Lunchtime small cap wrap: who’s going off and who’s wiping out

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Here are the key ASX small cap winners and losers at lunchtime Wednesday June 6.

The ASX Small Ords index is at a near seven-year high, putting on 8 points to 2845.1 by 1pm AEST.

GOING UP

MinRex Resources (ASX:MRR) jumped 33 per cent to an intraday high of 6.5c in Wednesday morning trade after delivering an initial cobalt resource for its NSW Pacific Express project three months after announcing the planned acquisition.

The findings outline contained metal of 806 tonnes of cobalt, 6301 tonnes of nickel and 27.5 tonnes of scandium.

This marks the completion of pre-acquisition due diligence on the Pacific Express project. The geology team has now delivered a positive recommendation to the board.

Exhausted shareholders of organic food chain Oliver’s Real Food (ASX:OLI) seem pleased that founder Jason Gunn has been shown the door.

The shares gained 12 per cent to 14.5c after Mr Gunn’s involvement with the business came to an end. He had earlier stepped down as CEO.

Oliver’s went public last year, raising $15 million selling shares to investors at 20c a pop. The shares were trading this morning at 14.5c — up 11 per cent.

Investors reacted sharply to an earnings downgrade in May – just two months after its earnings forecast had been reaffirmed – by dumping the shares to an end-of-day low of 11c. That was well below the post-IPO high of 39c a year ago.

Nickel explorer St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) is emerging as the small cap story of the week, today jumping another 20 per cent to hit 20.5c.

On Monday St George confirmed tests showed “multiple significant intersections of high-grade nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE mineralisation” at its Mt Alexander Project — initially pushing the shares to 14.5c.

“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.

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Silicon Valley-based Internet Of Things play Connected IO (ASX:CIO) pushed ahead today after a positive sales update.

Connected has banked $660,000 so far this quarter and reduced its US overheads by 40 per cent.

Manufacturing costs had been renegotiated “to increase gross margin on sales from 30 per cent to approximately 50 per cent on some products”.

CEO Yakov Temov said: “CIO has built a solid recurring customer base in the North American market. Over 80 per cent of our business is generated from existing customers.”

The shares climbed 13 per cent to 1.7c by 1.45pm AEST.

Gina Rinehart-backed Lakes Oil (ASX:LKO) has had to reassure investors its wells are not “plugged and abandoned” after a Victorian government department incorrectly updated the status of the company’s projects on its website.

The shares moved ahead to 0.3c — they have traded between 0.1c and 0.4c for a year.

Lakes Oil said Victoria’s department of resources changed the status of the Wombat-1, Wombat-3 and Wombat-4 wells to “other” and the Wombat-2 and Trifon-2 wells to “plugged and abandoned”.

“These changes to the status of the above wells were made by the department without any prior consultation with the company, and without its knowledge,” Lakes said.

According to Lakes, the five gas wells are still pending further work.

Six Sigma (ASX:SI6) also moved ahead after the first exploration pass over its Shamva project in Zimbabwe proved fruitful with the project unveiling its high-grade lithium wares.

The shares gained 9 per cent to 1.2c in early trade.

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.

Here’s a snapshot of the best performing ASX small caps at 12.45pm AEST Wednesday Jun 6:

GOING DOWN

Social-media-turned-augmented-reality app Thred (ASX:THD) was down 25 per cent to 0.3c ahead of the released of escrowed shares.

Thred said yesterday that 234,506,123 shares would be released to the market June 17 after a two-year escrow period lapsed.

The shares are at a three-year low.

Digital customer acquisition company Impelus (ASX:IMS) fell 16 per cent to 2.1c after announcing a placement of 100 million new shares at 2c each.

Chairman Ian Elliot and CEO Neil Wiles had agreed to participate in the placement, the company said.

The money would be used to accelerate the roll-out of new products and expand its UK operation.

Here’s a snapshot of the worst performing ASX small caps at 12.45pm AEST Wednesday Jun 6:

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