ASX 200 Live Today - Thursday, 6th August

Welcome to our live ASX coverage for Thursday, August 6. Expect a high volume of posts pre-market and more periodic updates throughout the day. We'll be wrapping the blog up around 2:00 pm AEST. Let us know how we can make it even better.

Reporting season is heating up and we've got you covered. Our reporting season calendar has over 250 stocks plus earnings and dividend estimates.

REA beats on FY26 earnings and lifts dividend 20%, but flags softer FY27 listings

[9:16 am] REA delivered core NPAT and EBITDA ahead of of market expectations on strong yield growth, though its FY27 outlook points to flat-to-lower listings amid a deteriorating demand backdrop.

• Revenue up 7% to $1.79bn, in line with ests

• Core EBITDA (ex-associates) up 12% to $1.09bn vs $1.06bn ests (3% beat)

• Core NPAT up 15% to $650.5m vs $637.3m ests (2% beat)

• Final DPS of $1.73 fully franked, with full-year dividend up 20% to $2.97 vs $2.95 Macquarie ests (1% beat)

• Residential revenue up 12% on 13% Buy yield growth and flat listings, better than the anticipated 1-3% decline

• FY27 new Buy listings guided flat to down low single-digits, with July down 2% and combined Sydney/Melbourne listings down 16%

• FY27 yield growth guided low double-digits, underpinned by an 8% Premiere+ price rise, with operating costs up mid single-digits ex-M&A

Key quotes:

• "More Australians trusted realestate.com.au for their property needs than ever before in FY26, with a record 12.7 million average monthly visitors."

• "Buy yield benefited from a 7% average Premiere+ price rise, growth in add-on products, higher subscription revenues and increased depth penetration."

Company page: REA Group (REA)

US government joins race for Twiggy's Yangibana rare earths stake

[9:08 am] The Trump administration's investment arm is among a dozen suitors circling Andrew Forrest's controlling stake in the WA rare earths project, the AFR reports.

• US Development Finance Corporation, Canada's Neo Performance Materials and ASX-listed Iluka are inside the BofA-run data room for Wyloo's 60% Yangibana holding

• At least 12 suitors are in the auction, with Forrest targeting a signed deal by year-end

• Yangibana is pitched as development ready with 20.9Mt reserves at 0.9% concentration and a 19-year life, spruiking a higher NdPr:TREO ratio than international peers

• Deal includes a Wyloo option to buy a further 10% from co-owner Hastings for around $20m

Source: AFR

Block beats on Q2 profit and lifts full-year guidance as Square GPV accelerates

[9:06 am] Block topped estimates across revenue and earnings, hitting record adjusted operating income and profitability while raising its FY26 outlook.

• Revenue up to $6.62bn vs $6.47bn ests (2% beat)

• Adjusted EPS of $1.02 vs $0.87 ests (17% beat), up 65% year-on-year

• Adjusted operating income of $864m vs $747.8m ests (16% beat)

• Square GPV up 13% year-on-year, with US growth accelerating to 10%, the strongest since Q2 2023, and international up 28%

• Cash App consumer lending origination up 59% year-on-year to $18.9bn, with primary banking actives up 17%

• FY26 EPS guidance lifted to $4.02 ex-items from $3.85 prior, ahead of $3.90 ests (3% beat), with operating income raised to $3.47bn from $3.34bn

Company page: Block (XYZ)

Alliance Aviation lifts pricing on revised Qantas wet lease deal, trims fleet

[9:02 am] Alliance has materially revised its Qantas wet lease contract, securing better pricing from FY27 while cutting committed aircraft and right-sizing its workforce.

• Revised deal delivers a meaningful pricing increase from 1 July 2026 plus a new annual escalation mechanism to better reflect future cost increases

• Committed fleet steps down from 30 to 23 aircraft over FY27 on reduced flying hours, freeing capital and opening alternative uses for the aircraft

• Alliance to right-size its workforce and operating model, starting a phased consultation process over coming months

• FY26 underlying PBT reaffirmed at the mid-point of prior $35-40m guidance, implying around $37.5m

• Principal commercial changes commence from FY27, with group-wide financial impact to be detailed at FY26 results on 25 August 2026

AQZ shares are down 77% in the past year, largely driven by a ~42% one-day selloff on 7-Nov-25 when the company announced a sharp downgrade to its FY26 guidance alongside the immediate resignation of founding managing director Scott McMillan and CFO Andrew Evans. Today's announcement marks quite a turnaround for the now ~$96 million market cap company.

