ASX small cap wrap: who smashed it last week

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ASX Small Cap Winners Jun 1-8

Small caps are the place to be for ASX investors as the graph below shows.

This week the ASX Small Ords sharemarket index hit seven-year highs as investors hunted stocks with strong growth potential.

The Small Ords touched 2864.6 this week — its highest point since 2011 and a gain of about 20 per cent over the past year.

That compares with a gain of about 7 per cent for the large cap All Ordinaries and ASX200 indicies.

This graph shows growth in the Small Ords (green) versus the All Ords (blue) and ASX200 (red) over the past year:

Canada legalises recreational pot

Friday was an exciting day for pot stocks as the Canadian Senate voted to legalise recreational marijuana — making Canada the first major western country to do so.

Most ASX-listed cannabis plays are focused on medical marijuana — but huge new markets in Canada and some US states could tempt them to consider the recreational market.

First out of the gate with an announcement was The Hydroponics Company (ASX:THC) which announced to the ASX it was “REC READY”. THC shares rose 3 per cent to 59.5c on Friday.

Cannabis play Stemcell United (ASX:SCU) made a much bigger jump earlier in the week after announcing its China partner HFIH had been granted a licence to plant, process and sell industrial hemp products.

Stemcell jumped 65 per cent to 3.8c amid heavy trading before closing the week at 2.8c —  gain of 27 per cent.

Investors piled into Latitude (ASX:LCD) after mining identity Klaus Eckhof’s daughter Kim moved to join the lithium play’s board.

The stock was up 23 per cent to 3.8c today for the week. That was in contrast to dad’s AVZ Minerals (ASX:AVZ) — see below — which dropped after Klaus sold down a large tranche of shares.

Latitude, which was previously focused on gold, will ask shareholders to vote on Ms Eckhof’s appointment on June 18.

Kim Eckhof’s appointment comes after Latitude struck a deal to acquire a 70 per cent interest in the Mbeta lithium project located in southern Zimbabwe.

Latitude chairman Tim Moore told Stockhead Ms Eckhof’s far reaching connections would come in handy for a small player like Latitude.

Another lithium play, Six Sigma Metals (ASX:SI6), had a strong week moving ahead 27 per cent to 1.4c after unveiling high-grade results at its Shamva project in Zimbabwe.

Lithium grades of between 1 per cent and 3.13 per cent were evident in 240 rock chip samples taken from a target called the Bonnyvale pegmatite, Six Sigma reported this week.

Pegmatites are rocks formed from lava or magma and are the primary source of lithium. More than 60 of the samples returned grades of over 2 per cent. (Anything over 1 per cent is high grade in lithium mining.)

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Breast cancer detector and blockchain wannabe Genetic Technologies (ASX:GTG) gained 22 per cent to 1.1c after formalising a deal with an Indian start-up that wants to build a blockchain-based health network called Project Shivom.

Project Shivom, launched last October in northern India, has the ambitious plan of “growing to be the largest genomic and health data-hub on the planet“.

The venture is said to have raised $US35 million ahead of a planned worldwide launch this year.

The terms of the deal were “confidential” but included sharing of Indian population data and access to Indian hospitals and patients to promote GTG’s risk assessment tests. Project Shivom will pay GTG $US200,000 under the deal.

Nickel explorer St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) was one of the small cap stories of the week, advancing steadily for a 29 per cent five-day gain to 15.5c

On Monday St George confirmed tests showed “multiple significant intersections of high-grade nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE mineralisation” at its Mt Alexander Project.

“We are very pleased to see laboratory assays confirming the thick intersections of high-grade nickel-copper sulphides at Stricklands from the recently completed drill program,” St George Mining chairman John Prineas said at the time.

Mark Creasy-backed Myanmar Metals (ASX:MYL) rose 26 per cent to 8.2c this week after raising $35 million at an issue price of 6c.

Myanmar said the placement was “heavily oversubscribed with significant demand from a wide range of new domestic and international institutional investors”.

The placement includes $19.1 million of binding commitments from Mr Creasy’s Yandal Investments and another cornerstone investor Perilya.

Myanmar believes its Bawdwin project — located north-west of Mandalay near the Chinese border — has the potential to emerge as a significant base metals producer.

Mount Ridley Mines (ASX:MRD) gained 25 per cent to 0.5c after telling investors drilling was about to get underway at its gold project near Esperance, WA.

Mount Ridley is undertaking Air Core drilling of 100 holes to resolve underlying geology and locate the source of the surface gold geochemistry.

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks for Jun 1-8:

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

ASX Small Cap Losers Jun 1-8

As mentioned above, AVZ Minerals (ASX:AVZ) shareholders were a bit miffed after boss Klaus Eckhof sold down a large tranche of shares.

Mr Eckhof told the AFR: “Would have loved to sell some at 30¢ like all the other shareholders, but as a director there are not [many] windows available.”

In the past year AVZ’s share price has rocketed over 1000 per cent to a 52-week peak of 37c.

The off-market sale of 32.5 million shares netted Mr Eckhof roughly $4.6 million.

The ASX queried AVZ (ASX:AVZ) over the share price dip, which went as low as 8.8c on Thursday from the open price of 12.5c.

WPG Resources (WPG) lost 25 per cent to 1.5c after producing less gold than expected.

“Although the month started well, gold production for May was approximately 5,200 ounces compared to a forecast of 6,500 ounces,” the miner said.

May’s production was lower than forecast due to “a number of unplanned events” including a rockfall that buried a remote unit and “some issues in the mill caused by wet and sticky high grade ore”.

Ongoing development of its Challenger Deeps project would require new capital investment, WPG said.

Here are the worst performing ASX small cap stocks for Jun 1-8:

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

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