Reporting season live updates: Everything you need to know about companies revealing results to the ASX today

Austal’s US boss is leaving the shipbuilder, just days after the disclosure of an accounting blunder that torpedoed its annual profit guidance.

The company said on Tuesday Austal USA’s president of less than two years, Michelle Kruger, was stepping back from leadership of its flagship business ahead of retiring on June 1.

Ms Kruger’s sudden exit follows last week’s disclosure that Austal’s profit guidance for the 2026 calendar year had been slashed by 18 per cent to $110 million after the discovery of an accounting gaffe in the US that had overstated its numbers.

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Copper has help to turn around an earnings slump for BHP, says Zavier Wong, market analyst at eToro, but headwinds remain for its powerhouse iron ore operations.

Mr Wong said the Big Australian’s first-half result was a clear improvement on the earnings downturn of the previous financial year, with a high interim dividend showing that “BHP is sending a clear message that the cash flow pressure has eased”.

“The turnaround has been largely driven by copper,” he said.

“Prices surged 32 per cent year-on-year, production guidance has been upgraded, and Escondida is delivering record throughput. BHP’s pivot towards copper continues to gather pace.

“Iron ore remains the cash engine, but the headwinds haven’t gone away. Chinese steel production has held around 1 billion tonnes for seven straight years, but that resilience is being propped up by strong exports and manufacturing rather than the property sector that traditionally drove demand.

“The question is how long that can last”

Miner Vicuna Corporation - controlled by Australia’s BHP and Canada’s Lundin Mining - has announced a $US18 billion ($25b) multi-year investment plan to develop copper, gold and silver mining projects in northern Argentina.

The initial investment in its Josemaria and Filo del Sol projects in the province of San Juan will be $US7b with capital deployment scheduled from 2027 until production begins in 2030, Vicuna said.

The project is forecast to average 395,000 tonnes of copper, 711,000 ounces of gold, and 22.2 million ounces of silver annually over its first 25 years.

Output during the first decade is projected at about 2.5mt of copper, 5.5moz of gold, and 214moz s of silver.

Development of the Josemaria and Filo del Sol mining projects will be carried out in three stages.

The first stage will be focused on the Josemaria deposit, with the latter two focused on Filo del Sol.

Baby Bunting says momentum from a stellar first-half of the year is carrying through to the back-end of the financial year.

Comparable sales growth in the seven weeks to Sunday was up 6.7 per cent, with stores in New Zealand leading the charge - up 17.8 per cent.

The company reported sales of $271.4 million in the six months to the end of December - a jump of almost 7 per cent on a year earlier.

Gross margin was up 124 basis points to 41 per cent - in line with its full-year target.

Baby Bunting chief executive Mark Teperson said it was a strong first-half that exceeded expectations, “demonstrating the ongoing momentum in our strategy”.

“Our record revenue result was driven by growth in our customer base, the continued success of our Store of the Future program along with strong gross margin performance,” he said.

“Across nine refurbished stores, average sales in the half are up 25 per cent since reopening, which is at the top end of our 15 to 25 per cent uplift target.”

Baby Bunting plans to complete six refurbishments in the second half.

SRG Global has upgraded its profit guidance for the full year after a strong six months to December.

Two non-execuctive directors Peter McMorrow and Michael Atkins are also due to retire and be replaced by Mark Foster and Alan Rule as part of the company’s succession plans.

Revenue for the half year was up 20 per cent on the prior period to $743.9 million, as was underlying earnings before interest deprecitation and amortisation, which came in at $71m.

EBITDA has been upgraded to land between $164m and $168m for the year.

SRG also locked away its acquisition of TAMs after the October 2025 purchase.

Managing director David Macgeorge said the contractor’s work in-hand stood at $4.2 billion.

“Our record 1H FY26 result is underpinned by strong business fundamentals, excellent cash generation and solid operational delivery for our blue-chip client base,” he said.

The veracity of one of Australia’s biggest gas companies’ promises to slash emissions will be put to the test as the Federal Court rules on a landmark greenwashing case.

In a judgment expected to have implications for climate commitments made by all businesses, the court will rule on allegations Santos breached corporate and consumer law with its representations of environmental goals.

The case brought by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility challenged claims made by Santos that natural gas provided “clean energy” and that the company had a “credible and clear plan” to achieve net zero by 2040.

The shareholder advocacy group’s lawyers further alleged the energy company’s descriptions of blue hydrogen as “clean” and “zero emissions” were misleading.

Courts were increasingly being asked to determine whether long-term emissions reduction claims were backed by concrete, near-term action and credible assumptions, the expert in corporate sustainability regulation said.

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WA’s Macmahon has hiked its payout to investors after delivering an 11 per cent jump in revenue for the first half of the year to $1.3 billion.

The engineering and civil works contractor will pay a fully franked interim dividend of 0.95c a share - up 73 per cent from 0.55c a year earlier.

Long-time chief executive Mike Finnegan said the Perth Airport-based company had reported solid increases across financial performance metrics, most notably strong growth in revenue, earnings and return on average capital employed.

Net profit came in at $48.2 million, up 61 per cent from the first half of the previous financial year. Underlying earning before interest, tax, deprecation and amortisation was 10 per cent higher at $200.1m.

“These results validate our strategy to diversify the Macmahon Group by growing our underground and civil infrastructure businesses, both of which have made material contributions to this strong first-half performance,” Mr Finnegan said.

“Consistent with our strategy, we are focused on further diversifying our business through organic means and accretive acquisitions that enable us to expand our service offering across the resources sector.”

He said the contractor’s order book remains well supported by a balanced pipeline, with half of the $25.6b pipeline expected to be awarded within the next 12 months.

Macmahon reaffirmed full-year revenue guidance of between $2.6b and $2.8b and underyling EBIT from continuing operatioms of between $180m and $195m.

Thousands of users reported issues accessing Elon Musk’s social media platform X for about an hour on Monday, according to monitoring website Downdetector.

The website and app failed to display new posts and sometimes struggled to load at all. More than 11,000 users globally reported trouble accessing the service as of about 1.50pm in London (9.50pm AWST) . The service was back up and running as of 2.30pm.

A representative for X did not respond to a request for comment.

There have been several major service disruptions to X since Musk acquired the platform in 2022. The billionaire blamed a “massive cyberattack” for a series of outages last March. Dark Storm, a pro-Palestinian “hacktivist” group, took credit for the attack via the messaging app Telegram and to Bloomberg News.

The service went offline for several hours in May, linked to a fire at a data center in Oregon. X was again disrupted in November when cybersecurity firm Cloudflare experienced a major network outage that hit a range of services.

Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, bought X in March 2025. XAI merged with his space-exploration company SpaceX earlier this month.

BHP’s first-half profit rose by 28 per cent to $US5.6 billion ($8b) as revenue jumped 11 per cent to $39.5b, driven by higher copper earnings in South America and strong iron ore output in WA.

There was no word on the mining giant’s ongoing dispute with China’s state-run iron ore procurer, China Mineral Resources Group.

BHP on Tuesday also announced it would recieve more than $6b after signing a silver streaming agreement covering its Antamina copper and zinc mine in Peru.

The Big Australian declared a fully franked interim dividend of US73¢ a share, up from US50¢ a year earlier.