Perth Mint Release Details of Australian 2015 Bullion Coins

Perth Mint Release Details of Australian 2015 Bullion Coins

The Perth Mint has unveiled the latest designs of the Australian 2015 Bullion Coin Program to an audience of financiers and investors in Frankfurt, Germany – its number one market for gold and silver bullion coins.

Perth Mint Release Details of Australian 2015 Bullion Coins

Showcasing the charming qualities of Australia’s kangaroo, koala, kookaburra and platypus; and portraying the elegant personality of the Chinese Lunar goat, this investment program amplifies The Perth Mint’s rich tradition of minting excellence.

Comprising 99.99% pure gold coins ranging in sizes from 1/20oz to 10 kilos, 99.9% pure silver coins from 1/2oz to 10 kilos, and a special 1oz 99.95% pure platinum piece; these stunning coins are released with select mintage limits and distinguished designs.

This coming year, the 2015 bullion program will highlight the 25th anniversary of the Australian Kookaburra with each coin in the silver series replicating the original artistry featured in its introductory year of 1990.

Each coin is issued as legal tender under the Australian Currency Act 1965 and reflects the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on its obverse.

Perth Mint Sales and Marketing Director, Ron Currie, said that European investors purchased 1.6 million investment coins in this past year. “We expect these authentic designs to prompt further purchases from established clients, as well as capture the interest of new investors throughout Europe and across the world,” he added.

The four smaller coins from the Australian Kangaroo gold series will illustrate a bounding kangaroo as it crosses the Australian outback with the moon in the background. To complement this artistry, the kilo release will feature a leaping red kangaroo circled by rays of sunlight.

The design of the Australian Kookaburra silver coin series will display an adult kookaburra sitting on a tree stump surrounded by eucalyptus leaves and a fern, while the latest Australian Koala silver coins will depict a mature koala sitting in a tree with an Australian bush landscape in the background.

Maintaining its classic design, the Australian Platypus coin will showcase the unique creature swimming among reeds surrounded by air bubbles.

Featuring an Eastern theme, the 2015 designs of the Australian Lunar coin series will celebrate the Year of the Goat. The gold coins will capture a goat standing on a ridge with mountains in the background, while the silver issues will depict a family of goats standing amid a stylised rural scene.

Scheduled for release over the next four months, the Australian Lunar and Kookaburra series will be available from September, followed by the Kangaroo in October, the Koala in November, and the Platypus in January.

The 2015 Australian Bullion Coin Program is available from the Bullion Trading Desk at The Perth Mint, 310 Hay Street in East Perth. The investment offerings can also be ordered via the Mint’s dedicated BullionLine 1300 201 112 (Australia), +61 8 9421 7218 (International), or online at www.perthmintbullion.com Investors can also check the availability of the releases with leading bullion coin dealers.

See the latest video on the 2015 Australian Bullion Coin Program at The Perth Mint’s YouTube channel

See more at: http://australiasilver.com/perth-mint-unveils-australian-2015-bullion-coin-program/#sthash.XnzMeWu0.dpuf 

Iron Ore Warning: High Spending Days Are Over

One of the world's largest investors in mining stocks, BlackRock, has been out and about over the past week issuing warnings to the major resource companies. 

The iron ore price has hit a five-year record low and BlackRock wants to push a message to management - avoid reverting to the high spending expansionary ways and stay focused on cutting costs and rewarding shareholders.

Evy Hambro, whose team manages more than $20 billion across multiple funds for BlackRock, doesn't seem to explicitly mention whether he includes big iron ore producers chasing increased production among the list of management's bad habits - or whether he thinks the likes of BHP and Rio are ultimately shooting themselves in the foot, given that massively increased supply is a significant factor on the weakening price of the metal.

There is plenty of unconfirmed talk that this is the message that BlackRock has conveyed to the likes of BHP Billiton (in which it is the largest shareholder) and Rio Tinto.

One of the larger culprits in a supply-flooding sense is Fortescue which, percentage wise, has grown much faster than its larger competitors. However the genesis of its expansion plans dates back many years and its target production level has now been reached. 

