Company announcements, releases, reports and appendix forms given to the ASX are lodged on-line through the Market Announcements Office website at www.asxonline.com
Lodgement Times
Announcements can be lodged at any time but are only up-loaded on to the ASX database on business days between the hours of 8:30am to 7:30pm Sydney time – with the closing time extended to 8:30pm during daylight saving.
Lodgement Process
The MAO website explains how to lodge as follows:
To elodge an announcement to ASX, logon using your username and password, select “Announcements” button at the top of the page. A drop down menu will appear with the following choices available:
eLodge Announcements
Status of Announcements
Click on each of these headings to view that page.
By selecting “eLodge Announcements”, a template will appear. Only one file can be elodged to ASX at any one time. Please see sections below for instructions on attachments/merging files. All announcements must be in pdf format, no larger than 20Mb in size and charts, photos, graphs, etc should be in 200 or 300 DPI. Please do not scan documents to convert into pdf, as transmission may be unsuccessful.
In the “Insert Announcement” box, use the “Browse” button to find your announcement within your PC’s directory. By clicking on it twice, the file will appear in the “Insert Announcement” field. You can preview the document in this field to ensure you have the right document, simply by clicking on “Preview Announcement”.
In the “Announcement Title” field, enter an appropriate title for the announcement or select a standard title from the dropdown list. The standard title can be modified as required. ASX recommends use of meaningful headlines and avoidance of generic titles such as ‘ASX Announcement’ or ‘Media Release’
The title is limited to 60 characters and will be truncated if it exceeds this limit. The title will not be changed by the Market Announcements Office (“MAO”) without prior consultation with the sender.
Due to technical reasons, the symbols # & ; “ ® [ ] + \ cannot be used in the ‘Announcement Title’ field. If they are entered, transmission will fail and a red error message will appear at the bottom of your ‘Send’ page explaining the error.
ASX Code is pre-populated. Please ensure that the ASX code shown is appropriate for the announcement being elodged with ASX.
Contact Name and telephone number are also pre-populated. These are the contact details ASX will use should we need to contact you for any reason regarding the announcement being elodged.
To elodge an announcement, you need to enter the Company PIN. It is important that the Company PIN be kept by only those individuals in your company authorised to elodge an announcement. After entering the Company PIN, click on “Send”. Notification of receipt of your announcement will be :
- Under the “Send” button a message will appear advising whether your elodgement has been successful. If unsuccessful, please try again or contact the ASX Market Announcements Office on 1800 021 965 (or +61 2 9227 0334).
- Confirmation of announcement being released to the market will be advised by:
a. the “Status of Announcement” page will provide a fast means of advising that the announcement has been released to the market, as the page is automatically updated every 45 seconds.
b. Although your announcement has been elodged, a faxed confirmation of the announcements release will be sent
c. An email message advising of the announcements release. Email messages are sent to the recipient list, as per the Company Secretary’s Dept section under “Your Details”.
*If your message continues to be unsuccessful, we suggest that you fax the announcement to ASX using the following fax numbers.
- For companies located within Australia – 1300 135 638
For companies located within New Zealand – 0800 449 707
- For companies located elsewhere overseas – 61 2 9778 0999 or 61 2 9347 0005
Please note that ASX will not accept any announcements that are handwritten nor hand delivered to ASX Offices. It is mandatory for announcements to be elodged to ASX using ASX Online. (Refer Guidance Note 14 – Market Announcements Platform – for more details).
Withdrawal or Deletion of a Pending Announcement
Following lodgement of an announcement, if there is a need for it to be withdrawn or cancelled (eg, if the wrong version is accidentally lodged, or an error in the wording is noticed) – before it is released – then the lodger should immediately phone the ASX at one of the above numbers.
However, if the lodgement/realisation of error is ‘out-of-hours’ (from the timeframe noted above) then a request for deletion of an announcement awaiting processing should be sent by email to the mailbox [email protected].
Access to ‘asxonline’
Access to the asxonline website requires:
USER ID – set initially; no programmed/periodic change, but can be done at any time if necessary (by re-logging in as a new user, then scrapping the old user)
PASSWORD – must be changed at least every 45 days
COMPANY PIN – must be changed at least every 90 days
ASX Trading Times
Announcements lodged between the times stated above are released to the market as soon as possible after lodging, regardless of whether or not the market is trading.
ASX trading hours are 10:00am ~ 4:00pm Sydney time.
*Originally written by Company Secretary, an Australian virtual company secretary service.