M2 Telecommunications full-year profit up 33%, NIB posts fall in full-year earnings, Wong challenges Abbott over budget cuts: Midday Roundup

M2 Telecommunications Group has delivered a sizeable increase in full-year earnings, with the company posting a 33% net profit increase to $43.8 million.

Revenue also increased, jumping 73% to $681 million, up from the previous year’s $393.5 million.

M2 will pay a full-franked dividend of 10 cents per share, marking the eighteenth consecutive dividend declared by the group.

The 2012-13 results make it 11 years of consecutive growth for M2.

“This has been another transformational year for our company, a year in which we strengthened our position in the consumer market and developed a platform to deliver organic growth for years to come,” M2 chief executive Geoff Horth said in a statement.

For 2014, the group is predicting its net profit to increase by 48%.

NIB Holdings posts small fall in full-year earnings

Health insurance company NIB Holdings has posted a slight full-year lost, with net profits coming in at $67.2 million, just under last year’s $67.6 million.

The loss comes largely from $3.4 million in one-off costs associated with its acquisition of New Zealand business Tower Medical Insurance.

The group’s premium revenue was up 14.8% to $1.29 billion and its underwriting profit increased 4.3% to $73.8 million.

The company is giving a full-year dividend of 10 cents per share fully-franked.

Wong challenges Abbott over budget cuts

Finance Minister Penny Wong has said a Coalition government could not deliver a surplus without cutting services.

Wong was responding to comments made by Abbott over the weekend regarding his plans for a Coalition government – he said a Coalition government would be smaller than a Labor government.

“We know what that’s Liberal for. We all know what that’s code for. It’s cuts to jobs and cuts to services,” Wong told Sky News this morning.

“How do you have growth if you do nothing except hack into jobs and services? Is that a recipe for growth?”

Shares rise on speculation over US stimulus

The Australian share market has opened higher this morning, following news from the United States where analysts are watching the Federal Reserve for movement on reducing stimulus.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 21 points or 0.4% to 5144.9 at 11.30 AEST.