Fortescue's shareholders are unlikely to see any further volume expansion beyond sweating the existing assets a bit harder.

The ripple effect of the continuing fall of the iron ore price is an issue that is now becoming mainstream. It has major ramifications for the country's exports and governments' tax revenue and thus the broader economy.

To date the large mining companies in Australia have been able to offset last year's lower commodity prices for iron ore and coal by undertaking major cost cutting drives and efficiency initiatives.

But if prices continue to fall and much of the low hanging fruit has been harvested, revenues and profits will be under pressure.

While we can't blame everything on oversupply, given there are seasonal demand factors from the Chinese customers that come into play - the latest of which is that country's weak property market - the fact remains that the Australian producers in particular have been pumping out enormous volumes of iron ore into the seaborn market.

The immediate focus for the Australian iron ore industry has been the health of the smaller mining companies with cash costs close or in excess of the current iron ore prices. How much longer can they last and is this the start of a wave of consolidation?

Western Desert Resources, a company unknown to most, became the canary in the coal mine last week when it had receivers appointed to it. It was the iron ore plaything of hotel billionaire Bruce Mathieson, and had plenty of high-profile directors on the board - with loads of experience across business. Sadly not much in mining.

How the industry shakes out from here depends on which of the smaller players are attractive to those looking for a cheap entry and the agenda of the buyers.

There may be some consolidation between the smaller players - and how this pans out depends on which have cash. BC Iron recently made a $250 million bid for Kerry Stokes' iron ore play, Iron Ore Holdings.

Earlier in the year the Chinese group Baosteel moved into the market in a joint bid with rail infrastructure group, Aurizon for Aquila Resources.

New York-based financier Edward Sugar - a man who helped Fortescue find finance in its early days and who was in Australia last week - suggested there were billions of dollars waiting in the wings looking for resources projects.

He says that private equity players that have traditionally not stepped into the mineral resources space are now assessing whether there are opportunities stemming from the fallout from the financially wounded or the asset sales from the bigger mining stocks that are looking to focus their core portfolios. BHP Billition and Rio are clear examples.

The interest from these private equity groups and other funds set up to invest in mining assets generally - like that formed up by former Xstrata boss Mick Davis - are scouring Australia, the UK and Canada in particular.

UBS' Glyn Lawcock has just released a useful update on the price iron ore (62 per cent Fe which is the one traditionally used) needs to be for companies to hit cash break-even.

For Rio (best in show) it is US$45, BHP needs an iron ore price of US$50 and Fortescue needs a price of US$74. The first two are looking pretty comfortable at this price and FMG will hope to further reduce its costs in order to make a decent return at current price levels.

But the next layer down the smaller iron ore producers hit break even above where the iron ore price is today. The exception in Mount Gibson and BC Iron which have a bit of additional head room.

These producers can not afford to ride out a protracted period of weak prices. 

And there is enormous disparity among those in the industry, the investment banks commodities experts and even the Australian state and federal treasuries about the outlook.

Lawcock for example thinks the price might pick up a bit in November and December (as it usually does).

But not even the most optimistic are suggesting that the days of super profits from this industry are set to return. It's a business that can generate good returns if costs are low but the days  of justifying the massive capital costs of building rail and port infrastructure from scratch appear to be a thing of the past.

House Price Boom Must End, Says David Gonski

ANZ chairman David Gonski has warned Australia's booming housing prices cannot go on forever and the market will eventually experience a correction.

The former Future Fund chairman said ANZ and all the big banks were "very aware of history" when it came to financial lending in the residential mortgage market.

"There will come a time when there will be a correction," he told the Australian British Chamber of Commerce.

"The fact is, anyone who believes prices always go up is, I think, a fool."

Mr Gonski's comments come as the housing market heats up as spring approaches. Capital city markets had their strongest winter since before the lead up to the financial crisis, according to figures released on Monday by RP Data.

Sydney and Melbourne house prices lifted 5 per cent and 6.4 per cent respectively over the three months to the end of August. The surge represents year-on-year growth of more than 16 per cent in Sydney and almost 12 per cent in Melbourne.

