00:00Well, Qantas was one of the standouts on the share market today after announcing its second
00:06highest profit ever, which sent its share price soaring to a new record. Not bad for
00:11a company which nearly collapsed during the pandemic had it not been for $2.7 billion
00:15worth of free money it received from the government at the taxpayer's expense. Now, Qantas says
00:21its $1.6 billion annual profit was boosted by strong demand for travel. While that's
00:26true, what also helps is that we don't really have that many options when we're flying domestic.
00:31Between Qantas and its subsidiary Jetstar, they control about two-thirds of the market,
00:35while its only real competitor, Virgin Australia, controls one-third. It's great business when
00:41you're basically part of a duopoly. Meanwhile, reporting season is still happening and there
00:45have been some pretty extreme reactions, as you can see. For instance, Ramsey Healthcare's
00:50profit and share price took a dive, partly due to the poor performance of its private hospitals
00:55in Europe. Yet IDP Education's share price jumped almost 30%, even though its profit is
01:00down by almost two-thirds. Plus, the company is expecting its student enrolment numbers to
01:05essentially fall off a cliff. It's all about managing expectations, and in IDP's case, they
01:11were incredibly low. But these extremes balanced each other out, so in the end, the ASX went up
01:17by just 0.2%, which isn't terribly exciting. Overseas, Wall Street's S&P 500 hit a new record,
01:24and it was a mixed bag in many of the other major share markets. While there wasn't much
01:29movement in gold and oil prices, iron ore is up, and the Aussie dollar is buying just
01:33over 65 US cents. And that's finance.
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