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It’s the quarterly season again as the ASX market announcements page becomes increasingly flooded with update lodgements.
To save you the trouble of trudging through it all, we’ve wrapped up the highlights from some of the reports that caught our eye.
Buckle up, there’s a fair few quarterlies that hit the bourse today.
The company made progress commercialising its AI-chip Akida during the quarter, while it also focused on the development of the second-generation Akida technology platform.
Akida is a neuromorphic processor that mimics the human brain to analyse only essential sensor inputs at the point of acquisition, processing data with efficiency, precision, and economy of energy.
“The company is currently experiencing its highest ever level of commercial engagements, the volume and quality of which are improving rapidly as a larger number of customers learn about BrainChip and our second-generation technology, which will be available in late Q3,” BRN said.
A key component of the company’s commercialisation strategy is to expand its ecosystem partnerships, to which it added Lorser Industries, CVEDIA, Teksun, Blue Ridge Envisioneering, and Quantum Ventura during the quarter.
BRN also announced IPro, a leader in IP sales and support in Israel, as its extended channel to serve that high-growth AI sector, and expand its reach in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Asia).
The company ended the June Quarter with US$21.8m in cash compared to US$17.7Mm in the prior quarter.
Resource Base completed the acquisition of the highly-prospective Wali and Ernst lake lithium projects in the James Bay lithium district of Québec, which are close to Patriot Battery Metals’ (ASX:PMT) Wali project and Winsome Resources’ (ASX:WR1) Ernst Lake project.
Mapped pegmatites and historical sampling will be explored rigorously over a three-month field work exploration phase, to quickly prove up drill-ready targets.
Results have been received from a detailed airborne magnetic survey conducted over the Wali project with high priority targets and anomalies identified to be followed up for potential lithium-bearing pegmatite intrusions.
Plus, at the company’s Mitre Hill REE project in Victoria, leach adsorption testwork has confirmed the resource is of an ionic nature and has potential for conventional separation – and with a more simplistic process this means superior mining economics.
Cash at 30 June was ~$1.6m.
The biotechnology company received the Phase 1 clinical trial report during the quarter for its ARG-007 treatment in ischaemic stroke patients, which showed the drug is safe, well tolerated and has a favourable pharmacokinetics profile.
Planning is well underway for the Phase 2 trial in other indications where a single dose of ARG-007 is given, such as hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), as well as surgically induced stroke.
The ethics application for Phase 2 has been submitted post quarter end, and the drug-manufacturing process was initiated with vials expected to arrive at trial sites in Australia by mid-December 2023, ready for administration to patients as recruitment and dosing of patients commences in Q1 CY2024.
Cash reserves stood at $9.3 million as at 30 June 2023 including funds from a $4m placement during the quarter to advance the Phase 2 trial.
During the quarter WA8 demonstrated extensions at Rothschild, Ricciardo, and Austin gold deposits from the Phase 1 and 2 drilling programs at its Golden Range and Fields Find projects in WA.
At Rothschild drilling results included 6m at 4.84 g/t from 161m, the Main Lode vertical depth was extended to 230m below surface and parallel lodes were identified.
At Ricciardo the Silverstone North deposit was extended to 180m below surface and WA8 noted a strike extension of the mineralisation to the south.
And the Austin deposit was extended at with confirmation of a polymetallic system, located 4km from the Golden Grove Cu-Zn-Pb-Ag-Au deposit cluster.
Plus, seven priority 1 bedrock conductors (massive sulphide targets) have been identified and modelled, ready to be drill tested – four of which sit within the Fields Find layered intrusive complex, where previous drilling has returned 4.4% nickel, 1.3% copper, and (at a separate location) 39 g/t gold.
The company had cash of $5.7m at the end of the quarter.
During the quarter the company increased the South Basin mineral resource at the Rhyolite Ridge project in Nevada, USA, by a whopping 168% to 3.4 Mt lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and 14.1 Mt of boric acid equivalent.
“We look forward to building on South Basin extensions and related exploration efforts on the much larger North Basin with similar mineral composition,” MD Bernard Rowe.
In May, the company announced a partnership with Nevada-based Dragonfly to deliver these critical electric vehicle battery materials from Rhyolite Ridge.
And they’re making progress in the NEPA process following the completion of the first public scoping period during the quarter and the decision of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to publish a Notice of Intent (NOI) in December 2022.