Brisbane, which was one of the weaker-performing cities, recorded a 1.3 per cent property value increase in the three months to the end of August.

The Reserve Bank warned in its submission to the Financial System Inquiry that moves to boost competition in the home loan sector could increase risk in the financial system.

Regional banks, credit unions and building societies have urged the federal government to change regulations that give the big banks a significant cost advantage when making home loans.

Mr Gonski also backed ANZ's Asian strategy, questioning why some in the market consider ANZ to be "riskier" than its peers because it is in Asia.

"I believe it's quite odd, I have to say, that we are regarded as a riskier investment because we have investments outside Australia.

"I could very well argue that a good investor has some money in Australia and some money overseas. That's exactly what the ANZ has done."

Australia 'at the Front' of Growing Subprime Mortgage Market

Australia 'at the Front' of Growing Subprime Mortgage Market

They triggered an economic meltdown in the United States and sparked the global financial crisis, but subprime mortgages are staging a revival in Australia.

Ratings agency Moody's says Australian lenders have doled out $3 billion worth of the non-conforming home loans over the last 18 months.

Prime mortgages are those that typically go to people with good credit scores, secure jobs and existing, well-serviced loans.

Moody's analyst Robert Baldi says non-conforming, or subprime, borrowers tend to have patchier personal financial histories.

"We're looking at things like prior bankruptcies or prior defaults in their credit history past," he explained.

"If the borrower is a non-resident, for example, or it's a jumbo loan, these would all fall outside of the lenders' mortgage insurance criteria and would classify the loan as non-conforming."

Essentially, subprime loans are those going to borrowers with a much higher risk of default that a typical loan.
Australia 'out at the front' of subprime market

While subprime remains something of dirty word in the economies hardest hit by the GFC, Australian lenders are increasingly willing to step up and fund subprime loans by selling what are known as residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS).

"Australia is out there at the front of the market, I would say, so we are the ones that have continued with issuance in this space," Mr Baldi said.

"Since the beginning of 2013, we've seen 10 new transactions in the RMBS market from non-conforming issuers and that's totalled about $3 billion, so that's quite a pick up in volume considering the market did shut down post the crisis in 2008."

While $3 billion sounds like a large amount of money, Mr Baldi says it is a relatively small share of the home loan market, and of RMBS issuance.

"In the year to date we saw roughly about $15 billion of RMBS transactions. Of that, about $1 billion was non-conforming, so we'd say about 7 per cent of issuance this year has been from the non-conforming market," he added.

Moody's says most of these loans are being written by non-bank lenders.

However, Mr Baldi is confident that there is enough regulation in place to avoid a subprime crash similar to that in the US in 2008.

"One of those is the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, and this basically requires lenders to take reasonable steps to verify a borrower's financial position and their ability to repay the loan," he said.

"Essentially this gets around the fact that in the US you saw those loans being written to borrowers pre-2008 with little to no income verification. In Australia that just can't happen."

The United States is still managing the fallout from its subprime crisis.

Last week, finance powerhouse Bank of America Merrill Lynch agreed to an almost $US17 billion settlement for its role in the crisis.
Australia's biggest danger in prime mortgages

Despite that history, banking analyst Martin North sees Australia's non-conforming market as much safer.

"Most of the investors now, the people who are buying these mortgage-backed securities, are now Australian investors rather than overseas investors," he said.

"So there is a bit of a feedback loop going on, and that does mean that some of the other players who might be buying those securitised loans now are essentially home-based rather than offshore-based."

Mr North says the subprime segment of Australia's market is so small that it is unlikely to destabilise the financial system, even if a lot of the loans go bad.

However, he says Australia's banks, households and the economy in general is too heavily reliant on real estate.

"This is a very small proportion of a much bigger question about leverage into property," he warned.

"We have a massively leveraged financial services system into property more broadly.

