SUNDAY ROAST: The stocks that lit a fire under our experts this week

Guy Le Page

It doesn’t get much more compelling than “one of the most compelling base metal plays listed on ASX… and TSX-V for that matter.”

Guy Le Page has been a fan of American West Metals (ASX:AW1 – 13c, $66m MC) for some time, hailing it as “an emerging copper explorer with district scale potential” at its 80% owned Storm Project in Nunavut, northern Canada.

If you’d hooked onto it at just under 5 cents prior to the 2023 field season last year, there were 600 per cent gains to be had by August after it announced a couple of significant hits at Storm.

That helped it to an impressive maiden MRE of 17.5Mt @ 1.2% copper reported earlier this year, but the stock has since dropped away to 13c. Meanwhile, the 2024 field season has been supersized from 10,000 metres of drilling to around 20,000 metres+. Read “potential significant resource upgrade”.

But Le Page reckons there’s a district scale play to be had, with exploration success at Blizzard/Tornado (10km southeast of Storm) and Tempest (around 40km southeast of Storm). It’s a region with “good provenance for delivering high grade base metal mines”, he notes.

There’s also a bunch of other 2023 copper discoveries at Thunder, Lightning Ridge and Cyclone North yet to be included in the MRE. Add in the fact that only 5% of the 100km of prospective strike has so far been explored, and you can see where Guy’s going with this.

“Definitely potential to find resources that rival giant deposits found in the Zambian Copper belt in terms of both scale and grade if exploration pans out the way I think it will,” he says.

Excellent logistics, access, 100% success rate from the follow up of EM anomalies returning copper sulphides? Check, check and check.

The whole shebang is also cashed up after a recent $10m capital raising earlier this year (managed by the gang of three, namely – disclosure time – Le Page’s RM Capital, Ord Minnet and Bell Potter), and at an undiluted market capitalisation of just under $58 million, based on an 11.5 cent share price.

James Whelan

Managing director, Barclay Pearce Capital Asset Management

First of all, Whelan’s getting shorter on Boeing by the minute, as bits of their planes keep falling off. Or at least “there’s a better chance that BA heads south before heading north”.

“But,” he says, if you “keep in mind that around a third of its revenue comes from defence, space and security”, you might want to go long again on US election night. Because, well, Trump and defence…

Here’s a smokey though – JW is a fan of Wellnex Life (ASX:WNX – 2.6c, $29m MC), formerly known as Wattle Health, the provider of natural energy products, sleep aid products, teeth whitening products, over-the-counter medicines and pain relief products.

That last category includes the recently acquired Pain Away. At last report, that acquisition has resulted in efficiencies in the business, with circa $1.5 million per annum in savings identified.

Overall, WNX February sales came in at a record $1.3 million at an average margin of 41%, compared to FY23 historical margin of circa 20%.

“Could be the value buy of the year here,” Whelan told Stockhead.

Buy of the year? WNX took a bit of a tumble from 5.6c this time last year to be trading between 2.2c and 2.6c since Christmas.

“It’s now a profitable company,” Whelan notes. “Couldn’t be happier.”

Emanuel Datt

Founder and chief investment officer, Datt Capital

Here’s a couple of quick ones from Datt, who says local IT stocks are “a hot sector for M&A” with companies such as Altium, Ansarada and Whispir receiving recent takeover bids.

“We expect to see more consolidation in this space,” he told Stockhead.

ClearView (ASX:CVW – 60c, $396m MC), he says, “is a life insurer that experienced improvements across all its financial metrics; the most important being an 11% increase in gross premiums received”.

“Clearview also improved its competitive position capturing 11% of new business written; a disproportionate amount relative to its market share of 4% of the life insurance market.”

Datt adds that the company is “simplifying its operations which should work to its benefit”, going forward.

Origin Energy (ASX:ORG – $8.98, $15.4bn MC) is an integrated Australian energy business which was recently subject to a takeover offer by Brookfield at $9.40.

“We believe the latest set of results justifies the rejection of the offer by shareholders,” Datt says. “ORG achieved a statutory profit of $995 million for the half year, a cool 250% rise versus PCP.

“All divisions performed very favourably, whilst its 23% equity stake in fast growing Octopus Energy, is worth $2.8 billion in its own right.

“Origin should benefit from Australia’s increasing demand for energy, driven by long-term population trends; and we believe it’s an attractive long-term asset.”

The views, information, or opinions expressed in the interviews in this article are solely those of the interviewees and do not represent the views of Stockhead. Stockhead does not provide, endorse or otherwise assume responsibility for any financial product advice contained in this article.