Company page: Alliance Aviation Services (AQZ)

Glencore eyes ASX listing to tap Australia's $3.1tn pension pool for copper push

[9:03 am] Glencore's planned secondary listing aims to unlock mining-friendly institutional capital to fund copper growth and potentially smooth future M&A, though some managers are sceptical it will draw flows quickly.

• Listing targets Australia's $4.4tn pension pool, projected to nearly triple to $12.4tn by 2045, via CDIs with no capital raising or share transfer

• CEO Gary Nagle sees ASX 200 inclusion within 12 months, requiring around $1.5bn of local market cap, before qualifying for the ASX 100 at roughly $5.5bn

• Interest picked up after failed Rio Tinto merger talks, with the six-month standstill on those discussions now expired, though Nagle says the listing makes no difference to any potential deal

• Sceptics flag no franking credits, four work-related fatalities this year and thermal coal exposure as hurdles to superfund buying without a liquidity event

• Copper is the strategic driver, with Glencore targeting about 1.6Mt output by 2035 from 810,000-870,000t expected this year, after $4bn net capex in H1 alone

Source: Reuters

Gold and copper prices soar

[8:55 am] A massive overnight session for gold, with prices up 4.2% to US$4,249/oz, the highest since 18 June. This drove a very strong response for gold equities, with a barometer like the VanEck Gold Miners ETF up 7.3% overnight.

Gold daily price chart (Source: TradingView)

Copper prices also cruised to a fresh all-time high, up 1.8% to US$6.80/lb.

Copper daily price chart (Source: TradingView)

The Global X Copper Miners ETF rallied 3.2% overnight, but remains ~13% below its 29-Jan record high.

Sandisk smashes Q4 estimates on datacenter surge, unveils US$14bn buyback

[8:53 am] Sandisk closed FY26 with revenue up nearly fivefold year-on-year and margins expanding sharply, though its Q1 revenue guide landed below ests. The stock is down ~5.5% after hours.

• Revenue up 372% to US$8.97bn vs US$8.6bn ests (4% beat)

• Adjusted EPS of US$39.25 vs US$34.45 ests (14% beat), up 68% quarter-on-quarter

• Adjusted gross margin of 84.6% vs 81.5% ests, up 58.2ppt year-on-year

• Datacenter revenue up 103% quarter-on-quarter to US$2.98bn, with Edge up 392% year-on-year to US$5.43bn and Consumer down 5% year-on-year to US$556m

• Q1'27 revenue guided to US$10.3-10.8bn vs US$11.1bn ests (5% miss at midpoint), with EPS of US$44-46 broadly in line

• New US$14bn buyback authorisation lifts total remaining to US$15.5bn

Tariffs escalate as US and China trade fresh curbs across solar, tech and critical minerals

[8:47 am] A flurry of trade actions this week saw Washington move on polysilicon, transceivers and tungsten while Beijing retaliated with drone curbs and sanctions, straining a fragile truce ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting next month.

• Trump readies tariffs of at least 15% and minimum import prices on polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules, with Roth Capital anticipating a 25-35% tariff, sending First Solar down as much as 7.3% and T1 Energy down 13%

• FCC is drafting an order to ban Chinese optical transceivers, which made up 8.7% of China's shipments in June, hitting Zhongji Innolight down as much as 14% while US, European and Japanese rivals rallied

• US bans exports of tungsten scrap and battery black mass from later this month, requiring domestic sale, in a bid to secure critical minerals and cut China reliance

• China retaliates with case-by-case review on drone exports, leveraging DJI's roughly 70% share of the US commercial market, plus sanctions on six US entities

• Beijing frames its response as generally restrained but warns of further countermeasures if new US restrictions land

• Chinese suppliers control more than half the high-speed transceiver market, leaving cloud players few near-term alternatives and potentially softening the proposed FCC policy

Oil steadies as Iran and Oman edge toward Hormuz shipping deal

[8:45 am] Iran says a shipping agreement with Oman is in final drafting, raising hopes of reopening the Strait of Hormuz after a five-month war that has choked global energy supply.

