• ASX Emerging Companies (XEC) Index is about 1.25% higher ahead of the close on Monday
  • Iron ore shakes $US160, Aussie rattles US75¢
  • Major movers today: Top End Energy (ASX:TEE), Golden Deeps (ASX:GED), Sayona Mining (ASX:SYA)

 

The ASX Emerging Companies (XEC) gained over 1.2% on Monday, the ASX200 benchmark (XJO) index lifted 0.2%, both driven by strong performances in the materials sector.

There was rare agreement in the Stockhead newsroom this morning, that the surprising cracker of an IPO by Northern focussed gassy Top End Energy (ASX:TEE) was totally worth getting out of bed on a Monday morning for.

A hand woven IPO by highly paid craftsmen – $6.4m at $0.20 a pop – was instantly discarded when the stock hit the bourse,  in favour of a glamorous 100% premium to the issue price.

So we first met the oil, gas and other various gassy product streams (including helium and hydrogen) at 40 cents and things have been exciting to watch ever since.

TEE says it wants to be a net zero emissions energy producer and already holds a 100% interest in a granted hydrocarbon permit in Queensland, where it plans to do some funky geological, geophysical and engineering studies, aeromag and gravity surveys, seismic acquisition as well as the plug and abandonment of the Barwinock 2 well.

In the Territory, TEE’s 50% interest in 30 hydrocarbon exploration permit applications totals a whopping ~160,000km2.

Top End ended at 36 cents. So bully to you lads, bully to you.

Back in emission central…

Back in the net-sh*t-loads-of-emissions real world – oil in the states fell sharply over the weekend, combine that with the Federal Budget petrol excise and the national average unleaded petrol price fell by a record 13.3 cents a litre last week, according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum,

Elsewhere today, the ANZ-Melbourne Institute monthly inflation gauge rose by 0.8% in March to be up 4% on the year, that’s the largest yearly hello to Mr Inflation since this happened, in September 2008.

The ‘underlying’ or trimmed mean measure lifted 0.6% – the most  January 2017 to be up 2.5% on the year.

In March, ANZ job ads rose by 0.4% to its highest since mark since July 2008). Job ads are up 32.5% on the year and are 57.5% above pre-Covid levels.

Hang Seng hangs ten

Meanwhile, The Hang Seng is killing Monday dead, it’s up 2% at around 4pm in Sydney, after China’s China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) declared on-site inspections no longer meed to be conducted by Chinese regulatory agencies.

This opens the door for US-listed Chinese stocks and may temper China’s rightly-held Wall Street delisting fears – one of many reasons Chinese equities have had such a crap run.

The takeover of HK didn’t help (in fact, Beijing’s handpicked chief executive Carrie Lam just announced she won’t be seeking a second term) and then of course there’s the virus – or not so much the virus as the Chinese virus playbook.

COVID-risk and actual COVID-19 certainly remain a big concern as the mainland and HK added more than 13,000 new infections to the many unknown numbers and the creeping emergence of new as yet unassigned flavours of the Omicron variant. But it’s the Zero Covid Policy which is making Chinese economics so damn interesting right now.

OANDA’s Jeffrey Halley says with Shanghai now in a full lockdown, the easing of audit restrictions is finally some good news out of China.

“News which could be mildly supportive for Wall Street later today, is that China appears to be loosening its audit restrictions, reducing the immediate threat of a mass delisting of US-listed Chinese companies. Many of those are listed in Hong Kong, which should also find reasons to cheer as a result.

On the negative side, Shanghai is now in a full lockdown as the government tried to get on top of the latest Covid-19 outbreak.

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP WINNERS

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

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Yes, Top End Energy did indeed open at 40c – twice its initial public offer price.

The Queensland and NT focussed debutant raised $6.4m at 20c per share with the money to be used to explore across its ATP 1069 prospect in Queensland as well as its “TG Project” – a portfolio of 30 oil and gas permit applications in the Northern Territory.

The shares debuted at 40c hit 41c, then settling back slightly to 38c in the first few minutes of trade. Top End closed at 36 cents.

If the stock’s copper, then the stock’s proper.

