Last Orders: ASX sails into calmer waters to close out a tough week

Pic: Stevica Mrdja / EyeEm / EyeEm via Getty Images

Friday, and the week ended pretty much the way it began, with loopy comments from Elon Musk diverting everyone’s attention away from real life.

BNPLs failed to recover from yesterday’s robust inflation expectations out of the US, and the market in general was… ok.

The S&P/ASX200 closed up Friday, gaining 31.50 points or +0.45% to 7014.20.

Following three straight losing sessions, that brought its cumulative loss down to 0.94% over the last five days.

A couple of new entrants on the bourse failed to excite, but Mindax Ltd (ASX:MDX) showed how it’s done, re-listing after two years suspended out in the cold.

Shares in the goldie initially rose as high as 20c, which marked a gain of around 6,000 per cent from its last traded price, but settled at a much more sensible 1,137pc gain.

Two years of anguish for those who were locked out around the 0.5 cent mark suddenly seemed worth the wait.

Here’s a few late breaking announcements which may have slipped under the bar this Friday afternoon.

EcoGraf (ASX:EGR)

The high-purity graphite play wangled its way into the MSCI Australia Micro Cap Index, after the index made a few changes.

That inclusion followed earlier news that EcoGraf was set to begin trading on the US OTCQX market at 9am (New York time) under the code ECGFF.

Investors liked the day’s news, sending EGR up 24% to 61 cents.

Austal (ASX:ASB)

The WA shipbuilder delivered a couple of good-looking boats to the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard.

The two 58m patrol boats were handed over at Austal’s Henderson shipyard:

They’re the first Cape-class vessels Austal has sent outside of Australia. The Australian Border Force and RAN have 10 similar vessels between them. Austal has another six being built right now.

The two ships can patrol for 28 days with a crew of 27 on board, and hit up to 25 knots. Trinidad and Tobago’s Lieutenant Commander Francoise Paulette Cazoe reckons the boats “will significantly enhance our operational capability”.

And they look good.

Picture: Austal

Xstate (ASX:XST)

Xstate popped back on May 3 when it announced it had tested 1.6 million cubic feet per day flow rate from Kione Sandstones in its near-vertical Borba 1-7 well.

Today, it upp ed that estimate to 2.1 million cubic feet. Showoffs.

It expects to bring the well into production at a flowing rate of around 3 mmcfpd, and actually believes “much higher headline flow rates are achievable”.

In-field testing of Borba 1-7 is now complete. Now it’s time to focus on the best pipeline connection.

XST shares enjoyed another 11.1 per cent rise on the news.