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• Star Entertainment, owner of Sydney’s The Star casino, had trading on the ASX suspended as it failed to report full-year financials by its due date. On Friday, Star requested a trading halt as it considered the findings of a NSW government inquiry. Trading was set to resume yesterday before the ASX suspended trading.
  
  

• The focus of Australia’s leaders this month is on the media. Two big decisions are pending: (1) a response to Meta’s decision to not renew the deals it had in place with large legacy media and (2) the future of gambling advertising. Together, these decisions will be worth tens of millions of dollars to News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media (Call us cynical, but with an election less than a year away, we’re pretty confident the government will step in to protect Australia’s legacy media)
  
  

• REA Group, owner of RealEstate.com.au, saw shares fall 5% after announcing it was considering a takeover bid for the UK’s largest real estate platform Rightmove. REA has a footprint in the US and Asia, but this would give them a presence in Europe.
  
  

• Australian ETF provider Betashares is following the lead of its American peer Vanguard and is directly entering the superannuation industry as it completes an acquisition of Bendigo Superannuation.
  
  

• Inflation in Turkey remains rampant. It hit a recent peak in May, at an annual rate of 75.5%, and is now falling, reaching 62% in July and an expected 53% in August. Interest rates are at 50% in an effort to bring prices back under control.
  
  

• Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the street urging the government to negotiate a ceasefire that would secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. The mayor of Tel Aviv has said that city workers would join a general strike called by the trade union Histadrut.
  
  

• Meanwhile, health workers in Gaza have begun to vaccinate children against polio with an aim of vaccinating 640,000 children under the age of 10 during the 3 day humanitarian pause.
  
  

• The Russia-Ukraine war keeps escalating. Russia claims it has shot down 158 Ukrainian drones in Russian territory, including 2 over Moscow. Meanwhile, a Russian strike on Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, targeted civilian infrastructure and injured 41 people.

What the…?

Your local fast food restaurant might be getting a ChatGPT overhaul very soon. Yum Brands, owner of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has confirmed it is testing AI drive-thru lanes at 5 KFC’s in Australia. 

If anyone knows where, let us know, we need to give it a try. (Unrelated question for accountants: Is KFC tax deductible if we’re researching it for work purposes?)

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Wild winds blow up solar farm profits

If you live in a south-eastern state in Australia, you would have noticed the wild winds of the past few days. Across NSW, Victoria and Tasmania more than 100,000 houses lost power and sadly one person has lost their life.

It has also been an instructive moment for Australia’s energy industry. As the winds picked up, so did electricity generation at Australia’s wind farms and the national energy market was flooded with supply. Add to that a reduced demand as a sunny, cloud-free sky meant many households could rely on rooftop solar and wholesale electricity prices dropped to zero and actually dipped negative.

In NSW, almost 80% of solar farms turned off completely or curtailed their generation. And this isn’t the first time this has happened. On Saturday, 74% of solar farms curtailed generation and the Saturday before that, it was 70%.

This is creating a headache for the energy industry. The combination of the ongoing baseload power from coal power plants, more renewables being added to the grid and more rooftop solar taking demand out of the grid is creating more moments where prices drop close to zero.

This is creating questions about future investment in more renewables. As market watcher Paul McArdle asks in this article, “Who’d want to build a new large solar farm in the National Electricity Market?”

The solution lies in more storage, so renewable generators can store electricity when demand falls and then support the grid when prices spike. But that is a lot easier written than rolled out. And with Australia targeting 82% renewable energy by 2030, it needs to be rolled out soon.

Today’s sponsor is iShares by BlackRock

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