That’s how Monday is playing out for Golden Deeps (ASX:GED), which ripped into some high-grade goodies, in shallow terrain at Namibia  ~53.5m grading 3.6% copper equivalent from surface (1.15% copper, 0.62% vanadium, 3.49% lead, 4.57g/t silver) at the historical prospect of ‘Nosib.’

This includes a high grade 11.74m at 8.5% copper eq from 2m (Reuben says this was a vertical drillhole… so not the true width).

Reuben ‘Grizzly ‘Adams has his menagerie of highly-trained both wild and domesticated animals watching Sayona Mining(ASX:SYA) after SYA recently joined the ASX 300 index among a a hotchpotch crew of lithium entrants like Lake Resources (ASX:LKE), AVZ Minerals (ASX:AVZ) and Core Lithium (ASX:CXO).

The company is up sharply following news that lithium from its ‘Authier’ project in Québec performed as well, if not better than the incumbents in battery test work.

Grizzly says the near-term lithium miner has gained  ~150% over the past month, giving it ‘an outrageous market cap’ of around $2.2bn. Here’s some rare footage of Reuben at the farm:

SYA owns advanced exploration assets in Canada’s Quebec province, where it announced a doubling of the Authier and North American Lithium projects’ combined resource to 119.1 Mt at 1.05% Li2O at the start of March.

As reported by Stockhead’s Eddy Sunarto Rhythm Biosciences (ASX:RHY) jumped over 15% in early trade on the back of some good news for its blood test product ColoSTA, which a clinical trial (Study 7) suggests was as much as 35% more accurate than the market standard Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) for detecting cancer and advanced adenomas.

The much better named ColoSTAT clocked an over 80% improvement on Sensitivity, and a more than 9-% beat on Specificity of 91%.

“ColoSTAT has the potential to transform the way colorectal cancer is detected, on a global scale,” Rhythm CEO, Glenn Gilbert said earlier.

 

TODAY’S BIGGEST SMALL CAP LOSERS

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ANNOUNCEMENTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

Perth-based energy exploration company Kinetiko Energy (ASX:KKO) saw its share price rally ~10% today to 9 cents after announcing its subsidiary Afro Energy had executed agreements with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa to co-develop a gas production field of up to 20 wells.

“Kinetiko’s vision of becoming a major player in South African onshore gas production has today taken a significant step forward with agreements being finalised with the IDC, a leading national development finance institution, to co-invest in the development of a gas field adjacent to the company’s existing Amersfoort wells,” Executive Chairman Adam Sierakowski said.

Duke Exploration (ASX:DEX) has announced assay results from the final three holes of the latest five-hole diamond drilling program have returned further significant copper intercepts at the Rogers Prospect.

The company said results further confirm the exploration targeting model at its flagship Bundarra is effective and has had a direct influence on the follow up RC drilling currently underway focusing around Absolon, Quorn and Rogers targets.

Duke is an exploration company focussing on Copper, Gold and Silver discoveries in Qld & NSW.

Duke’s 100% owned flagship project is the Bundarra tenement EPM 26499, a previously mined area dating back to the 1870’s where hand mining of visible high-grade copper spanned 40 years.

Bundarra itself is a large granodiorite pluton located next to Bowen Basin coal mines between Moranbah and Mackay and represents a near mine development opportunity.

And all bets appear to be on for PointsBet (ASX:PBH) in Canada. The company announcing its wholly owned subsidiary PointsBet Canada Operations has launched iGaming and sportsbook operations in Ontario and taken its first best.

PointsBet Canada CEO Scott Vanderwel said – just after 12am local time on April 4 – that PointsBet became one of the first private sportsbooks to take a legal wager.

“Over the past few months, our team has been scaling and focused on building partnerships with the athletes, teams and organisations that matter to Canadians,” he said.  So, nothing that makes sense here.

 

TRADING HALTS

The following companies went into a halt on Monday and are due out in the coming days.

Sovereign Metals (ASX:SVM) – announcement regarding an updated Mineral Resource Estimate at Kasiya

PVW Resources Limited (ASX:PVW) – capital raising

GTI Resources Limited (ASX:GTR) – announcement regarding a material acquisition capital raising

Centrex Limited (ASX:CXM) – capital raising.

Energy NL (ASX:NWE) – announcement regarding a capital raising.

Orcoda Limited (ASX:ODA) – capital raising and intended Share Purchase Plan (purpose).

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