Closing Bell: Lithium debut goes up, health stock debut gets smashed

The ASX returned to positive territory today as investors began to shrug off fears of the omicron variant, but the bourse is still well below levels seen last week.

While utilities lost over 1%, most other sectors gained with telcos being the best performer with a 1.84% gain.

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP WINNERS

(Stocks highlighted in yellow rose after making announcements during the trading day).

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IDT (ASX:IDT) announced it had finally manufactured Australia’s first mRNA vaccine.

The ASX’s latest lithium explorer Winsome Resources (ASX:WR1) lived up to its name, rising on its first trading day on the ASX.

Leigh Creek Energy (ASX:LCK) signed an offtake agreement with Korean company Delim for an offtake of at least 500,000 metric tonnes of granular urea per annum for at least five years.

Golden Deeps (ASX:GED) rose after reporting high-grade copper-lead-silver intersections at its Nosib Block prospect.

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP LOSERS

(Stocks highlighted in yellow fell after making announcements during the trading day).

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Despite today’s rebound in the equity markets, probiotics business Biome (ASX:BIO) saw one of the worst debuts of 2021 falling over 40%.

Nuix (ASX:NXL) fell off the back of a trading update and an address to shareholders at its AGM earlier this morning.

ANNOUNCEMENTS YOU MAY’VE MISSED

Pacific Equity Partners is ordinarily a buyer of ASX companies or their individual assets but today it was a seller. Automotive accessories firm GUD Holdings (ASX:GUD) announced it was buying industry peer APG from Pacific Equity Partners for $744.6 million.

Australian Finance Group (ASX:AFG) announced it was buying a 75% stake in asset finance aggregator National Finance Alliance. It says the combined group will have over 3,335 brokers and settlements of over $1.7 billion per annum.

Way2VAT (ASX:W2V) announced it had signed technology retailer Bang & Olufsen as a client. The deal runs for a a one year term initially and will cover over 40 countries.

SportsHero (ASX:SHO) formally launched Ellevate Football, its world leading football talent scouting app, into Indonesia. The app allows aspiring young footballers to be connected to talent scouts of professional football clubs worldwide.

EMvision (ASX:EMV), a medtech developing a brain screening technology which can diagnose stroke, unveiled additional data from its pilot clinical trial which showed that the ability of its technology to distinguish stroke types was very high. The company says it is preparing for expanded clinical studies and hopes to eventually reach commercialisation.

TRADING HALTS

Wednesday

Emerald Resources (ASX:EMR) – acquisition
Epsilon Healthcare (ASX:EPN) – Valens agreement update
Leigh Creek Energy (ASX:LCK) – offtake agreement
Vection (ASX:VR1) – capital raising
Firebird Metals (ASX:FRB) – maiden resource estimate
GUD Holdings (ASX:GUD) – capital raising completion

Thursday

IOUpay (ASX:IOU) – acquisition completion
Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH) – material license upgrade
Celsius Resources (ASX:CLA) – scoping study update
MGC Pharmaceuticals (ASX:MXC) – capital raising
Altech Chemicals (ASX:ATC) – capital raising