The Federal Court held that Brambles' maintenance of its FY17 earnings guidance constituted misleading or deceptive conduct from 16 November 2016 (for Underlying Profit) and from 21 December 2016 (for both sales revenue and Underlying Profit) because the company lacked reasonable grounds for those representations, given months of material underperformance against an aggressive budget in its key US Pooled business unit and unrealistic recovery projections. The Court also found Brambles contravened its continuous disclosure obligations under s 674(2) of the Corporations Act over the same periods by failing to immediately notify the ASX that it was likely it would not achieve its FY17 Guidance. The claims as at 18 August 2016 and 20 October 2016 were not established, and the claims regarding the FY19 ROCI Target and Medium-Term Targets were also not made out. The applicants established loss and damage through market-based causation using event study methodology.
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