LAST ORDERS: A wistful look back on the day before the midterms happen

Well, will you look at the time? The day’s pretty much done, so while Bernice whips round to put the chairs up on the tables, how’s about we spread out a sheepskin rug and get low and lazy by the fireside to mull over the day’s events?

Because as the weather warms up, it’s very close to that time of year where our fireside soirees turn to late afternoon pool parties – so let’s make the most of the time that we have, and start spittin’ rhymes like Super Investor and Surprise Rap God, Ca$h Buffy-T, who is reportedly pretty happy with how things are going on his side of the hedge.

Source: Where else but /r/WallStreetBets?

FROM THE HEADLINES

Straight off the bat, let’s get one thing clear: there is probably never a good time to down industrial quantities of alcohol, let yourself into a stranger’s home, take off all your clothes, climb into someone else’s bed and get discovered by the shocked woman whose bed it is, who then calls the police who – in turn – arrive to find you unable to speak because you’re so impaired, so they haul you off to jail.

But there is especially never a good time for it if you’re the son of the chairman of the second-largest meat-processing company on the planet.

And it’s especially-especially not a great time if it’s been barely six weeks since you dipped out of your high-flying Hedgie-VC career to take up the role of chief financial officer at your old man’s meat company.

Annnnd dear sweet merciful crap, a week before you’re meant to be front and centre to deliver the fiscal fourth-quarter earnings for your the company where you’re the CFO – the very meaty mega-corp your grandfather founded with little more than his own two hands and an insatiable lust for murdering animals – is perched right up the top of the list of bad days to be pulling that kind of stunt.

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin trying to figure out what random variant of Wayne Carey’s Crushed-Up Back Pills™ the alleged behaviour of John Tyson (Tyson Foods CFO) is going to be blamed on, but whatever it was, I’m pretty sure I know a few folks who might be interested in acquiring some. For science.

LAST ORDERS

Let’s kick off what’s been happening in the depths of the market with an update on a trading halt from yesterday. It turns out that Gascoyne Resources’ (ASX:GCY) “announcement to the market in relation to production and cost guidance at the Dalgaranga Gold Project for the December Quarter and the second half of FY2023” was a lot more serious than most of us thought.

At 12:23pm today, Gascoyne went into an immediate suspension from trading, followed at 12:49pm by the announcement the company had decided that “abnormally high rainfall, labour shortages and COVID-19 impacts” had conspired to turn its Dalgaranga Gold Project in Western Australia’s Murchison region into an unsustainable endeavour.

GCY says that The 2.5Mtpa Dalgaranga mill will be transitioned to operating on a care and maintenance basis over the next 2 to 3 weeks and maintained in a state ready for a rapid resumption of production, and in the meantime the bulk of the workforce currently at Dalgaranga will be demobilised over the next 1-2 days.

It’s not the end of the road for Gascoyne, which will spend the immediate short term looking at how to meet its obligations as it pivots towards other projects it has been developing in recent times, with Managing Director and CEO, Simon Lawson, saying the decision to pull the pin on Dalgaranga was “very disappointing”.

Elsewhere, Lode Resources (ASX:LDR) put out an announcement today, centred around results of a 1,899g/t silver equivalent intercept at the company’s Copy Cat Lode discovery.

LDR says the results show high-grade silver-lead-zinc-copper mineralisation over a thick drill intercept at shallow depths including 1.5m @ 1,899g/t AgEq, within a broader intercept of 20.5m @ 375 g/t AgEq including

20.5 m @ 375 g/t AgEq from 16.0m including
8.8 m @ 667 g/t AgEq fr0m 21.2m including
1.5m @ 1,899 g/t AgEq also from 21.2m

The announcement had precisely the effect you’d expect such a grand, large number to have, with Lode trading 26% higher by the end of the day.

And last one for today, Kineticko (ASX:KKO) is no doubt as pleased as the cat what’s been into the cream, after its excitingly-named Core well 270-06C (they just don’t name wells like that anymore, do they?) was successfully spudded, which is still a term that I find as hilarious as it is baffling.

I’m sure there’s a reason it’s called spudding, but it’s late, I’m tired, super-lazy and I’ve already lost interest – but if you feel like writing me a thin-lipped email explaining it to me, I won’t stand in your way.

Anyhoo… KKO has spudded Core well 270-06C (the “6C-est” well we reckon KKO has ever spudded) and Kinetiko CEO, Nick de Blocq, is proper chuffed about it, saying: “This borehole represents the first of many we have planned in this area”.

TRADING HALTS

Tymlez Group (ASX:TYM) – It’s that old, timeless classic ASX move: a capital raise.

NickelX (ASX:NKL) – NickelX has an update to the market regarding diamond drilling results at its Cosmos South Project. More likely they found nickel than diamonds, I reckon – but that’s just a guess and you never know your luck in the big cosmos.