Top 10 at 11: Half-year numbers speak for themselves as reporting season marches on

Good morning, and welcome to Stockhead’s Top 10 at shortly-before-11-ish, which is meant to highlight the best (and sometimes worst) performing ASX stocks in morning trade using live data, to provide a short, sharp update to help frame the trading day by showing the biggest movers in percentage terms that have made announcements.

The market opens at 10am (eastern time) and the data is taken at 10:15am, once every ASX stock has started trading – for better or worse – and then I do my best to make sense of who’s moving where and why it might be happening.

The ASX 200 benchmark is off to a solid +0.6% start this morning, thanks in no small part to a massive bump for the InfoTech sector, and that’s mostly because Block Inc has gone ballistic, up +15.5% in the opening minutes in what is surely an unsustainable attempt to escape Earth’s gravitational pull and drift aimlessly off into the deep, dark void of interstellar space where there’s nobody around to see you scratch yourself somewhere intimate whenever you want to, and they only possible hazard is the likelihood of being run over by that Tesla Elon Musk launched on his rocket ship ages ago, because those electric cars are very quiet, but in space you’ll never know it’s there until it’s gotcha.

Anyway… here’s what’s been happening since the doors were opened this morning…

WINNERS

Stocks highlighted in yellow have made market-moving announcements (click headings to sort).

Revolver Resources (ASX:RRR) was letting off a few celebratory rounds into the air this morning, on news that the Queensland government has delivered a $1.3 million grant to the company, as part of its Critical Minerals and Battery Technology Fund to fast-track key technical and design workstreams on its Dianne copper mine project.

Metarock (ASX:MYE) is worth noting because it was making some substantial gains this morning, but hasn’t said anything to the markets that might explain why, so it’s a spooky spooky mystery that will eventually end up having a super-mundane explanation, so whatever.

Apiam Animal Health (ASX:AHX) delivered a solid 1HFY24 report card Friday morning, claiming revenue is up 11.4% to more than $104 million for the period, with a gross profit of $70 million and change, up 15.5% on pcp.

LBT Innovations (ASX:LBT) was also on the rise Friday morning, after the company announced that the group’s net loss for the Half Year was $1.83 million, which is an improvement on the $2.89 million it lost in the previous comparable period.

LOSERS

Stocks highlighted in yellow have made market-moving announcements (click headings to sort).

American Rare Earths (ASX:ARR) has fallen this morning after revealing it has received firm commitments via an institutional placement to raise gross proceeds of A$13.5 million at an issue price of A$0.30 per share, well below this morning’s $0.38 open.

The Agency Group Australia (ASX:AU1) has reported that it sold 3,115 properties, which was a 9.4% increase on pcp, delivering revenue of $43.9 million which helped the company reach an underlying EBITDA for the 1H FY24 period of +$0.56 million, up from the 1H FY23’s -$0.95 million.

Laserbond (ASX:LBL) has dropped its half-year report this morning, disappointing the market with a rise in revenue but an overall drop in NPAT to $1,689,000, well below the previous years’ result of $2,000,000 on the nose.