Four ASX shares that have failed to follow the market higher today are listed below. Here's why they are falling:

Brickworks Limited (ASX: BKW)

The Brickworks share price is down over 2% to $27.02. This has been driven largely by the building products company's shares going ex-dividend this morning for its upcoming interim dividend. Last month, the company released its half-year results and declared a fully franked interim dividend of 24 cents per share. This was up 4% on the prior corresponding period, representing its 10th annual increase in a row. Brickworks shareholders can look forward to receiving this dividend at the very start of next month on 1 May.

Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd (ASX: FLT)

The Flight Centre share price is down 2% to $21.20. This appears to have been caused by a bearish broker note out of Goldman Sachs this morning. According to the note, its analysts have downgraded the travel agent's shares to a sell rating with a trimmed price target of $18.30. This implies potential downside of approximately 14% for investors from current levels. Goldman Sachs warned that "moderating corporate travel and intensifying SME competition could lead to margin disappointment."

Heartland Group Holdings Ltd (ASX: HGH)

The Heartland share price is down 5% to $1.06. This morning, this New Zealand based financial services company successfully completed the institutional component of a capital raising. Its placement and institutional entitlement offer raised gross proceeds of approximately NZ$131 million thanks to strong support from existing institutional shareholders and new institutional investors. It notes that eligible institutional shareholders elected to take up 98% of their entitlements. Heartland will now push ahead with its retail entitlement offer.

Spartan Resources Ltd (ASX: SPR)

The Spartan Resources share price is down over 10% to 60 cents. This follows the release of drilling results from the gold explorer's 100%-owned Dalgaranga Gold Project in the Murchison region of Western Australia. The assays include significant intercepts from exploration and resource extension drilling at the high-grade Never Never Gold Deposit, West Winds Gold Prospect, and the Sly Fox Gold Deposit. However, it seems that some investors were pricing in even stronger grades from the Never Never Gold Deposit. Nevertheless, Spartan's Chief Executive Officer, Simon Lawson, was "absolutely delighted to see a plus-20-metre down-hole intercept of typical Never Never-style mineralisation with visible gold logged in two areas."

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The Challenger share price opened at $7.45 and quickly rose to a high of $7.77, up 7% on yesterday's close. It is now trading at $7.63, up 5.1%.

Challenger share price rockets as dividend is raised

Here are the highlights for the six months ending 31 December 2022:

• Normalised net profit before tax (NPBT) of $250 million, up 5% on the prior corresponding period (pcp) of 1H22
• Normalised net profit after tax (NPAT) of $167 million, down 1% pcp
• Statutory NPAT of $123 million, down 56% due to largely unrealised investment market movements
• Total assets under management of $99.4 billion, down 14% pcp (reflecting the sale of Whitehelm Capital in 2H FY22 and the market sell-off in 2022)
• Interim dividend 12 cents per share fully franked, up 4% pcp.

What else happened in 1H FY23?

The company reported a record half-year for its retirement income business, Challenger Life, with $5.5 billion in sales, up 11% pcp.

This was driven by record annuity sales growth of 41%, with particularly strong retail growth of 89%.

The life book grew in value by $1 billion, reflecting 5.5% book growth in 1H FY23.

In its statement, the company said the life business is "benefitting from a more favourable macroeconomic environment, with higher interest rates helping to accelerate annuity sales and expand margins".

In October, Challenger announced the $36 million sale of Challenger Bank to Heartland Group
Holdings Ltd (ASX: HGH). Pleased investors pushed the Challenger share price 4.6% higher on the day.

The bank is well-capitalised and Challenger expects about $100 million to be returned upon completion.

What did management say?

Managing director and CEO, Nick Hamilton said:

Our strong performance over the half year again demonstrates the resilience we have embedded
through our diversified business model, enabling us to capture opportunities in all market
conditions.

We have positioned the business to benefit from rising interest rates, which have stimulated strong demand for retail annuities, particularly longer dated products.

