Ann: Results of Meeting, page-5

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25 MINUTES AGO | 9.57AMDeutsche retains Harvey Norman ‘buy’

Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Simotas believes the current Harvey Norman (HVN) share price isn’t giving credit for the company’s property portfolio and strong offshore results. The recent trading update at its AGM this week highlighted some improvement in Australia and a continuation of the very strong performance from offshore, a new report from Deutsche Bank said. The Australian business was down 1.1 per cent like for like in July/August but finished the period down only 0.2 per cent, implying 0.5 per cent like-for-like growth in the last two months. Total Group sales grew 2.7 per cent. “This was driven by very strong underlying sales growth from Asia, Europe and Ireland, boosted by a foreign exchange tailwind”. New Zealand has also remained robust. “Clearly Australia is not as strong as it was in the past, which we attribute to housing weakness but it is not a disaster and we expect strength from offshore (which is now a third of earnings) and resilience of property earnings to drive earnings growth at a group level. Deutsche Bank has retained its ‘buy’ rating.