Closing Bell: Stocks putting out good news, sneaking in bad news while almost everyone watches the cricket

  • ASX 200  up ~0.9% to 7,567 points – its highest since August 2021
  • Small Cap Winners: ARN, BLY, EVR, AGR
  • Small Cap Losers: IVZ, VIT, GPR

 

A solid but quiet day on the ASX.

Even CommSec is trading the Bloomberg terminal for beers and test cricket until early January.

At 4pm eastern time the benchmark ASX 200 was up ~0.9% to 7,567 points – its highest since August 2021. Yew.

 

TRADING HALTS

These stocks entered trading halts Wednesday and are expected out in the coming days

Mighty Kingdom (ASX:MKL) – capital raise

Entyr (ASX:ETR) — additional detail in respect of the offtake and collaboration agreement with Trafigura

Eagers Automotive (ASX:APE) – cyber incident

 

 

WEDNESDAY’S LARGE CAP MOVERS

Winners

Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR) +6%

Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD) +5%

Mercury NZ (ASX:MCY) +5%

 

Losers

Mader Group (ASX:MAD) -4%

Sigma Healthcare (ASX:SIG) -2.5%

Boss Energy (ASX:BOE) -2%

 

SMALL CAP LEADERS

Today’s best performing ASX small cap stocks:

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WordPress Table

Aldoro Resources (ASX:ARN) is picking up rock chips grading +9% niobium at the Kameelburg project.

Deposits of niobium, a little-known metal made famous by WA1 Resources’ (ASX:WA1) monster find in WA, usually grade between 0.2% and 2.5%.

130 year-old drilling company Boart Longyear (ASX:BLY) will be taken private by a US company via court approved plan of arrangement.

The cash deal values each share at US$1.9554 – a 96% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average price.

The BLY board unanimously recommends the deal to shareholders.

EV Resources (ASX:EVR) has the green light to drill its high grade Parag copper-molybdenum project (EVR: 70%) in Peru.

And phosphate co Aguia Resources (ASX:AGR) continues to run after announcing a deal to acquire private South American gold hunter Andean Mining last week.

Far East Capital analyst and AGR/Andean chair Warwick Grigor calls the deal “a game changer”.

“The main asset of Andean, the Santa Barbara gold mine, stands out for the very high-grade gold that will make it one of the lowest cost gold mines in the world,” he says.

 

SMALL CAP LAGGARDS

Today’s worst performing ASX small cap stocks:

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WordPress Table

Oil and gas hopeful Invictus Energy (ASX:IVZ) has raised more cash, this time $15m at 13c per share. This is a 21% discount to the 5-day VWAP.

IVZ will also launch an entitlement offer to all shareholders with details to be released to the market in January next year.

The company raised a collective $35.4m between April-June, and another $15m in September.

Pot tech stock Vitura Health (ASX:VIT) – formerly known as Cronos Australia — says Code4 Cannabis will not be extending its services agreement with VIT subsidiary Canview.

Gold developer Geopacific Resources (ASX:GPR) will defer a $3.5m debt owed to a major shareholder in exchange for a 4% “prolongation” fee.

Meanwhile miner Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) continues to bleed, down 27% since announcing the dreaded ‘strategic review’ of operations last week in response to plummeting lithium prices.

It is currently paying 24c/sh, down from a peak of $1.67/sh in November last year.