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Resources Top 5: Another lithium explorer joins the 10-bagger club as sentiment soars
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- Popular lithium stock Arizona Lithium has gained an impressive 1,350% year-to-date
- Arcadia announces acquisition of JORC resources abutting ‘Bitterwasser’ lithium project
- Copper explorer Cannindah raises $1.5m at significant premium to share price
Here are the biggest small cap resource winners in early trade, Wednesday November 3.
ARIZONA LITHIUM (ASX:AZL)
Another lithium ten-bagger confirmed.
The popular lithium stock has now posted three straight days of gains since announcing a $13m cap raise Monday.
Proceeds from the placement – plus the $5m AZL already had in the bank — will be used to design and construct a research facility to process material from the flagship ‘Big Sandy’ lithium project and fast-track metallurgical test work.
Exploration drilling is also fully funded and will begin immediately after US Bureau of Land Management approval is received, AZL says.
Big Sandy currently has a resource 32.5 million tonnes grading 1,850 parts per million lithium for 320,800 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent. This covers just 4% of the project area, the company says.
“With metallurgical testing continuing at Hazen, and further drilling planned at Big Sandy with the aim of further expanding the existing resource, it is an exciting time for all AZL stakeholders,” managing director Paul Lloyd says.
The $250m market cap stock has gained an impressive 260% over the past month, and 1,350% year-to-date.
ARCADIA MINERALS (ASX:AM7)
ASX lithium explorers are running hot this week.
AM7 has come out of a trading halt today to announce the ‘conditional’ acquisition of JORC resources abutting its ~3,438sqkm ‘Bitterwasser’ lithium project in Namibia.
The new ground contains an ‘inferred’ resource of 15.1 million tonnes @ 828ppm lithium and 1,79% potassium – grades which “compare favourably with similar clay deposits in Clayton Valley, Nevada, USA”, AM7 says.
This resource area represents only 6% of the newly acquired exposed clay pans.
The licenses also hold potential to host lithium-in-brine aquifers, with a “proof-of-concept” study now underway to guide exploration over a geological feature known as the ‘Kalkrand Half-Graben’.
Auger drilling to expand the resource will kick off this month, AM7 says.
The $8.9m market cap stock is up +30% on its June listing price of 20c per share.
PETRATHERM (ASX:PTR)
Could this be the turning point for PTR?
The $11m market cap stock — which is down 75% year-to date — has uncovered 3 promising gold anomalies at the ‘Comet’ project in the mineral rich Gawler Craton region of South Australia.
This project is near the mothballed Challenger gold deposit (1.2Moz @ 5.1g/t), and 30 km from Marmota’s (ASX:MEU) recent high-grade ‘Aurora Tank’ gold discovery.
However, this ground has been historically hard to explore due to the 5m – 20m of ‘new’ soil cover which obscures any potential deposits at depth.
This makes surface soil and rock sampling ineffective.
PTR overcame this problem by substituting soil sampling with shallow drilling programs to get into the deeply weathered basement rock.
The new assay results have yielded gold in saprolite up to 305ppb (part per billion) and for comparison, the gold in saprolite above primary gold mineralisation at the nearby ‘Comet’ gold prospect ranged between 7 to 51 ppb.
Bedrock drilling below the saprolite anomaly at Comet has yielded multiple high gold intercepts of up to 6.97g/t gold, the company says.
Anything above 5g/t is generally considered high grade.
Infill drill sampling over the new prospective zones is scheduled to start in ~3 weeks’ time. Following the infill sampling work, the rig will then expand the regional shallow geochemical grid sampling program into new areas.
PTR will also conduct core/percussion drilling of the nearby ‘Target 14’ and Comet prospect areas from mid-November.
TEMPEST MINERALS (ASX:TEM)
Another lithium announcement, another sizeable share price gain.
This one comes from gold and base metals focussed explorer TEM, which is reminding punters of its “strong exposure to lithium in Australia and internationally”.
“In addition to the company’s gold and base metal portfolio in the Yalgoo and Mt Magnet regions, TEM maintains a strong de-risked position in lithium both in Australia and Internationally through its WA exploration projects and holdings in projects in Africa (hard rock lithium) and the USA (lithium brine),” TEM says.
While these projects are taking a back seat for now, TEM says it is prepping for early-stage reconnaissance mapping, drone surveys and a targeting study at the ‘Rocky Hill’ lithium, kaolin, and magnesium project near Perth.
CANNINDAH RESOURCES (ASX:CAE)
Yesterday copper explorer CAE completed a placement to raise $1.5m at $0.31c per share — a significant premium to the share price at the time.
The cash came from existing major shareholder and sophisticated investor Paul Weel, who is already up on his investment thanks to a 20% share price gain in early trade today.
(Could this be ex-V8 Supercar driver Paul Weel?)
CAE’s brownfields ‘Mt Cannindah’ copper-gold-silver project has an existing resource of 5.5 million tonnes @ 0.93% copper.
In late October, assays returned a further 92m at 1.2% copper from the bottom half of hole 21CAEDD002. All up, this monstrous intersection totals 282m @ 0.94% copper, 0.3 g/t gold, and 19 g/t silver — which translates to 282m @ 1.28% copper equivalent.
The next hole, (21CAEDD003) still has assay results pending, with the hole ending at 762.6m (versus a planned 250m). CAE is expecting these “in the short term”.
The $200m market cap stock is up 180% over the past month, and 1,200% year-to-date.
