Staff writersUpdated August 27, 2026 — 6:35am,first published 5:26amThe Australian sharemarket is set for a flat open on yet another busy earnings season day, with Qantas and Wesfarmers among those having reported their results before the start of trading.ASX futures slipped 4 points to 9068 as of 7.59am AEST. The ASX lost 0.4 per cent on Wednesday as shock inflation figures put another interest rate hike on the table. Wall Street drifted through a quiet session overnight after a report said US inflation was also a bit worse than economists expected.Wall Street didn’t provide a lot of direction for the ASX.BloombergQantas said before the start of trading its profits have taken a hit as rising fuel costs outpaced the benefit of sustained demand for international travel. The airline posted a 13.8 per cent fall in underlying pre-tax profit of $330 million in the year to June. Underlying pre-tax profit is $2.06 billion, down from $2.39 billion in 2025. The company said its fuel bill jumped by over $600 million as it was hit hard by the ramifications of the Middle East conflict.Retail conglomerate Wesfarmers saw its sales rise 3.4 per cent to $47.3 billion, and net profits excluding significant items grow by 8.3 per cent to $2.9 billion. Bunnings showed the biggest sales growth, up 4.1 per cent to $20.4 billion; Kmart sales grew by 2.8 per cent to $11.75 billion; and Officeworks gained 3.7 per cent to $3.7 billion. The company said Bunnings boss Mike Schneider will retire in February next year, with chief customer officer Rachel McVitty set to take over the role.Healthcare giant Sigma said its sales jumped 15.5 per cent to $10.8 billion and profits climbed 22.3 per cent to $732.2 million in its first results after taking over the Chemist Warehouse pharmacy chain. Business was boosted by demand for weightloss drugs, which will also help lift sales by double digits again in the current year, the company said.Mayne Pharma said underlying earnings had slumped 27 per cent to $34.2 million in the year to June as its management was distracted by the $672 million takeover bid by US private-equity backed drugmaker Cosette, which was eventually blocked by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on national interest grounds. “The Cosette transaction process and subsequent legal matters placed real demands on management focus and caused general disruption,” chief executive Aaron Gray said.On Wall Street overnight, yields in the bond market, the focus of Wall Street’s biggest recent worries, edged higher following America’s inflation data, weighing on sentiment.The S&P 500 edged down by less than 0.1 per cent and remains near its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 113 points, or 0.2 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1 per cent.Nvidia, the chipmaker at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom, delivered a sales forecast that met expectations. Its shares were up 4.3 per cent in after-hours trade.Revenue in the current period will be $US108 billion, plus or minus 2 per cent, the company said in a statement. Though analysts had forecast $US105.2 billion on average, some projections exceeded $US110 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Stocks made relatively few big moves ahead of the earnings report from Nvidia, which arrived after trading ended for the day. Expectations were high once again for the chip giant, whose tremendous growth in profit because of the artificial-intelligence boom has made it the largest stock by value in the US market.Strong profit growth across US companies broadly has been the main reason the US stock market has run to records this year.Abercrombie & Fitch leaped 35.7 per cent after reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer also raised its forecast for earnings over the full year and for how much cash it will send to investors by buying back shares of its own stock.On the losing end of Wall Street was Intuit, even though the company behind TurboTax, Credit Karma and QuickBooks topped analysts’ profit expectations in the latest quarter. It fell 3.2 per cent after giving a forecast for profit growth of nearly 25 per cent in its upcoming fiscal year, which fell short of analysts’ expectations.Outside of earnings reports, Meta Platforms added 1.1 per cent after agreeing to pay up to $US18 billion ($24 billion) and to add child-safety measures to Facebook and Instagram to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by states across the country.In the bond market, US Treasury yields ticked higher to 4.65 per cent from 4.64 per cent late on Tuesday following updates on inflation and economic growth. Yields had shot upward through the American summer on worries about high inflation and the US government’s growing and gargantuan debt, among other factors. They got so high that the US Treasury Department made a surprise announcement last week to intervene in the bond market, though analysts say its effect could be limited.The latest update on inflation released overnight said that the measure the Federal Reserve has historically preferred to use sat at 3.7 per cent last month. That was the same rate of inflation as in June and slightly worse than the 3.6 per cent that economists expected, according to FactSet. It remains far worse than the 2 per cent goal the Fed has set.Growth in spending by US consumers, which is the main engine of the economy, slowed at the same time. The overall economy grew at a 1.5 per cent annual pace in the spring, according to a revised estimate of its performance, the same amount as the government’s first estimate.Traders didn’t change their forecasts much for what the Federal Reserve will do with its main interest rate in the short term, and they are betting on a nearly three-in-four chance the Fed will hike the federal funds rate at least once by the end of the year, according to data from CME Group.One of the factors that’s worsened inflation this year is higher oil prices, though they’ve come down recently.The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, continued to swing Wednesday on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again. It dropped as low as $US84.56 before settling at $US86.94. That’s down 0.4 per cent from the day before and from $US94 at the end of last week.In other international markets, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1 per cent, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.6 per cent for two of the bigger moves.From our partners