kind of the focus of media at the moment, that it is actually the tough cop on the beat. It is prepared to take difficult cases.
It is prepared to go after people who have a lot of money and can fight in court. So You know, it's interesting to see whether that kind of translates now into the political arena that they also think that ASIC's done a great job of how it, you know, watches over alleged criminals.
Well, I was very moved by his emotion and the tears as he discussed what he and the team had done in the past few years. I did ask him, you know, what would you have gone harder on? And his answer was very simple, harder on everything.
Yeah.
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