"If we have the sorts of defaults we're talking about in the non-conforming sector, then you would also be having, I think, similar defaults more broadly across the market, and it's those broader defaults across the market that would be of much more concern rather than the non-conforming element, which I think is quite small and quite isolated."

Don't Get Burnt by The Property Market

Don't get burnt by the property market

How seriously should property investors take recent warnings that Australian property prices are 20 per cent to 30 per cent higher than they should be and that there is an impending apartment glut in 2017? 

Whatever the fundamental basis for these and similar warnings, existing and new property investors need to be aware of the potential downside.

The basic issue is to understand the risks involved with  investments already owned or being purchased. While less popular for purchases of listed assets including shares and property trusts as well as managed funds, large levels of borrowing are widely used to help acquire direct property holdings.

This high level of gearing helps to drive up property prices in good times such as the present and down when markets turn down, for example due to increased levels of vacancies and/or falling rents. Currently, strong foreign buying interest, low interest rates and a shortage of available stock is forcing and encouraging new investors to bid up prices.

While it may be some time off, a similar downward ratchet in prices will start when interest rates rise again and when new housing developments result in an oversupply in the major locations. Compared with share market falls which can be brutal and swift, downward property price movements are generally protracted as sellers holding out for higher prices ultimately are forced to lower their expectations.

A special feature of the apartment market can, however, result in distressed forced sales. This is when a large number of off-the-plan sales negotiated before or during construction fall through. A recent example of this occurring is the setback in the Canberra apartment market due to over-supply and reduced public sector employment opportunities.

In this situation, a significant percentage of off-the-plan  buyers were either unable or unwilling to complete their purchases. The resulting forced sales depressed asset valuations and made it more difficult for heavily geared purchasers to obtain credit to meet their commitments.

The key message for individual investors is to be aware of these and other risks before entering into off-the-plan contracts. While one benefit of off-the-plan purchases is what can often be a lengthy time lag before money is required to complete the purchase, this can be a negative if personal circumstances change or property valuations fall before the settlement date..

The chances of both of these changes increase with the amount of time before completion. The risks are also greater in situations such as the present time when contracts are entered into in a buoyant market. So even if the warnings of problems ahead don't prove accurate, they are a timely reminder to avoid becoming over-committed to a future large heavily geared property purchase.

How Almost 300,000 SMSFs Avoid Paying Income Tax

Only a fraction of Australia's ­half-a-million self-managed super­annuation funds pay any income tax, experts say, because of generous super concessions and franking credits that are undermining the federal budget.

Tax Office statistics show almost 300,000 self-managed superannuation funds eliminated or reduced their tax bills through exemptions on super and $2.5 billion in franking credits in 2011-12. 

These are the most recent records available, although experts say the surge in dividend payments since then has further reduced the small amounts of tax paid by these funds, which are often the primary income of wealthy retirees.

At the time, 424,360 funds generated gross taxable income of $32.9 billion. About $15 billion of that was entirely exempt from income tax because the funds were in the pension phase, which doesn't incur income tax.

Self-managed funds contribute little to the tax system – because about half of the funds' assets are already in the ­pension phase, Tria Investment Partners principal Andrew Baker said. Also, most self-managed funds receive franked dividends, which cuts the tax bill of many other funds to zero.

"It's a problem isn't it?" Mr Baker said. "It's unlikely SMSFs are ever going to pay a substantial amount of tax as a segment."

The loss of revenue will rise because of an ageing population shifting assets into pension phase and the greater payment of dividends, he said.

Pressure is growing to focus on superannuation tax breaks in the Coalition's planned review of the taxation system. The government is desperate to find ways to reduce the budget deficit.

There have been frequent calls for the government to stop the concessions. The head of the Financial System Inquiry, David Murray, recently suggested Australia's dividend imputation system, which SMSFs are also capitalising on, needed to be looked at.

The roughly 1 million Australians with investments in self-managed super funds argue that having spent their careers paying income tax and following the rules they shouldn't be penalised for saving for retirement.

"Super funds, including SMSFs, are taxpayers, and franking credits should be available to all taxpayers," SMSF ­Professionals' Association of Australia's technical and professional standards director Graeme Colley said.

