Resources Top 5: $200m capped explorer pops as investors eye $1.3bn payday

GreenX, now up 51% since December 29, is seeking up to $1.3 billion in damages from Polish Government
Soil sampling confirms 160km long rare earths trend at Green Critical Minerals’ North Barkly project
PolarX (gold), Lodestar (gold, lithium), Horseshoe Metals (gold, copper) up on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Tuesday January 3.

GREENX METALS (ASX:GRX)

(Up on no news)

The GRX share price is at multi year highs as a potentially company making payday looms.

The now-copper focused explorer is suing the Poland Government for (allegedly) unfairly blocking a couple of coal mines from going into production, back in the day.

It is seeking up to $1.3 billion in damages, which is eyewatering stuff for a $200m capped explorer.

This story from Polish business newspaper Parkiet seems to think there are media leaks about the pending arbitration proceedings.

In mid 2020, GRX partnered with litigation funder LCM to take Poland to court, seeking “lost profits for both the Jan Karski and Debiensko mines as well as the value of Prairie’s historic expenditure in developing both the Jan Karski and Debiensko mines plus interest and costs”.

Importantly, LCM only gets paid if GRX wins. In 2019, LCM had completed 205 cases since inception – 87 per cent of these were profitable.

In its September 2022 quarterly, GRX noted “the recent success of AIM listed, Rockhopper Exploration Energy Charter Treaty claim against … Italy in relation to oil and gas licenses including a unanimous decision against the Republic of Italy to award €190 million in damages plus interest”.

In November, 2 weeks of arbitration hearings were conducted. The Arbitral Tribunal will now render an Award (the legal term used for a decision by the tribunal) at some indeterminate point in the future.

“There has been an enormous amount of time and effort put into the claim by our legal and management teams,” GRX CEO Benjamin Stoikovich says.

“We now look forward to the Arbitral Tribunal rendering the Award in due course.

“GreenX has claimed up to £737 million in damages following Poland’s acts against the company which prevented it from being able to develop the Jan Karski and Debiensko projects.”

GREEN CRITICAL MINERALS (ASX:GCM)

GCM says soil sampling has confirmed a 160km long rare earths trend at its North Barkly project in the NT.

That’s right, 160km. It’s early days, of course, but GCM says all signs point to an “immediate ionic clay (IAC) REE target”.

“GCM is pleased by these results as they confirm that the project has the potential for a very large ionic clay REE deposit at a shallow depth, most likely less than 30m,” it says.

“Such a deposit would be expected to be present as a blanket underlying the environs of the surface area rare earths trend.”

There is also a coincident and “unusually shallow” (100m deep) iron oxide copper gold (IOCG) target.

Iron oxide copper gold ore (IOCG) deposits, like BHP’s (ASX:BHP) Olympic Dam, can be tremendously large, simple-to-process concentrations of copper, gold and other economic minerals.

In 1995, BHP drilled close to this geochemical and geophysical target at North Barkly and encountered copper, lead and zinc anomalism including sulphides from 90m to 400m, GCM says.

“BHP did not assay the top 90m of the hole at all and none of it for rare earth elements,” it says.

“GCM considers this hole to be a near miss result.”

The explorer is planning to extend the soil sampling program early in the next dry season, which includes more detailed sampling over the modelled IOCG targets.

GCM then intends to drill the IOCG target, initially testing the laterite soil profile for clay hosted ionic rare earths, but also for deeper base metals and gold.

The timing of this program will depend upon access agreements, weather, and suitable rig availability, it says.

POLARX (ASX:PXX)

(Up on no news)

Are we seeing investor sentiment return to precious metals?

The gold price is up 11% over the past two months to ~$US1,830/oz, and with central banks surely nearing peak interest rates and the economic outlook rather bleak, that trend could continue.

Cheap, ostensibly high-quality stocks are stirring.

$30m capped PXX is now up 130% over the past month on big volumes thanks to a vote of confidence from major gold miner Northern Star (ASX:NST).

NST became a 10% shareholder after shelling out ~$1m as part of a recent placement.

That’s the equivalent of finding a few bucks underneath the couch cushions for NST, but a big deal for PXX which is now cashed up for drilling in 2023.

The junior also scored one of the biggest gold hits of 2022, which you can read about here.

HORSESHOE METALS (ASX:HOR)

(Up on no news)

HOR is busy on a couple of promising gold projects.

There are a bunch of targets in the crosshairs at the Glenloth goldfield project, near Barton Gold’s 1Moz Tunkillia project in the Gawler Craton of South Australia.

Meanwhile drilling kicked off late November across a bunch of targets at its historical Horseshoe Lights project, ~60 km from Sandfire Resources’ (ASX:SFR) DeGrussa copper mine.

Horseshoe Lights has already produced ~316,000oz gold and 55,000t copper metal in two phases of mining, but HOR believes there is a lot more to be found.

Up to 15 holes for ~2000m is planned in current phase as part of 6000m multiphase program, the company says.

LODESTAR MINERALS (ASX:LSR)

(Up on no news)

The small lithium-gold explorer has a number of interesting programs teed up for an early 2023 start.

Drilling is set for the current quarter at the 100% owned Coolgardie West lithium-gold project.

A ~1000m drilling program pencilled in for late April/ early June will test the best copper-gold targets at the Earaheedy project.

Meanwhile, at the Nepean nickel JV (80% Auroch (ASX:AOU), 20% LSR), AOU announced 3,000m of drilling to pursue extensions to the high-grade lithium results recently intersected by RC exploration drilling.

“Auroch have mapped pegmatites close to the mineralised drillholes which will be tested at depth to evaluate the lithium mineralisation potential of these pegmatites,” LSR says.

“NPRC084 intersected 6m @ 1.38% Li2O, including 2m @ 3.26% Li2O from 198m and NPRC058 intersected 1m @ 0.88% Li2O from 78m.”