ASX Small Cap Lunch Wrap: Who’s taking a quick break today?

ASX reporting season is in full swing, and when it comes to the year-end accounts investors are looking for transparency (i.e. whether or not companies are making a loss while simultaneously paying huge director fees).

Transparency is also the name of the game for Japanese health authorities, who’ve come up with a novel way to address the various health and safety concerns associated with public toilets.

Neatly dubbed ‘The Tokyo Toilet Project’, 16 architects were asked to renovate 17 public toilets in the district of Shibuya.

And turning the most heads was an effort by Shigeru Ban (pictured above), who addressed two key questions — is the toilet clean, and is anyone in there? — with one simple answer; make the whole thing see-through.

Ban’s design deploys smart-glass technology to turn the walls from transparent to opaque once the door is locked. Not bad.

To markets…

Local stocks remain relatively buoyant, with gains in the big banks supporting a 1 per cent gain in the ASX200 while the Small Ords Index traded flat.

With no major catalyst for asset markets, the Australian dollar remains well-supported above US72c and gold briefly climbed back above the $US2,000 mark (~$2,760) overnight, before easing back slightly.

WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Wednesday August 19:

Junior explorer Enegex Limited (ASX:ENX) continued its big week after announcing last Friday night it had submitted an application for an additional six tenements of exploration ground in the South West Terrane of WA, “an emerging new nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE province”.

Today the company confirmed it had raised $440,000 via a share placement priced at 2.2c to fund the exploration, after being “approached by a group of sophisticated and professional investors with an offer of investment”.

Enegex said it planned to raise an additional $760,000 via a share entitlement offer to eligible investors.

In an investor presentation today, the company said it now had a 100 per cent interest in “four project areas comprising 20 tenement applications over 3,550km”.

Shares surged above 8c, a premium of almost 300 per cent to the placement offer price.

Also rising sharply was Scout Security (ASX:SCT), which announced a distribution deal for its home security system with global ecommerce giant Amazon.

And Fiji Kava (ASX:FIJ) held its gains into midday trade after signing another distribution agreement of its own, this time into the Chinese market.

LOSERS

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks at 12pm Wednesday August 19: