Resources Top 5: A new cobalt IPO, takeover bids, and a couple of shiny gold stocks

Zinc explorer Altamin tells shareholders ‘take no action’ on unsolicited takeover offer
Victory Goldfields pulls up impressive 5m @ 15.2g/t gold from 37m
The ASX’s newest battery metals stock Koba Resources enters listed life on strong footing

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Wednesday May 4.

ALTAMIN (ASX:AZI)

The advanced zinc play says shareholders should take no action on a unsolicited takeover offer tabled yesterday arvo from its largest shareholder, VBS.

VBS is part of the powerful family office Victor Smorgon Group and is Altamin’s largest shareholder, with a disclosed voting power of 19.73%.

The 9.5c per share offer isn’t exactly going to blow minds — it represents an 8.7% discount to AZI’s 52-week high of 10.4c per share, and a 3.1% discount to the 9.8c per share highest price achieved within the last month.

AZI will provide shareholders with a Target’s Statement early June, it says.

“Shareholders should wait until they receive and consider the Target’s Statement before deciding whether to accept or reject the VBS Takeover Offer.”

AZI’s main game is the Gorno zinc project in Italy, where a Scoping Study ascribed a net present value (NPV) of US$211 million ($297 million) in late-2021.

The US$2,850/t zinc price used in the study compares with over US$4,000/t today, the company says.

It also has exposure to battery metals projects in Italy, including the ‘Punta Corna’ cobalt project and lithium projects neighbouring ground held by Vulcan Energy Resources (ASX:VUL).

The $40m market cap stock is up 42% year-to-date. It had $6.1m in the bank at the end of March.

VICTORY GOLDFIELDS (ASX:1VG)

Fire assay sampling on drilling completed late last year returned thick, shallow, and high-grade gold hits up to 54.3g/t gold at the ‘Coodardy’ project, part of 1VG’s tenement portfolio in the Cue region of WA.

The highlight result was 5m @ 15.2g/t gold from 37m (including 1m @ 54.3g/t from 38m).

Anything above 5g/t is generally considered high grade.

‘Fire assay’ — which melts samples in a furnace heated to about 1000 degrees — is the industry standard process for obtaining definitive gold concentrations from high-grade ores.

1VG says a mineral resource for Coodardy, which remains open, will be finalised by the end of the month.

A small 600m follow-up drilling program will also commence soon “to search for an adjacent near surface supergene enriched orebody”.

“Victory is very encouraged with the Coodardy assay results which provides evidence there is potential for the gold mineralisation to continue within the area covered by the RC drilling program which will commence around the middle of this month,” exec director Brendan Clark says.

“With the latest grades from the fire assay program being far greater than the previously announced aqua regia results from the 4 metre composites, Victory remains optimistic with the outcome from the initial JORC 2012 mineral resource estimate work that has now commenced.”

The $6.7m market cap tiddler is down 10% year-to-date. It had $2.1m in the bank at the end of March.

OZAURUM RESOURCES (ASX:OZM)

(Up on no news)

The hard-drilling gold explorer has bounced higher, perhaps in response to a what we assume was a high quality presso at this year’s RIU Sydney Resources Round-up Conference.

Late last month OZM hit 1.31g/t over 56m — including 18m @ 2.07g/t — in drilling at the ‘Mulgabbie North’ project, next door to Northern Star’s (ASX:NST) tier 1 Carosue Dam operations in WA.

The results, which include significant hits from three holes spaced 100m apart, come from a recently launched 7,500m reverse circulation (RC) drilling campaign.

It’s early days, but this virgin discovery at the so-called ‘Demag Zone’ remains ‘open’ all over the joint, OZM says.

“These excellent RC results, combined with aircore (AC) results defining new zones of mineralisation now extending for 2.8km in strike further highlight the potential of Mulgabbie North to be a significant gold project,” it says.

After listing in 2021, OZM punched in a mammoth 82,000m of combined RC and AC for the year in the hunt for WA’s next big gold mine.

It is planning an initial 7,500m of RC, 2,000m of diamond and 5,000m of AC for the first six months of 2022.

The $10m market cap stock is up 30% year-to-date. It had ~$3.3m in the bank at the end of March.

KOBA RESOURCES (ASX:KOB)

The ASX newest battery metals stock has entered listed life on a strong footing, up 20% in early trade.

KOB was spun out of New World Resources (ASX:NWC) to explore and develop its North American copper-cobalt assets.

It has five five projects: the Blackpine, Colson and Panther cobalt-copper projects in the Idaho Cobalt Belt; the Elkhorn cobalt project in the same belt; and the Goodsprings copper-cobalt project in Nevada.

Blackpine and Panther were acquired in November last year.

Both projects have been the subject of historical mining but no drilling has been undertaken at Blackpine since 1996. A maiden program is expected to kick off in Q3.

KOB raised $9m in its IPO, which gave it an indicative market capitalisation of $13 million upon listing.

REEDY LAGOON (ASX:RLC)

Previously focused on gold and iron ore, the small explorer has now shunted its long-held lithium assets back to flagship position.

A couple of years after mothballing its US brines projects due to poor sentiment and lack of suitable processing methods, ‘Alkali Lake North’ and ‘Clayton Valley’ have now been hauled out from the dusty recesses of RLC’s project portfolio.

They are within 30km of the ‘Silver Peak’ lithium brine operation owned by Albemarle Corp and a few hundred klicks from the Tesla Gigafactory in Reno.

A $3m cap raise launched Monday will help fund exploration, it says.

The $18m market cap stock is down 17.5% year-to-date.