Sydney, June 20, 2026, 04:04 AEST
- ANZ ended at A$35.03 on Friday, slipping 0.31% for the day. Shares still managed to gain about 2.5% over the past five sessions.
- The S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.9% Friday but still gained 0.3% for the week. ANZ ended the week ahead of the main index.
- Australia reports May inflation on Wednesday, with the release coming after the central bank left its cash rate at 4.35% and signaled another hike is possible.
ANZ Group Holdings shares ended the week higher, though the stock dropped 11 Australian cents to A$35.03 on Friday. National Australia Bank closed up 1.07%. Commonwealth Bank was little changed, up 0.10%. Westpac dipped 0.43%.
Australian cash trading is on hold for the weekend. Market action resumes Monday, June 22. For the week, ANZ outperformed the main index by about 2.2 percentage points. Investors are looking past revenue worries for now and sticking with CEO Nuno Matos’s cost reset plan as they wait to see if growth picks up.
BHP’s 5.6% fall after revealing higher Jansen potash project costs hit Friday’s trade, knocking the ASX 200 down 82.4 points to 8,828.7. Most of the drop came from miners. There was no new news out of ANZ.
Interest rates are still front and center for bank stocks. The Reserve Bank of Australia kept its cash rate at 4.35% on Tuesday, holding steady after a total hike of 75 basis points since January. Governor Michele Bullock said “inflation remains too high” and added that the pause doesn’t take more hikes off the table. Reserve Bank of Australia
ANZ sticks with its May half-year numbers. The bank’s cash profit, its preferred earnings gauge, came in at A$3.78 billion, up 14% from the previous half when one-offs were stripped out. ANZ’s cost-to-income ratio got better too, reaching 49.4%. CEO Matos said the bank’s “transformation is running at pace”. ANZ
Whether banks can keep up lending as savings grow, without giving up returns, is the bigger question. Jefferies analyst Andrew Lyons said back in February, “The real test though, in our view, will be how it manages its net interest margin when it gets back to system housing growth.” Net interest margin is the difference between what a bank makes on loans and what it pays out on deposits and funding. Reuters
ANZ shares finished the week ahead of the market, but traders aren’t seeing a fresh earnings signal here. The move looks like another read on management’s execution plan. ANZ is leaning on cost cuts, though that can’t support the stock forever. Investors will need to see more from loan growth, deposit pricing, and mortgage business quality.
But risks are still there. If inflation runs higher, talk of another rate hike could come back, pushing up deposit and wholesale funding costs and adding to the squeeze on mortgage borrowers. If inflation falls, weak credit demand might still keep a lid on revenue, and if ANZ stumbles on its cost program, the stock case could get weaker.
May consumer-price numbers out Wednesday are likely to set the tone for local markets this week. For ANZ, investors are watching both the cash rate signal from the figures and if higher borrowing costs are still helping margins or starting to hurt lending growth and boost credit losses.