• Iran's foreign ministry says a joint statement with Oman is in final review, with a deal possible if third parties do not obstruct the process

• Proposed arrangement would see ships enter the Gulf via an Iran-controlled route and exit through Omani waters, with security and environmental fees charged

• Deputy FM frames it as a temporary two-to-four month route, stressing it does not mean full reopening, which Iran ties to a change in US behaviour and lifting the port blockade

• Trump claims a US-Iran deal could land within 48 hours and flags denuclearisation as a second phase, though Tehran denies negotiating directly with Washington

• Attacks persist, with Houthis claiming a missile strike on a Saudi tanker in the Red Sea and a cargo ship reportedly hit near the Omani port of Al Khasab

Alphabet slides 4% as AI chief Jeff Dean exits in leadership shakeup

[8:43 am] Alphabet fell as much as 5.4% after AI architect Jeff Dean departed to launch a startup, prompting a broader restructuring of the company's AI leadership.

• Dean, Google's 30th employee and a Google Brain co-founder, leaves with fellow AI veterans Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le and Sanjay Ghemawat to launch Discovery Loop, a startup automating scientific research

• Alphabet is backing the venture as founding investor and cloud partner, alongside seed co-leads Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures

• Departures add to recent AI talent losses, following Noam Shazeer's exit to OpenAI and John Jumper's to Anthropic

• Demis Hassabis steps back from day-to-day DeepMind operations to become GDM Chair and Alphabet Chief Scientist, retaining Isomorphic Labs

Hedge funds hammered in July as AI selloff forces fire sales

[8:42 am] A brutal reversal in crowded AI and momentum trades drove steep hedge fund losses in July, with Citadel emerging as the standout winner.

• Situational Awareness plunged 67% and was forced to offload most of its public equities book to Citadel at a 10% discount to meet margin calls

• PivotalPath's TMT index fell 10%, its worst benchmark, after momentum, crowded longs and equity beta had compounded at roughly 25% annually over three years

• Whale Rock's flagship fell 21.7% and Altimeter dropped 11%, though both remain strongly positive for the year at 35.1% and 34% respectively

• Citadel's flagship Wellington fund rose 5.9% on the Situational Awareness deal, lifting its year-to-date gain to 12%

Source: Bloomberg

Tech trade may lean more on retail after July rout, JPMorgan warns

JPMorgan says a brutal July for tech hedge funds could structurally shrink their capacity to hold the sector, leaving it more exposed to retail-driven swings.

• TMT sector hedge funds lost more than 10% in July on preliminary Pivotal Path data, excluding Situational Awareness which was forced to sell the bulk of its public portfolio

• Losses point to forced liquidations of semiconductor and memory exposure across other tech-focused funds

• Philadelphia Semiconductor Index shed 21% in July, its worst month since 2008, as investors rotated out of top AI names on spending concerns

• JPMorgan expects tighter risk frameworks and concentration limits, plus reduced prime broker balance sheet allocation, to curb funds' ability to hold volatile tech

• If that capacity is structurally reduced, the tech trade grows more dependent on retail and more vulnerable to leveraged ETFs, retail options buying and margin accounts

Source: Bloomberg

SpaceX slides as $101bn lockup expiry looms

[8:41 am] Insider selling restrictions lift Thursday just as the stock trades below its IPO price, drawing heavy short interest.

• Up to 911.5 million shares unlock Thursday, more than doubling the tradeable float to as much as 1.55 billion from about 639 million

• Shares slumped more than 10% Wednesday to near US$110, having fallen 38% below their June 16 high and reversing a rally that had briefly added over US$250bn in market cap

• Short sellers now hold 35% of the tradeable float, sitting on US$5.3bn in paper profits, with the lockup overhang expected to persist until December

• First quarterly result triggered a 13% slide on higher-than-expected AI spending, though revenue beat ests on the back of the profitable Starlink business

• Nine-stage unlock structure defers many backers until early December, when tradeable shares jump to 5.33 billion

Source: Bloomberg

Good morning!

[8:27 am] ASX 200 futures are down 9 pts (-0.09%). Here's what happened overnight:

• Major US benchmarks gave back early gains to finish mostly lower

  • S&P 500 (-0.17%), Nasdaq (-0.83%), Russell 2000 (-0.59%) but the Dow (+0.49%) closed at fresh all-time highs

• S&P 500 up as much as 0.74% in early trade, but this follows a four-day win streak where the index rallied 5.7%

• Trump said a Strait of Hormuz deal "Could happen. Tomorrow or the next day," though Brent edged 1.2% higher to US$79.64 a barrel

• Copper (+1.83%) surged to all-time highs of US$6.80/lb, while gold (+4.1%) recorded its best day since 28-Jan, rallying above US$4,200