Top 10 at 11: Lithium takeover and antimony acrimony are making today's news

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.

Briefly, here’s what’s been happening already this morning: Local markets opened lower, in line with where the ASX 200 Futures has been pointing all morning. Gold stocks took an early lead, after the precious metal topped US$2,500/oz for the first time ever, but Consumer Staples is dragging early – which could be because it’s Monday morning, and honestly if it’s feeling like I am today, I’m amazed it turned up for work at all.

WINNERS

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

Code	Description	Last	%	Volume	MktCap
VPR	Voltgroupltd	0.002	100.0	1,290,000	$10,716,208
ATH	Alterity Therap Ltd	0.004	33.3	250,000	$15,961,008
EXL	Elixinol Wellness	0.004	33.3	500,000	$3,963,547
CHR	Charger Metals	0.089	30.9	371,959	$5,264,577
PUR	Pursuit Minerals	0.0025	25.0	5,077,444	$7,270,800
AVE	Avecho Biotech Ltd	0.003	20.0	916,666	$7,923,243
BXN	Bioxyne Ltd	0.006	20.0	166,666	$10,233,227
LRV	Larvottoresources	0.215	19.4	6,667,906	$55,431,803
NVA	Nova Minerals Ltd	0.155	19.2	133,490	$31,662,395
SPX	Spenda Limited	0.0095	18.8	418,493	$34,595,662

Charger Metals (ASX:CHR) was rising on Monday after releasing a strategic update regarding its Bynoe Lithium Project in the Northern Territory, as well as merger and acquisition discussions at the corporate level. The headline news from the update is an unsolicited non-binding, conditional, indicative offer from Core Lithium for 100% of Charger, for scrip consideration coming in at around 0.9 Core shares per Charger share – which valued Charger at $0.084 per share or $6.5 million.

Larvotto Resources (ASX:LRV) was up after providing the market with an explanation of why its price has been soaring recently. The short version is this: Larvotto acquired Australia’s largest antimony deposit at the Hillgrove project in New South Wales in December 2023. Since then, China has slapped export controls on antimony, which has driven the price up 2x to about US$23,000 – leaving Larvotto in the driver’s seat as a global supplier of the critical mineral.

Nova Minerals (ASX:NVA) is up this morning, but that’s alongside news that CEO Christopher Gerteisen has been invited to present at the Emerging Growth Company Conference on 21 August 2024 – which is fantastic news for Christopher and Nova, but unlikely to be the reason behind Nova’s jump this morning.

Spenda (ASX:SPX) was climbing Monday morning on news that acquiree company, Limepay, has executed an agreement to process Lessn’s entire payments volumes, currently about $50 million per annum, using Limepay’s white labelled payment widget product, to enable payment services on Lessn’s platform.

LAGGARDS

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

Code	Company	Price	%	Volume	Market Cap
SI6	SI6 Metals Limited	0.001	-33.3	260,330	$3,553,289
SIT	Site Group Int Ltd	0.002	-33.3	1,364,659	$7,807,471
WML	Woomera Mining Ltd	0.002	-33.3	50,000	$4,554,417
1TT	Thrive Tribe Tech	0.002	-20.0	370,522	$1,529,054
ECT	Env Clean Tech Ltd.	0.002	-20.0	401,008	$7,929,526
A2M	The A2 Milk Company	5.8	-17.3	4,609,946	$5,067,773,004
ADD	Adavale Resource Ltd	0.0025	-16.7	181,332	$3,634,296
CTN	Catalina Resources	0.0025	-16.7	774,884	$3,715,461
ZLD	Zelira Therapeutics	0.67	-16.3	4,543	$9,077,724
HCT	Holista CollTech Ltd	0.011	-15.4	333,579	$3,624,401