Last Orders: Despite losing week, best month in six for small caps

Small caps have declined for the fourth time in the past five days — but still finished April with their strongest performance in six months.

The Small Ordinaries index gained 4.83 per cent in April despite declining 0.96 per cent this week, the index’s second losing week in a row. Still, it was the Small Ords’ best month since a 10.2 per cent gain in November.

On Friday, the index of Australia’s 101st to 300th biggest companies declined 24.9 points, or 0.75 per cent, to a two-week low of 3,282.1.

The ASX200 dropped slightly more, by 0.88 per cent, finishing the week down 0.6 per cent and April up 3.4 per cent.

The Emerging Companies nano-cap index dipped 0.2 per cent, finishing the week up 0.8 per cent and April up 7.2 per cent – its best month since a 12.9 per cent gain in November.

Every sector save industrials and utilities was down, with energy the worst hit, down 1.7 per cent as Beach Energy (ASX:BPT) plunged 24.1 per cent to $1.275 as the $3.8 billion oil and gas producer announced a downgrade to its Western Flank reserves.

It was the last day of quarterly reporting season and there were a flurry of announcements from companies on how they’d done.

ResMed (ASX:RMD) slid 4.6 per cent to $26.06 after announcing third-quarter revenue was down three per cent to $768.8 million.

Mesoblast (ASX:MSB) gained 6.8 per cent to $1.955 after announcing an analysis of its COVID-19 trial in the United States had found Mesoblast’s stem-cell treatment had saved lives.

Small cap news

Japara Healthcare (ASX:JHC) rose 25.6 per cent to $1.005 after Little Company of Mary Health Care made a non-binding $278 million indicative takeover proposal for the aged care provider. The Calvary rest home operator is tentatively offering $1.04 per share for Japara.

Tesserent (ASX:TNT) fell 5.1 per cent to 23.25c after the cybersecurity provider announced it had completed the acquisition of managed security services provider Secure Logic and appointed a new group chief financial officer.

Pure Hydrogen (ASX:PH2) was flat at 25.5c after announcing that flow testing had begun this week at its Venus-1 gas project in the Surat Basin.

Althea Goup (ASX:AGH) fell 2.1 per cent to 46.5c despite the cannabis company announcing that third-quarter cash receipts rose 85 per cent to $2.75 million.