Experts say it would be better to tax the earnings of superannuation funds in pension phase at 15 per cent, rather than try to get rid of franking credits, which could see share prices plummet.

A fundamental change 

Australia and New Zealand are now the only two developed countries that have full imputation of dividends.

Mr Baker said scrapping Australia's dividend imputation system, would involve "a fundamental change to the taxation system" that would be hard to implement. He said a better way to address the problem was a 15 per cent earnings tax for those in the pension stage. Another option was to copy the United States' minimum taxation rate, "that in short says everybody pays an amount of tax".

Ending franking credits could ­trigger a political backlash from ­investors and "would be reintroducing double taxation, so there are enormous problems with it", Mr Baker said.

"The UK did a similar thing 15 years ago, denying pension funds franking credits, and they got away with it . . . despite the protest." He said a tax rate on the pension phase would also stop gearing by SMSFs.

Tax Office data shows SMSFs have an interest expense bill of about $375 million a year, but Mr Baker said that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The data comes from SMSF tax returns, but it is common for SMSFs to achieve gearing outcomes by in­vesting in private property trusts. He estimated the overall interest expense for the sector would be about $500 million annually.

Grattan Institute chief executive John Daley said any change to dividend imputation would have to be part of a package that also reduced the company tax rate and personal tax rates.

He said the difficulty with scrapping imputation was that it would "create incentives for companies to hoard ­capital rather than returning it to shareholders, which may reduce the efficiency of investment decisions".

Instead, the government should wind back superannuation tax breaks for the old and wealthy. "The easiest way to do this would be to tax the income and capital earnings of super funds in pension phase at 15 per cent," Mr Daley said. "These funds would then pay tax on earnings at the same rate as the super funds of those aged under 60."

He said there was no reason to grandfather this change.

"Anyone who is in pension phase can withdraw the entirety of their super fund tomorrow, and if they think they can find an in­vestment on which they will pay less than 15 per cent tax, good luck to them," Mr Daley said.

"I'm guessing that there will be very few withdrawals."

'It ain't going to happen'

At the end of 2012, the average SMSF had $920,000 (typically funds are made up of more than one person: couples).

According to a 2012 ASX study, about 52 per cent of SMSFs directly hold ­Australian shares. Tax Office data shows of the $550 billion invested in SMSFs, $180 billion is directly invested in Australian-listed shares, which is already higher than the average of APRA-regulated funds.

Leading economist Saul Eslake said he was "undecided" about whether dividend imputation should be scrapped, although he had previously mentioned it is a costly tax break that the wealthy use to lower their marginal tax rates.

He said that like negative gearing, there are now so many who benefit from franking credits – SMSFs, investors and members of larger public or industry super funds – that "no matter what the intellectual merits of getting rid of it, it ain't going to happen for political reasons".

"Almost certainly, the benefits of franking credits are capitalised into the share prices of companies that have high franked dividend yields, so it seems almost inevitable that abolishing dividend imputation would cause share prices to fall, unless there were an equivalent reduction in the company tax rate," Mr Eslake said.

David Murray said in his review of the financial sector the imputation ­system – first introduced in 1987 and estimated to cost about $20 billion a year – had created a bias where in­dividuals and super funds preferred shares and this had hindered the growth of the domestic corporate bond market.

PwC's submission to the Murray inquiry said "careful consideration should be given to whether there would be benefits to be obtained from modifications to the imputation system"

Property-Related Firms Rake in Revenue From Real Estate Boom Australia

Property exposed companies have reported "tremendously successful" and "best ever" results thanks to the booming housing market.

Developer Mirvac saw its full year profit spike 220 per cent to $447 million dollars.

Shareholders will receive a final dividend of 4.6 cents a share, taking the full year payout to 9 cents unfranked.

Strong residential sales lifted the result, with a total $1.2 billion of exchanged pre-sales contracts in hand and a slightly better than forecast 2,482 properties settled.

Chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz says the year has been "tremendously successful" and has set the company up for the future.

