Austco Healthcare, Aussie Broadband rise after upping their guidance for FY21

Medtech Austco Healthcare (ASX:AHC) and telco Aussie Broadband (ASX:ABB) rose today after shareholders liked the taste of what they could expect come reporting season.

Austco Healthcare provides technology for healthcare including nurse call systems and enterprise reporting and analytics tools.

The company is experiencing higher growth in the second half of the financial year than the first and is now expecting a $2.8-$3.3 million net profit after tax. This compares well to FY20 in which it made a $2.5 million profit.

Austco Healthcare credited demand for its software for the rise. It currently has its largest book of confirmed orders at $17.1 million.

While it admitted recently re-imposed COVID-19 restrictions in Melbourne and Singapore could threaten this result it was confident revenues would grow when such restrictions were lifted.

The company was one of the biggest winners in early trade rising as high as 13.5 cents – a 40 per cent premium to yesterday’s closing price.

Austco Healthcare (ASX:AHC) share price chart

Aussie Broadband

The high-flying telco also gave its guidance. While it wasn’t all positive it gave an upgrade to its earnings before interest, tax and depreciation.

Excluding IPO costs, Aussie Broadband tips earnings between $17 million and $20 million. This is well up from the $12.3 million the company forecasted in its prospectus.

As for revenues, it narrowed the guidance from $345m to $355m tipped earlier this year to somewhere between $349-$351 million.

Aussie Broadband reported that the implementation of its white label product and its fibre rollout is going as planned. The company will have 28 to 31 POIs and data centre sites connected by the end of the financial year.

However it noted that residential connections were affected by increased market competition and NBN connection issues and would only be 360-364,000 compared to 380-410,000 tipped a few months earlier.

Nonetheless, business customer connections remained on track to achieve the previous guidance range.

The company also commented about Victoria’s latest lockdown, noting that past lockdowns increased network utilisation which increased costs. However, so long as it only lasted seven days the company anticipated no further impacts.

Aussie Broadband shares rose like Austco Healthcare, by as much as 11 per cent in early trade.