Stuart Kelly, Bloomberg/Australia

(Bloomberg) — ABC Learning Centres Ltd., the world’s biggest publicly traded owner of child-care centers, cut its profit forecast for 2008 because a rise in the Australian dollar reduced the value of sales abroad….

ABC in August posted an 88 percent gain in second-half net income to A$81.5 million for the six months ended June 30. The company, which gets about 45 percent of sales overseas, spent more than $700 million last year buying child-care centers in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. to tap rising demand for daycare services….