Issue #24 | The Week of Exits

ASX - Top 3 Winners & Losers
Deals Down Under - TPG's $2bn Payday
Global Markets - Starmer Quits
Other News - Aussie Politics, Sport and Culture

The S&P/ASX 200 finished the week down 0.7 per cent. Gold logged a fourth straight weekly loss, though a late rebound above US$4000 an ounce gave miners a lift into the close. Easing inflation data out of the United States took some pressure off rate expectations after a tougher Fed meeting the week before. Investors also rotated hard into defensives like utilities and consumer staples as a fresh round of profit warnings hit other parts of the market. Tech shares dragged too, after a sell-off across Asian chip stocks and reports OpenAI (parent company of ChatGPT) could delay its public listing.

This week’s best performers

Pro Medicus Limited (ASX:PME) +9.31%

Pro Medicus, whose software helps hospitals view and store medical scans, extended its month-long rally this week, up around 40 per cent since late May. The push came from a binding agreement with Echo IQ, an AI cardiology business that flags heart failure risk from imaging. Pro Medicus will invest $10 million through convertible notes, with another $10 million on FDA clearance, plus a reseller deal for Echo IQ's tools in the US. CEO Sam Hupert called it another plug-in rather than something built in-house.

Ramsay Health Care Limited (ASX:RHC) +9.14%

Ramsay's rally kept rolling this week, with the stock up 23 per cent in 2026 against a flat ASX 200, after Perpetual portfolio manager Nathan Hughes called it one of the most undervalued names on the index. His case leans on the planned demerger of European arm Ramsay Santé, letting the company focus on lifting how efficiently its Australian hospitals run, plus a strong balance sheet and a large pile of unused franking credits that could eventually fund capital returns.

SGH Limited (ASX:SGH) +7.44%

SGH, a diversified industrial group whose businesses span heavy machinery, building products and energy, jumped this week after announcing an on-market share buy-back of up to A$500 million, roughly 2.8 per cent of shares on issue, set to begin alongside its FY26 results in August. Buy-backs tend to attract investors because they signal management thinks its own stock is undervalued, choosing to spend cash buying shares rather than on anything else.

This week’s worst performers

Judo Capital (ASX:JDO) -40.74%

Judo Capital had the worst trading day in its history on Thursday, crashing as much as 46 per cent after slashing both its FY26 and FY27 profit guidance. The bank blamed provisions (money set aside to cover loans it doesn't expect to get repaid) against three bad loans across different sectors, with the downgrade extending into next year too, signalling the problem runs deeper than a one-off. The reaction wiped out roughly $500 million in market value. 

Predictive Discovery Limited (ASX:PDI) -23.81%

Predictive Discovery, the explorer behind the Bankan gold project in Guinea, fell sharply this week with no company-specific news behind it. As a pre-production explorer with no revenue of its own, its share price moves almost entirely on sentiment toward gold, not anything it's actually doing day to day. After a strong run, investors started taking profits this week, the kind of swing that comes with holding a stock this volatile.

Elevra Lithium Limited (ASX:ELV) -19.24%

Elevra Lithium, the Quebec hard-rock lithium producer, gave back some of its enormous 2026 gains as battery metals sentiment weakened this week, with lithium stocks broadly under pressure rather than anything specific to the company. It's still up more than 400 per cent over the past year on the back of its North American Lithium project, making it one of the best performing stocks on the ASX this year.

Five years ago, Cocobella was just a coconut water brand sitting inside Coca-Cola Amatil's portfolio. This week it became the centrepiece of Danone's biggest Australian play yet, a deal worth close to $2 billion that hands TPG Capital a return of five to six times its money.

TPG bought Made Group from Coca-Cola and its founders in 2021, when the business was earning about $22.6 million. The group, which includes popular Aussie brands like Cocobella, Rokeby and Impressed, now earns roughly $110 million, with sales topping $490 million this financial year. Much of that growth has come from Rokeby, whose protein drinks have ridden Australia's 'protein obsession', with demand for high-protein food and drinks climbing across the board.

This isn't just a one-off purchase, though. Danone's CFO Juergen Esser said the company has big plans for Australia and New Zealand, calling Made a springboard for further regional deals. Danone is separately buying out the remaining 49 per cent of its Saputo yoghurt joint venture in the same week, consolidating control of its other major local asset.

Danone's regional push is driven by global demand for high-protein food, which has been climbing for years on broader health and fitness habits, and the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, with users trying to preserve muscle while losing weight, is now adding even more to it. Competition is intensifying because of it too, including against rivals like Chobani in the US, where Danone has struggled to keep pace.

Made's co-founders will sell out entirely, while CEO Amanda Butler stays on. It's a textbook private equity exit – buy a steady earner, run it hard for five years, then sell to a strategic buyer for five to six times your money.

Keir Starmer is out as UK prime minister, the country's sixth leader in 10 years, with Andy Burnham on track to become the seventh. Starmer resigned June 22 and stays on as caretaker PM until nominations open July 9, with a new leader in place before parliament resumes September 1. Burnham is the clear favourite after rival Wes Streeting backed him instead of running.

The interesting part is what didn't move. The pound's real reaction came three days early, dropping from US$1.34 to US$1.32 when Burnham won his by-election on June 18, not on the resignation itself. UK government bonds, known as gilts, told the same story: the 10-year yield rose to 4.85 per cent before settling at 4.81 per cent. As Morningstar's Michael Field put it, the lack of reaction shows investors are “simply indifferent” to who's actually in the job.

Burnham's own history shows why. He once said the UK needed to stop being "in hock to the bond market", a comment that alone triggered a gilt sell-off last September. That's bond market discipline in action: when investors think a government will spend too freely, they demand higher returns to lend, pushing up borrowing costs until it backs off. Markets care more about who Burnham picks as chancellor (Britain's equivalent of treasurer), than about the new PM himself. Investors want someone cautious with spending, not someone who borrows too much and gets punished by bond markets for it.

For Australian investors, it's a live look at bond markets disciplining fiscal policy rather than voters, a useful contrast to the US, where one person's tariffs and Fed threats can move markets far more violently. It's also relevant given Australia's own negative gearing and capital gains tax changes land next year. Super funds holding UK assets are watching the pound too, since a weaker Pound shrinks the Australian-dollar value of those holdings even if nothing underlying has changed. The IMF expects UK growth of just 0.8 per cent, regardless of who's in charge. The real test isn't who becomes PM, it's whether Burnham's chancellor changes that math at all.

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