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From companies that generated little more cash than the corner shop, to those with vast international property portfolios, the traditional last-day stragglers of reporting season came bearing gifts — mostly of red ink.

For every $1 of profit reported, more than $4 were wiped off, with the result that net losses announced on the day topped $3.75 billion after allowing for the $1 billion or so of profits made by the minority. Close to 300 companies — almost 15 per cent of the total listed on the Australian Securities Exchange — deluged the exchange's staff with either their annual or six-month results for the period to June 30 yesterday.

They sought to beat the deadline, which demands they report within two months of balance date. Those that did not make the cut last night, or at least send their numbers in overnight, will most likely find trading in their shares suspended before the market opens this morning.

As usual, the avalanche of results did not really begin until late afternoon.

Fewer than 50 companies reported between breakfast and lunch yesterday, and then 120 deluged the ASX with their reports in the two hours to 6pm and half as many again by the close just after 7.30pm. And, also per tradition, the ratio of loss-making companies to those that made a profit rose as the day went on. Earlier, one in every four companies was in the black, but by 7pm that was down to perhaps one in 20.

The ignominious prize for the biggest loser seemed to settle on the shoulders of industrial property investor the ING Industrial Fund, which finished the year to June 30 with a loss of more than $1.17 billion after management slashed the value of its local and overseas property portfolio to more realistic values. It secured a $1.6 billion restructuring of its finances after June 30.

ING now has until December 2011 to reduce the debt by $375 million. Melbourne-based paper distributor PaperlinX was a close second after taking on the chin the cost of selling, to appease its bankers, most of its paper manufacturing to Japanese giant Nippon Paper for less than it carried the assets on its balance sheet.

Its bottom-line loss of almost $800 million was not helped by the punitive charges heaped on it by bankers and their advisers for, firstly, having breached the terms of its borrowings and, secondly, those same banks waiving their right to act on the breaches.

PaperlinX shareholders, by contrast, will go without a dividend this year. Among those that took heavy damage was Keybridge Capital, which had $151 million of impairment write-downs on its investment portfolio, producing a bottom-line loss of $129 million for the year. The troubled Warrnambool Cheese & Butter Factory, which has replaced its chief executive and most of its board, suffered a near $45 million downturn in performance to a $20 million loss for the year.

The dividend, which was 16¢ a share last year, has been axed. And there were some surprising profits — like Quest Investments, which slipped into the red in the first half, but reported a $3.9 million profit for the full year thanks to deciding that the 43 per cent stake in had taken in a Chinese seafood business was worth far more than what it paid. Quest's 31 per cent shareholder, Murchison Holdings, also benefited from the valuation, its profit rising more than 20 per cent to $1.91 million.

Guinness Peat Group posted a half-year loss of £24 million ($A46.33 million), partly due to its share of losses from investments in Coats and Capral. Telephony group Freshtel Holdings not only increased its losses to more than $10 million, and asked its chief executive Rhonda O'Donnell to fall on her sword after completing a restructuring, but is considering delisting to conserve cash.

And the luckless Clive Peeters retailing group declared itself $9 million in the hole after accounting for the costs of misappropriated millions — although it would still have lost $6.5 million before tax without the embarrassing confession of an alleged $20 million fraud.