What's next?

Challenger expects profit growth to continue and reaffirmed its FY23 full-year guidance. It's expecting normalised NPBT of between $485 million and $535 million.

Challenger share price snapshot

The Challenger share price is up 22% over the past 12 months.

This compares to a 3% bump for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO).

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At the time of writing, the financial services company's shares are fetching for $3.22, up 1.26% — an all-time high.

New facility to support growth

Investors are pushing Money3 shares into positive territory following the company's sights to fund growth in the New Zealand market.

According to the release, Money3 advised its subsidiary, Go Car Finance has secured a NZ$40 million facility with Heartland Bank.

Founded in 2011, Heartland Bank is a New Zealand-owned bank, and a subsidiary of ASX-listed Heartland Group Holdings Ltd (ASX: HGH).

In addition, Money3 stated that the 3-year facility is an addition to the existing facility with the Bank of New Zealand. The new line of credit, however, will replace the current mezzanine finance facility. It's also estimated that the cost of funding will be improved by more than 3% for the switch over.

Notably, Money3 has now secured facilities from four different banks. Two in Australia and also two in New Zealand. Furthermore, the group highlighted that it's strategic intent was to diversify its funding strategy to ensure adequate funding capacity.

Moving into FY22, Money3 will seek to grow its loan book to more than $800 million since securing funding partners.

Management commentary

Money3 CEO, Scott Baldwin touched on the company's progress, saying:

Over the past 24 months the Go Car team have executed perfectly on our growth strategy. Growing introduction partnerships across New Zealand and growing a quality loan book allowing us to introduce Heartland Bank to the Group.

The new facility along with the existing debt with the Bank of New Zealand will allow the group to further grow our loan book.

Heartland Bank CEO, Chris Flood added:

Heartland Bank is pleased to support Go Car Finance with funding for its New Zealand loan book. The funding aligns with Heartland Bank's strategy to diversify business lending and is consistent with our long history of providing motor vehicle finance in New Zealand.

Money3 share price summary

In the past year, the Money3 share price has been ascending on an upwards trajectory, gaining over 120%. The company's shares hit a record high today on the back of positive investor sentiment.

Based on the current share price, Money3 has a market capitalisation of roughly $671 million, with 207 million shares outstanding.

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Here were some of the highlights from the ASX 200:

Biggest movers and shakers

At the bottom of the ASX 200 performance table the Mineral Resources Limited (ASX: MIN) share price fell by 9.4%.

There were businesses that dropped heavily. The Breville Group Ltd (ASX: BRG) share price fell by 7.5%, the Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX: FMG) share price dropped 6.4%, the Whitehaven Coal Ltd (ASX: WHC) share price declined by 5.5% and the Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price dropped 5.4%.

There were some businesses that saw gains. The ASX 200 leader was the Orora Ltd (ASX: ORA) share price which climbed around 3%.

Netwealth Group Ltd (ASX: NWL)

Fintech business Netwealth announced today that it was making a strategic investment and partnership with Xeppo. Initially, Netwealth is buying a 25% stake, though it has an option to increase its investment to 50%.

The ASX 200 business said that Xeppo specialises in connecting, matching and reconciling data from a wide range of sources to support the wealth management, accounting and mortgage industries.

Netwealth said that the investment, although not initially financially material, will enable and accelerate a number of key initiatives Netwealth has previously announced and is expected to create a unique and market-leading proposition for multi-disciplinary and integrates wealth practices.

Matt Heine, joint managing director of Netwealth, said: "A key element of Netwealth's strategy is to expand and enrich the data which underpins our current and future technology and which sits at the core of our 'whole of wealth' and client portal offering.

"From our recent research, we found that advice firms on average use between 12 and 15 technology systems in their business, all of which have different data models, significant data discrepancies and often overlap from a features perspective. For example, the Netwealth platform captures customer details as does an advice firm's CRM, planning software, fact find and client portal.

