BHP, CSL boom results; Canberra deal frenzy; Tasmanian Tiger auction
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Welcome to Fear and Greed, Business News You Can News. Today, copper becomes the driving force for BHP, and healthcare giant CSL claims it is back in the game. The federal government does deals to push through its gambling, NDIS, and widow tax legislation. And a badly stuffed foxhead, which turned out to be a Tasmanian tiger, sells at auction for $118,000. Plus, three different takeover bids were made. Yesterday in the manufacturing, mining, and financial services sectors, and Commonwealth Bank expands its loyalty points beyond credit cards. It is Wednesday, the 19th of August, 2026. I'm Michael Thompson, and good morning, Sean Aylmer. Good morning, Michael. What a cracking 24 hours to be a journalist.
It is a bumper show this morning, Sean. The main story today: two of Australia's biggest companies, BHP and CSL, have improved. Impressed investors with earnings results that matched or beat expectations and have really set the companies up now for a strong period ahead. BHP yesterday announced a 9% jump in net profit to almost $10 billion, driven mostly by a rise in copper prices, but also improved returns for iron ore and coal. The dividend payout, which is a real a focal point, really, this report. Reporting season given the capital gains tax changes. Well, that was a a real highlight with the total dividends for the last financial year hitting one dollar seventy-two US a share, which is fifty-seven percent higher than last year.
BHP's share price finished up more than three percent yesterday.
Incredibly, the high dividends come notwithstanding a big jump in planned capital spending. You know, companies can either give it back to shareholders or spend it themselves. Well, looks like BHP is doing both. It wants to spend about 45 billion US dollars in copper projects over the next decade. In an increasingly electrified world, copper is a hot commodity, as demonstrated by its record high price at the moment. Relatively new bare. CHP Chief Executive Brandon Craig said the group planned to expand its copper operations in South Australia and South America simultaneously, and they will be self-funded. Copper has become the focus of the Big Australian. Its iron ore operations are still going pretty well, but few, relatively few expansion plans there, no major coal projects in the pipeline, the Potash project in Canada.
which is the other big commodity for BHP. It suffered cost blowouts. It's still about twelve months away from production. Overall, I mean particularly in copper, it is hard to argue that BHP is not the world's best miner, certainly it's it's the biggest and among the most efficient major operators, and we saw that yesterday.
Yeah, it's a pretty incredible story and it's worth a mention of today's Fear and Greed QA episode coming up after the show. You're speaking with BHP CFO Vandita Pant about the result and about the future for BHP. It's a great chat.
And where the future is, we talk a lot about copper, we mentioned potash, what's gonna happen to iron ore. Uh it's fantastic chat.
Yeah, coming up after the show. Lots still to get through before we go though, Sean. Uh Wow, I was nearly ready to wrap things up. We barely even start we barely even started. Healthcare leader CSL, which is another Melbourne based company, uh reported a near three point seven billion dollar annual loss yesterday thanks to a massive ten billion dollar write off at its VIFA kidney treatment subsidiary, uh which it acquired a few years ago back in twenty twenty two.
Yes, now notwithstanding it was one of the biggest write downs in Australian corporate history, CSL share price jumped 18% yesterday, now up 70% since early June in about 10 weeks. Quite extraordinary. Now, having said all that, its market cap of what, mid-sixties? Let's say $65 billion, way below its peak of nearly $150 billion back in 2020. The VIFA business. Business has been a poor strategic move. Uh sales are expected to drop 25% due to competition and changes in Medicare payments. However, and this reflects the share price jump, the blood plasma business.
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