The next phase, the release of a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), is expected to be completed in Q3 2023.
Plus, detailed engineering and procurement activities are advancing in preparation for the commencement of construction in H1 2024.
“The Company is financially well positioned as we approach the final permitting stage with conditional debt and equity commitments of nearly US$1.2 billion,” Rowe added.
The medical tech company progressed its pursuit of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory clearance for the Salix Software System AI product during the quarter, lodging a Q-Submission (Q-Sub) with the FDA, a key enabling step in the US regulatory process, in May.
This was followed in early June by a successful Q-Sub meeting with the FDA in the USA where Artrya and the FDA agreed on a pathway to 510(k) regulatory clearance for the Salix product.
The tech basically aids radiologists and cardiologists in the analysis of 2D/3D coronary images acquired from Coronary Computed Tomography Angiographic (CCTA) scans.
A favourable reimbursement regime in the US, together with the US healthcare system putting significant value on AI tools for clinical decision support, provide a fertile opportunity for the Salix Software System in the US, the company says.
Artrya is now embarking on a clinical validation study with expert clinicians from several key institutes and hospital groups within the US to validate that the software is safe and effective and also put the software in the hands of clinicians in the US for testing, prior to a formal FDA submission.
Cash at call as of 30 June 2023 is $20.1m.
The company is re-launching its exploration efforts at its WA lithium projects, targeting hard rock lithium mineralisation with a month-long program of surface rockchip sampling and detailed mapping to commence across the Split Rock, Western Shaw, Yule River projects and additional areas at the Turner River project.
The company also welcomed high grade diamond drill results including 4.7m at 2.0% nickel, 1.6% copper and 0.1% cobalt from Bayrock Resources’ Lainejaur project in Sweden – a company in which QXR holds 39%.
A 450-metre diamond drilling program (16 hole) is underway at a second Bayrock asset in Sweden, the Vuostok project, a near surface nickel-copper project within trucking distance of Lainejaur.
QXR also intends to commence a mining lease application over the advanced-stage ‘Anthony’ molybdenum deposit in central Queensland which has been previously upgraded to an indicated and inferred mineral resource estimate of 24,700 tonnes (53.7 million pounds) of contained molybdenum.
The company’s cash balance was $1.8m at the end of the quarter.
During the quarter IG6 released the scoping study for its proposed Collie graphite Battery Anode Materials (BAM) facility based on processing of up to 40,000t/y of graphite concentrates to produce up to 17.6kt/y of BAM and 20kt/y of micronised by-products from its Springdale graphite project.
The plant is designed with staged product lines, with two separate products in uncoated spheroidised purified graphite (USPG) plus the addition of carbon coating to produce coated spheroidised purified graphite (CSPG).
Plus, during drilling at the Springdale project, the company identified four new graphite discoveries with the latest assays from the 2022-2023 drilling campaign due at the end of July and a revised Springdale mineral resource estimate targeted for late August 2023.
IG6 now plans to complete a definitive feasibility study for the integrated development and operation of the Springdale project and Collie graphite BAM facility targeting Q3 2024.
The company also nabbed $4.7m from the Australian Government through the national Critical Minerals Development Program administered by the Federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources during the quarter – and finished up with $2.7m cash on hand as of 30 June.
The company’s Mt Thirsty PGE-nickel-cobalt-manganese-scandium JV project in WA returned more high-grade results during the quarter, including 59m at 0.05% cobalt, 0.37% nickel, 0.35% manganese and 45.3 g/t scandium from 10m from Phase 1 drilling.
The project also saw a massive 146% increase in the mineral resource estimate (indicated and inferred) to 66.2 million tonnes at 0.06% cobalt; 0.43% nickel and 0.45% manganese.
In addition, several significant intersections were returned outside of the mineralisation indicating there remains potential for an increase in JORC Resources even further.
The company says the deposit hosts the second highest cobalt-nickel ratio for similar predevelopment projects in Australia and is uniquely positioned to potentially produce Pre-Cursor Cathode Active material (pCAM), containing cobalt, nickel and manganese – which typically receives a ~50% pricing premium.
A scoping study on the project examining high-Pressure Acid Leach (HPAL) production of pCAM4 is anticipated to be completed in August 2023.
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Argenica Therapeutics, Resource Base, Warriedar Resources, Ioneer, QX Resources, International Graphite and Conico are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.
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