"Working closely with Xeppo we can solve this challenge and enable systems to better connect and integrate with each other driving business efficiency and great client experiences."

Heartland Group Holdings Ltd (ASX: HGH)

Heartland announced its FY20 result today.

It said that it generated net profit after tax (NPAT) of $72 million. It also said it made adjusted NPAT of $78.9 million (after removing the economic overlay of (pre-tax) $9.6 million) which was up 7.2%.

Its gross finance receivables was $4.6 billion, up 4.9%. The financial business said that its net interest margin (NIM) was 4.33%, flat compared to FY19. Net operating income increased by 13.2% to $235.3 million.

It declared a final dividend of 2.5 cents per share, taking the full year dividend to 7 cents per share. However, that was a reduction of 3 cents per share due to the restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

In FY21 the company is expecting its net profit after tax for FY21 to be in the range of $83 million to $85 million.

Splitit Ltd (ASX: SPT)

Buy now, pay later business Splitit announced that it is forming a partnership with QuickFee Ltd (ASX: QFE). It will see 'advice now, pay later' interest-free instalments launched for accounting firms and law firms.

No applications are required as no new credit is being offered to clients. Splitit will be integrated directly into Quickfee's payments portal. This service will initially be available to more than 1,000 accounting and law firms already using Quickfee.

Quickfee sees this as an opportunity because it expands its customer base to include smaller firms that typically fall outside of its credit risk framework. Advice businesses' clients will be able to more easily access legal, accounting and financial advice.

Splitit said it was not able to determine how material this partnership will be.

The Splitit share price finished flat today.

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What does Heartland do?

Heartland is a New Zealand registered bank with operations in New Zealand and Australia. Heartland services small- to-medium sized businesses, the rural industry and individuals with a full range of finance, investment, banking and lending solutions. It is listed on the ASX 300 with a current market capitalisation of $866 million.

What did Heartland Group announce?

Heartland achieved a net profit after tax (NPAT) of $39.9 million for first half of FY20, an increase of 20.4% on the prior corresponding period (pcp).

Gross finance receivables came in at $4.6 billion, up $177 million, which was an 8% annualised growth since June 2019. Return on equity was 11.7%, up 165 basis points (bps) and net interest margin of 4.72% was flat on the 6 months to 30 June 2019 (2H2019) and 5 bps down compared on pcp.

Heartland's cost-to-income ratio (CTI) was 46.0%, up 3.5% on pcp. After allowing for changes in the accounting treatment and one-off impacts, the underlying CTI was 43.3, up 4.3% as a result of significant investments.

A 32% ($4.3 million) lower impairment expense reflected significant efforts to enhance collections processes and discipline.

Heartland declared a fully imputed 2020 interim dividend of 4.5 cents per share (cps), an increase of 1.0 cps from 1H2019. The resulting gross dividend yield was 8.3%

Heartland commented that significant progress had been made on implementing Heartland's workplan to address improvements across conduct and culture. It also reported that 47% of employees were aged 35 years and under and 35 interns joined Heartland Bank's Manawa Ako internship program.

FY20 outlook and guidance

Heartland commented that asset growth from Heartland's core lending activities is expected to continue in the second half of FY2020, particularly in Australia and New Zealand reverse mortgages and small business lending.

Investment will continue, specifically in marketing, to continue building awareness of reverse mortgages (in Australia and New Zealand) and its product O4B, as well as in new areas of opportunity.

Heartland anticipated that some of these costs to be one-off and will contribute to growth beyond FY2020.

It expects further diversification of funding, particularly in Australia, to support growth. Looking ahead to the rest of FY2020, Heartland said that it will continue its focus on evaluating its overall environment, social and governance (ESG) strategy and the ways in which it can continue to reduce its environmental impact.

Heartland further commented that the underlying balance sheet growth supports a result in line with the original NPAT forecast in the range of $77 million to $80 million.

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