Bargain Barrel: The sub $15m market cap stocks looking for uranium, rare earths, and ‘new opportunities’

Hitting the jackpot on a previously overlooked microcap stock is every investor’s dream.

Punters have been jumping onboard some legit small cap resources winners lately, especially in popular sectors like lithium and uranium.

Bargain Barrel: Part 1 focused on 10 unloved sub-$15m market cap lithium explorers that are yet to rerate.

Part 2 will look at forgotten uranium (very hot) and rare earths (heating up) stocks, as well as those companies looking to transform their fortunes with a big acquisition.

Uranium

THOR MINING (ASX:THR)

Market Cap: $14m

Cash: ~$2.9m

The dual listed explorer is focused primarily on copper, plus gold and uranium.

Thor has three projects within a historic high-grade uranium-vanadium mining district in southwest Colorado known as the Uravan mineral belt.

Uravan has produced +85 million pounds of uranium oxide and 660 million pounds of vanadium over the past 100 years.

Drilling at its ‘Wedding Bell’ uranium project is due to kick off once permits are received, the company said last week.

This program will target high grade uranium and vanadium at the ‘Rim Rock’, Groundhog’ and ‘Section 23’ targets.

Thor believes there to be “high potential” at Section 23 which, because it was previously held by the government, has never been drill tested.

RESOLUTION MINERALS (ASX:RML)

Market Cap: $10m

Cash: $1.75m (June 30)

Resolution is mainly focused on finding monster copper-gold deposits, but it does have a copper-cobalt-uranium project called ‘Wollogorang’ in the Northern Territory.

Mid-tier copper producer OZ Minerals (ASX:OZL) is currently spending $5m on exploration to earn a 51% interest in the project.

Rare Earths

FRONTIER RESOURCES (ASX:FNT)

Market Cap: $14m

Cash: $5.18m (August 27)

~$10m market cap Frontier is the latest ASX explorer to dip their toes into ionic clay (IAC) hosted rare earths after acquiring the ‘Murraydium’ project in South Australia.

IAC deposits – like the ones exploited in southern China — are some of the cheapest and most readily accessible sources of heavy rare earths.

“Ionic Clay REE deposits are relatively fast to drill and develop, with low capex, simple metallurgy, and a high value REE offtake product,” FNT says.

The company is currently undertaking early-stage work — like field mapping and reviewing historical data — to assist in defining targets.

RED MOUNTAIN MINING (ASX:RMX)

Market Cap: $15m

Cash: $1.7m (June 30)

Red Mountain is preparing an exploration push at its ‘Mt Mansbridge’ rare earths project in WA’s Kimberley region.

Drilling in October will test three REE targets — Mansbridge, Killi-Killi and Kylo — as well as the ‘Déjà vu’ nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE prospect.

EMETALS (ASX:EMT)

Market Cap: $8m

Cash: $686,000 (July 30)

Drilling is currently focused on the greenfields ‘Mughal’ nickel-copper-PGE project in WA, but EMT also has several rare earths projects in the portfolio.

Last quarter, surface sampling the ‘Codra Creek’ project defined “REE enriched granitoids with up to 0.29% TREO in rock chip sampling”, the company says.

EMT says it will investigate the Ionic Clay model for the Gascoyne in the context of these results and ongoing project generative work.

1243m of aircore drilling completed at ‘Cowalinya’ project — prospective for IAC Type deposits – also returned significant results.

MT MONGER RESOURCES (ASX:MTM)

Market Cap: $5.5m

Cash: $5m (June 30)

This WA gold explorer is also hunting rare earths at the ‘East Laverton’ project.

The recently listed stock is exploring the ‘Point Kidman’ prospect area, where historical aircore drilling indicated the presence of anomalous light REE.

Point Kidman is ~45km from the world-class Mt Weld open pit mine and concentration plant operated by Lynas Rare Earths (ASX:LYC).

Further systematic sampling “over a broad area of approximately 50km2 is required to evaluate this exploration opportunity”, the company says.

AUSMON RESOURCES (ASX:AOA)

Market Cap: $4m

Cash: $55,000 (June 30)

Earlier this month perpetual minnow AOA applied for a couple of tenements in South Australia prospective for rare earths.

The tenements are in the same region where Australian Rare Earths (ASX:AR3) recently announced a resource of 39.9 million tonnes at 725 ppm TREO (Total Rare Earth Oxides) at the ‘Koppamurra’ ionic clay project.

“When the tenements are granted and landholder access agreements have been executed the company plans to carry out, subject to government approval, orientation fine fraction sampling and analysis of the Strandlines prior to planning shallow Aircore Drilling to test for the clay fraction,” AOA says.

Wildcard Round: Who wants a new project?

A new direction can completely revitalise a stale exploration company.

Tao Commodities – now Hyperion Metals (ASX:HYM) — has been transformed from $3m battler to $157m butterfly since acquiring the ‘Titan’ titanium, rare earths, silica sand and mineral sands project in the US.

And while previous iterations as a furniture assembly business (AssembleBay) and vanadium explorer (ScandiVanadium) did not get investors’ pulses racing, Province Resources (ASX:PRL) has hit the motherlode with hydrogen.

The $160m market cap stock is now up 600% since announcing the acquisition of a green hydrogen project in WA’s northwest in February this year.

So, which sub-$15m stocks are still looking for their company-maker? Here’s the list, collected from company announcements:

Copper Strike (ASX:CSE)

Cradle Resources (ASX:CXX)

Cassius Mining (ASX:CMD)

Discovery Africa (ASX:DAF)

Oakajee Corp (ASX:OKJ)

Renegade Exploration (ASX:RNX)

Lincoln Minerals (ASX:LML)

Castle Minerals (ASX:CDT)

Black Canyon (ASX:BCA)

Kalnorth Gold (ASX:KGM)