Australian Resource Shares Rise; Japan Futures Fall on Earnings

By Masaki Kondo

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Australian resource shares advanced as higher oil and metal prices lifted producers’ earnings prospects. Japan’s stock futures fell on concern earnings will deteriorate further.

BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, climbed 0.8 percent in Sydney after prices for crude and copper rose. U.S.-traded receipts of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Japan’s biggest banks, lost at least 3.3 percent from the closing price in Tokyo, after Credit Suisse Group AG said rising bad loans may cause the lenders to post annual losses. Sony Corp. slumped 3.4 percent after its mobile-phone affiliate predicted a first-quarter loss.

“Earnings for fiscal 2008 will undoubtedly turn out bad,” said Yoku Ihara, head of equity research at Retela Crea Securities Co. “Rising bankruptcies are putting pressures on banks, and nobody knows when demand for electronics and cars will recover.”

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index swung between gains and losses, and was up 0.3 percent to 3,477.30 as of 10:23 a.m. in Sydney. New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index was little changed at 2,599.40 in Wellington. In New York, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 2 percent on March 20.

Futures on Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average expiring in March closed at 7,825 in Chicago, 0.4 percent lower than 7,860 in Osaka on March 19. Japan’s market was closed on March 20 for a national holiday.

Last week, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 6.4 percent, the biggest weekly rally since August 2007, on optimism central banks and governments will step up efforts to avert a deepening of the global recession. Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said yesterday that a new stimulus package would require trillions of yen and that a figure of 20 trillion yen ($209 billion) is “not out of line.”

Sony Ericsson

Crude oil for May delivery added as much as 1.6 percent to $52.90 a barrel today in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Copper rose as much as 0.7 percent.

Mitsubishi UFJ may post a net loss of 430.9 billion yen and Mizuho may lose 436.6 billion yen as the value of shareholdings fall and bad-loan costs swell, Shinichi Ina, a Tokyo-based analyst for Credit Suisse, wrote in a report on March 19. He cut Mizuho to “neutral” from “outperform.”

Sony Ericsson, 50 percent owned by Tokyo-based Sony, said on March 20 that a pretax loss will reach as much as 390 million euros ($530 million) in the first three months of this year as demand wanes. Sony, the world’s second-biggest maker of consumer electronics, expects a record $2.7 billion operating loss for the year to March 31.

To contact the reporter for this story: Masaki Kondo in Tokyo at mkondo3@bloomberg.net.