ASX Small Cap Lunch Wrap: Who’s finally opening the wallet today?

In a day of notable mergers and acquisitions, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway agreed to buy Dominion Energy’s gas transmission and storage assets for the bargain basement price of $US10bn ($14.31bn).

“The Dominion purchase was Mr Buffett’s biggest in four years, putting to use some of Berkshire’s $137bn cash pile,” writes New York Times’ DealBook.

“And it will probably quell some investor anxiety about Mr Buffett’s recent drought of deal-making.”

Uber’s share price also gained on a deal to buy food delivery app Postmates for $US2.65bn ($3.8bn).

US share markets climbed again overnight, boosted by a resurgence in the Chinese economy and a big jump in US services sector activity.

Amazon (+5.8 per cent) hit $US3,000 per share for the first time, Netflix touched record highs, and Tesla rose 13.5 per cent on a broker upgrade.

Tesla has been claiming victory over the firm’s beleaguered short sellers, announcing Sunday that the electric-car company was selling limited-edition red satin ‘short shorts’.

The site promptly crashed.

It was a good day all-around (unless you were a Tesla short seller), with gold, base metals, and iron ore also gaining.

The Benchmark ASX200 index followed Wall Street’s lead to be up almost 1 per cent in early trade, before fluctuating between positive and negative territory in the lead up to lunch.

WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Tuesday July 7:

Swipe or scroll to reveal the full table. Click headings to sort.

Marquee Resources (ASX:MQR) (+95%) is running the ruler over a gold-nickel project near Kalgoorlie in WA, called West Spargoville.

“Marquee has undertaken due diligence on numerous gold projects over the last nine months with a view to acquiring brownfield gold projects which will enable our shareholders to be exposed to the expected increase in the price of gold in the coming years,” executive chairman Charles Thomas says.

“The option to acquire the West Spargoville project, which is located in the prolific gold and nickel district of the Eastern Goldfields, is the first step in this continuing strategy.”

Recruitment platform AD1 Holdings (ASX: AD1) (+100%) has extended its Managed Services Agreement (MSA) with the Victorian government for up to a further three years.

It follows a two-year deal extension with the NSW government for its iworkforNSW careers platform, announced at the end of June.

“This contract extension, along with the other major managed services contracts, bolsters and locks in almost 97 per cent of our employment platform subscription business revenue in multi-year contracts and demonstrates the sustainability of that revenue base,” chief exec Prashant Chandra says.

eSense-Lab (ASX:ESE) (+77%) has entered into an exclusive US sales agreement for its sanitiser products which “marks the beginning of its expansion plans into the world’s largest consumer base”.

And Australian healthcare software provider Global Health (ASX: GLH) (+66%) has landed Peninsula Health — one of Victoria’s largest community healthcare providers — on a three-year contract.

LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Tuesday July 7:

Swipe or scroll to reveal the full table. Click headings to sort.