"Need to know Mark to market impacts before we can judge (and...

"Need to know Mark to market impacts before we can judge (and other accounting details)"

The old n equations with n+1 variables situation.

I can't understand why supposedly financially literate people insist on publishing financial updates in a manner that is almost meaningless in the absence of that relevant context.

That absence of relevant context makes today's share price response worthy of a chuckle.

Of course, what one can do is play around with some what-if, mark-to-market scenarios, an obvious one being to assume that the DH2024 didn't also include an investment loss (because that would make it four half-years in a row in an environment when asset prices were rising).

And if the past half did indeed break the pattern of prior losses (which probabilistically it should have done) then the investment gain booked doesn't have to be a very big one to result in negligible operating leverage in the underlying performance of the business.

December half-years are seasonally weaker than June halves, but based on yesterday's update, DH24 Revenue is actually 5% stronger than JH24's which, ordinarily would be a good thing. Trouble is, unless the full set of financial accounts shows that the $6.25m NPAT for DH24 has been diminished by another non-recurring investment loss, DH24 underlying earnings would be lower than JH24, despite the higher level of Revenue recorded in DH24 vs JH24.

Accordingly, as is the case every time, the very first number I'll look at when the next set of financial statements are posted will be the (Loss)/Gain on Investments. If it is once again a negative number, then I'll be satisfied that the underlying result was sufficiently strong.
A positive number up to, say $2.5m by my reckoning, will just past muster in terms of result quality, but any investment profit that comes in greater than $2.5m will score the underlying result as a fail.

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