That future is very focused on building apartments to feed what it believes will continue to be high demand, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.

Chief investment officer Brett Draffin says the strong sales and price momentum seen over the past financial year is set to continue, albeit at a "slightly more moderate level."




He is not concerned about the flood of units that is expected to come onto the market in the near term.

"Fundamentally increased stock levels are insufficient to overcome the national undersupply, there is a high level of activity from offshore buyers in select locations and product types," he told investors.

"We expect demand volumes to continue to grow driven by tight rental vacancy population growth and a strengthening of the economy."

Mirvac has spent $248 million on new sites, two-thirds of these acquisitions were in NSW, less than a fifth were in Victoria, and the remainder in Queensland and Western Australia.

Half of the lots to be released this year are in Sydney, and almost all of them are units.

Mirvac believes the major acquisitions it has made will see residential development drive earnings from two years time onwards.
Mortgage broker boosts earnings

Mortgage broker Mortgage Choice has also benefitted from the fever that has swept the residential property market over the past year-and-a-half, boasting a best ever full-year result.

Full-year net profit rose 6 per cent to $19.85 million, and cash profit jumped 19 per cent to $18.7 million.

The final dividend was boosted to 8 cents a share, fully-franked.

The company says it "managed to capitalise on the industry tailwinds and significantly grow its core business."

The business wrote $12.2 billion in loan approvals, which is almost 20 per cent higher on the prior year, and the loan book rose to $47.4 billion.

Chief executive Michael Russell says it is the best result so far for the company.

"We have embraced the opportunities that the strong market has presented us with and managed to deliver some of our best financial results to date," he said.

The company says it is well on its way to achieving its goal of becoming a recognised diversified financial services provider.

"We will continue to focus on our growth and diversification moving forward."

Sydney Inner-City Apartment Market Glut Predicted to Push Prices Down

Sydney Inner-City Apartment Market Glut Predicted to Push Prices Down

A leading economic forecaster is warning that oversupply will cut Sydney apartment prices by up to 10 per cent.

The report by BIS Shrapnel estimates that 5,800 apartments are being built in inner-Sydney right now, with almost as many again planned to be completed over the next few years.

The report says the peak annual output of 4,500 units in 2016-17 is comparable to the last boom in 1999-2000, but the average of 3,800 new inner-city apartments per year over three years will be a record.

BIS Shrapnel's senior manager of residential property Angie Zigomanis, who wrote the report, says developers have been playing catch-up after a decade of undersupply in Sydney, but they look like soon getting ahead of themselves.

"The population growth in Sydney still stays pretty strong, rental demand will still be fairly strong, but it's just that the level of apartment construction now is moving up to a level that's probably approaching a level that's too high and that's unsustainable in the long-term," he told ABC News Online.

Mr Zigomanis does not expect this to occur in the short-term, but warns that the wave of new developments over the next few years is likely to result in supply exceeding demand.

"Once the market starts getting into oversupply then rents either flatten out or start falling," he said.

"This has the potential to also coincide with the Reserve Bank looking to start tightening interest rate policy as well and that combination will see the investment equation change and investors start becoming less confident about the market and prepared to pay lower prices for dwellings.

"So any new apartments that come back onto the market are likely to experience some sort of loss two or three years out from now."

Mr Zigomanis says the losses are unlikely to be large, but may prove a serious setback for those buying off-the-plan now expecting capital gains.

"Depends on location, etc, but I wouldn't be surprised if from their current purchase price they don't experience losses of perhaps 5 per cent, and perhaps selected developments up to 10 per cent."

In results released last week, property developer Mirvac said it planned to focus heavily on increasing apartment developments in the Sydney market, expecting that segment to remain strong for the next five years.

Mr Zigomanis says a lack of pre-sales a couple of years hence may force a rethink of such optimistic strategies.

"They require a certain level of pre-sales before they go ahead with construction," he said.

"Over the next couple of years we expect pre-sales will be pretty strong so it should be able to sustain the number Mirvac are talking about, but if they were assuming that demand would stay at current levels over the next say five years we suspect that won't be the case.