Australian Shares Recommendations

Citigroup Investment Research target price for Woodside Petroleum Ltd is $47.00 (increasing from $46.00 due to the strong result).

A strong result delivered on the 16th February 2006 picking up market share everywhere including New Zealand. AMP is capturing 18% market share of the ever increasing superannuation pool. MRE (Macquarie Research Equities) has upgraded their earnings forecasts for the company by 7% in 06, 4% in 07, and 2% in 08. MRE have also upgraded their 12 month price target to $9.06. MRE believe the stock represents good value at these levels with an attractive yield. A 40cps capital return was announced and another flagged for FY07.

Shares in BHP Billiton (BHP) have surged over 3% in morning trading after the world’s largest miner announced a record: BHP this morning announced a bumper interim profit - the biggest interim profit in Australian corporate history at $US4.4 billion ($5.9 billion). BHP also announced that it will return US$2 billion back to shareholders in the mext 18 months. UBS has a BUY 2 recommendation on BHP as does Macquarie Research Equities (MRE) was an Outperform rating with a 12 month price target of $26.23. MRE warns that further digestion of the BHP results may disappoint a few investors at the operating level - but MRE reckons that the strength and duration of the current cycle remain unchanged.

BHP Billiton Ltd is set to announce a record result tomorrow. UBS has a Buy 2 recommendation with a target of $32 while MRE has an outperform recommendation with a 12 month target of $26.23. Look at your charts!

The recent moves in base metal prices have taken the spot prices well above Macquarie Research Equities (MRE) previous annual forecasts for 2006. As a result MRE has decided to strongly raise many base metal price forecasts for 2006-2007. In turn MRE has a preference for for Alumina (AWC) as a high quality, leveraged aluminium play and Oxiana (OXR) and Kagara Zinc (KZL) for copper and zinc exposure.

News Corporation was begun to shoulder out "old media" in a comprehensive way with Internet acquisitions and growth. UBS has reported strong performances at Cable and Sky Italia were enough to temper a tough time for Film and weakness in Newspapers. Furthermore, revenues are up 233%: US$160m of the US$6.67bn of revenue was contributed by BSkyB and DTV. Internet acquisitions have proven timely, with momentum building in MySpace as 200,000 new registrations per day are being accepted.

UBS currently has a Neutral 1 rating for this company's stock which is currently trading around $17.07 with a target of $19.06. Westfield Group (WDC) is due to report their full year result on Monday 20th February 2006. UBS believes that the market expects management to also announce their revised dividend policy.UBS values WDC at $18.23 on a 1yr DCF price target unchanged with their $18.61 DCF fair value is unchanged. Have a look at your charts...

The broker ABN Amro has placed short-term trading Sell recommendations on both Commonwealth Bank (CBA) but on a bittersweet note: still rates the stock as a long term hold. ABN Amro reckons that the short-term risk/reward has now moved to the negative side as the stock is trading at a significant premium to its valuation of $39.59. Perhaps a shorting opportunity for active traders?

Brokers Credit Suisse and Aspect Huntley have supported a recent share price fall by Macquarie Bank (MBL) buy initiating a buy recommendation. Although shares in MBL fell to around $60 there is strong support by the brokers for this large conglomerate. Aspect Huntley notes that the Macquarie Bank stock price tends to dip down every year for the first few months. And if you believe this pattern then now would be the time to pile buy according to the broker.

UBS has a BUY 2 target on RIO head at $90. Earnings are in line with investor and market sentiment. It was a goos overall result with the large capital management program announced outweighing some disappointment that the ordinary dividend was not increased further. Underlying profit of US$4,955m was 1.4% below our expectations. Underlying profit was 0.7% above consensus expectations of US$4,921m. Final dividend per share (DPS) of US41.5cps (centes per share). RIO also announced a special dividend of 110cps and increased their planned buyback programme to US$2.5bn over two years, incl.