- Battery metals stocks have outperformed other IPOs this year
- Lithium Plus is still trading 184% up from its listing price
- Bellavista Resources has high hopes for its nickel-PGE projects in WA
Whether it’s lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, rare earths, manganese, magnesium, or vanadium, debuting battery metals stocks have outperformed the wider IPO market this year.
Lithium Plus (ASX:LPM) rocketed up 292% on debut, peaking at $0.98 per share from its listing price of $0.25, before dropping back down to $0.71 last week (184% increase).
Notably, its flagship Bynoe project is adjacent and along strike to Core Lithium’s (ASX:CXO) Finniss lithium mine which has a current mineral resource estimate of 14.7 Mt at 1.32% Li2O.
Plus, the company also nabbed a cornerstone investment from Suzhou CATH Energy Technologies, a subsidiary of CATL which is the world’s largest EV battery manufacturer.
It’s just part of a wider trend in 2022.
Most of these stocks have also maintained those early gains — just look these at recent debutantes.
Cobalt-nickel play Nico Resources (ASX:NC1) – a spinout from tin producer Metals X (ASX:MLX) – is now trading up a massive 507.5% at $1.21 per share.
International Graphite (ASX:IG6) is up 72.5%. It’s main game is an integrated mine and downstream graphite business in WA, with the goal to produce battery anode material for battery makers.
Then there’s Firetail Resources (ASX:FTL) – up 48%.
The explorer’s QLD and WA portfolio contains lithium, rubidium, nickel, cobalt, copper and gold, which the company says places it in an ideal position as the battery metals industry develops into the future.
And Lord Resources (ASX:LRD) is up 60%, with its Horse Rocks lithium-nickel project in WA just 8km from Mineral Resources’ (ASX:MIN) Mt Marion Lithium Mine – with the same source granite and ‘Mt Marion-style’ lithium potential.
So, what are the battery metals IPOs to come?
Bellavista Resources (ASX:BVR)
Listing: 25 May
IPO: $6.5m at $0.20
The explorer is targeting large, high-grade base metal and battery mineral deposits in Western Australia.
The company has a large and highly prospective tenement package that covers approximately 100km of strike of the northern margin of the highly prospective Edmund Basin.
The projects include Brumby Deposit, Vernon Base Metals, Vernon Nickel-PGE and Gorge Creek which are highly prospective for zinc, copper, silver, PGE and uranium deposits.
The company has high hopes for the Vernon and Gorge Creek nickel-PGE projects, which Geoscience Australia (GA) has flagged could potentially host economic nickel-copper-PGE deposits.
GA also specifically highlighted the potential of the sills which outcrop within the Vernon project area and have associated anomalous nickel, copper, chromium and platinum, palladium geochemistry in GSWA regional soil data.
“The significance of this is that these host rocks and setting is strongly analogous to the world-class Nova-Bollinger discovery in the Fraser Range region of WA,” the company says.
“Specifically, they both are hosted in ‘eye-structures’ (lensed intrusive sills) and initial surface geochemical surveys have similar geochemical signatures.”
And the same goes for the Gorge Creek project area.
Listing: 16 May
IPO: $8m at $0.20
This company is focused on the exploration and development of its Aurora Project in Oregon, USA.
The project hosts a defined uranium resource and is prospective for lithium, and the company will conduct exploration and evaluation programs to assess the potential of both these minerals.
“The company is coming to market at a time of a global focus for a clean energy transition of shifting away from fossil fuel sources to a low carbon future,” non-executive chair Peter Lester says.
“Nuclear energy requires uranium and this energy provides reliable emissions free baseload power in many countries as part of a clean energy transition.
“Lithium is also a critical mineral as part of a clean energy transition with lithium primarily used in lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, storage and mobile devices.”
Funds from the IPO will go towards a two-year exploration and evaluation program on the project, which already hosts an indicated uranium resource of 65.7 Mt at 253 ppm eU3O8.
Listing: 20 May
IPO: $6m
This explorer is focussed on assets prospective for nickel, lithium and gold in the Goldfields-Esperance region of WA.
It actually holds the largest land package ever held by one company in the history of exploration within the Lake Johnston Greenstone Belt and says the region has been historically overlooked and underexplored – with the Lake Johnston project never the main focus for nickel majors that previously held the ground.
And there are occurrences of lithium, gold and vanadium present within and near the project.
The company plans to collate historical surface geochemistry and drilling results from +6,000 drill holes and 27,000 geochemical surface samples to define the nickel-cobalt oxide potential in areas already drilled – and to define untested and new targets.
Listing: 27 May
IPO: $6m at $0.20
The company has two lithium projects – the Solonopole Project in Brazil and the Napperby project in the NT.
Solonopole’s permits cover historic artisanal mining sites previously mined for lithium, coltan (tantalum and niobium) and tin.
And Napperby is in the Pine Creek Pegmatite province – which hosts Core’s Finniss project.
Plus, the company’s directors and consultants have all held senior executive positions with established lithium producers with operations in Australia, Argentina and Canada, non-executive chairman Jerome Vitale says.
“The company has secured major chemical manufacturer Ya Hua International Investment and Development Co as a major anchor investor, which has agreed to subscribe for $1,000,000 under the Offer,” he said.
“I believe this demonstrates confidence in the quality of the company’s lithium exploration portfolio and experienced management team.”
Listing: TBA
IPO: $8.5m at $0.20
This explorer has its eyes on the Sarytogan Graphite Project in Central Kazakhstan which is un-substitutable in the battery market, with drilling kicking off late last month.
Kazakhstan is an established mining jurisdiction smack bang between the largest battery manufacturers in Europe and China.
Plus, the project already has a mineral resource of 209 Mt at 28.5% total graphitic carbon (TGC) for 60 Mt contained graphite.
The company says the ASX has stated they are not currently in a position to provide a formal listing decision, and have requested that the title extension beyond October 2022 be procured ahead of listing.
SGA is working on fast-tracking the title extension – targeting June 2022.