Metcash weathers tough market conditions, Aldi to sell booze online, Facebook bug leaks 6 million details: Midday roundup

Supermarket group Metcash has released its full-year results today, announcing a profit rise of 6.9% to $281 million and a 3.8% revenue rise to $13.1 billion.

Despite the profit rise, earnings per share fell 4.4%, which the company puts down to mid-year restructuring and acquisitions, which haven’t delivered a full year’s earnings. The final dividend of 16.5 cents per share takes the full year dividend to 28 cents per share.

Metcash CEO Andrew Reitzer said in a statement the business remained in a strong position.

“The core grocery business has performed reasonably in light of the difficult market conditions, ALM is performing extremely well, Hardware & Automotive is performing in line with expectations, and the strategic acquisitions are progressing soundly,” he said.

Aldi to sell booze online

Aldi will begin selling alcohol online from August 1, in a bid to extend the chain’s liquor offering across Australia’s eastern seaboard.

It will be the discount chain’s first e-commerce presence in Australia.

Although Aldi has sold a limited offering of alcoholic products in some stores in Victoria, the ACT and NSW, licensing laws limit the chain’s ability to stock all stores with a selection of liquor, and Queensland currently doesn’t allow sale of liquor in Aldi stores at all.

The website will allow the chain to sell to more customers in more states and will sell most of Aldi’s current range of local and international beer, wine and spirits.

Facebook bug leaks contact details of 6 million users

Social networking giant Facebook has admitted this morning it accidentally shared the contact details of 6 million users because of a software bug.

The social network created by entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg says it is “upset and embarrassed” over the incident where phone numbers and email addresses of users were improperly shared.

Despite this, it says no financial or other information was shared and affected users are being contacted by email and the impact of the data sharing is likely to be minimal as it would only have occurred between users which were already connected.

Aussies shares slide further

Australians shares have fallen hard this morning with the S&P/A SX200 down 71.4 points to 4667.4, just after midday.

The healthcare sector is the only industry performing well, with an 87.2 point increase.

Following the release of its full-year results today, Metcash shares have risen 6.83% to $3.675 per share.

The dollar is trading at US92 cents.