What’s making news for ASX ETF investors on Friday

The ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) is up over 1% so far today, following on from a positive night in international share markets. The S&P 500 Index (INX) rose over 1% as well.

An ETF’s movements higher or lower are dictated by the individual shares that make up the ETF. So if shares report news, it can cause noticeable share price movements.

Some of the main news items today

REA Group (ASX: REA)

The REA Group share price is up 6%.

REA Group is Australia’s largest property portal, it owns realestate.com.au. It reported its FY20 third quarter update to investors this morning. For the three months to 31 March 2020, REA Group experienced revenue growth of 1%, EBITDA growth of 8% but a free cash flow decline of 20%.

But COVID-19 has had more of an effect in April. Last month the national residential listings were down 33%, with Sydney listings down 18% and Melbourne listings down 27%.

It has also added a $149 million loan facility and also opened a $20 million draft facility.

Macquarie (ASX: MQG)

The Macquarie share price is up 3.6%.

Australia’s global investment bank announced its FY20 result this morning. It reported that FY19 profit was down 8% to $2.73 billion. Macquarie announced credit and other impairment charges of $1.04 billion, mainly relating to expected COVID-19 impacts.

It ended 31 March 2020 with $606.9 billion of assets under management (AUM).

The investment bank decided to declare a final dividend of $1.80 per share, bringing the full year dividend to $4.30. That’s a cut of 25% from last year.

Zip (ASX: Z1P)

The buy now, pay later business delivered its April trading update this morning. The Zip share price is up 23%.

It achieved monthly revenue of $15.1 million, up 81% compared to a year ago. Monthly transaction volume was $181.6 million, this was an increase of 86%. Receivables were up 97% to $1.2 billion.

Customer numbers rose by 66% to 2 million year on year and merchant numbers rose 50% year on year to 23,100. It had net bad debts of 1.99% and monthly arrears remained flat at 1.57%.

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Disclosure: Jaz does not own shares of any of the shares mentioned at the time of writing. 

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