Resources Top 5: Is something big coming for Lycaon Resources?

Lycaon soars on highly awaited exploration results from Stanmore
AusQuest is still on a tear from yesterday’s news of a copper discovery
Biggest gainers have no news out

Your standout small cap resources stocks for Friday, January 24, 2025.

LYCAON RESOURCES (ASX:LYN)

(Up on no news)

West Arunta niobium and rare earths explorer LYN made headlines earlier this month after naming former Azure Minerals’ MD Tony Rovira as a director of the company, a move that saw the company’s shares surge 66% to 15c on its best volume in months.

The seasoned mining veteran also invested $360,000 in LYN through the issue of 4m shares at 9c a share to help drive the company’s focus in the remote, under-explored region as well as facilitate the acquisition of new project opportunities.

LYN securities are currently under a ‘pause in trading’ pending a further announcement on exploration results, likely from its maiden drilling program at the Stansmore project.

“As we have seen with WA1’s and Encounter’s recent drill results in the region, this area has proven to have a very good strike rate of success in drilling regionally significant geophysical anomalies like our Stansmore target,” LYN technical director Thomas Langley said last year.

“We will become the first ever explorer to drill the Stansmore magnetic anomaly below the thin cover of sand, with the aim to emulate the success of WA1 in making a major discovery in the West Arunta region.

“Geophysical modelling has shown the Stansmore magnetic anomaly to be a pipelike body 500m in diameter and continuing at depth,” he added.

“This is not dissimilar to other significant discoveries such as the 8Moz Havieron gold-copper deposit and Australia’s major Ernst Henry copper gold mine, also discovered in Proterozoic aged terrain.”

AusQuest (ASX:AQD)

(Up on yesterday’s news)

A major copper find in southern Peru blew the lights out of the stock market yesterday with thick hits including 348m at a grade of 0.26% copper and 0.06ppm gold.

What could be the first significant ASX exploration story of 2025 has investors asking whether majors could come sniffing as AQD works to build on its initial success.

The discovery saw AQD’s shares rise a tidy 200% on Thursday with MD Graeme Drew – former Rio Tinto exploration manager – saying the company only just scratched the surface of the target within the Cangallo project.

That the discovery was made in an area without any historical drilling just makes it that much sweeter, though having most of it under cover means that more drilling and possibly geophysics would be required to prove its extent.

Cangallo also has a leg up over a lot of other porphyry discoveries in that it is fairly near surface, which could make an open cut mine viable.

“We have a large caldera-type structure, which you can see on satellite imagery, and that’s anywhere from several square kilometres up to 10-20km2 possibly,” Drew said.

Arrow Minerals (ASX:AMD)

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Arrow rose strongly before entering a trading halt today on news of a proposed capital raising.

The company completed ore type characterisation and metallurgical testwork on Simandou formation oxide BIF at its Simandou North iron ore asset in Guinea earlier this month.

Simulated flowsheets delivered high grade +66% Fe and low alumina (<0.5% Al2O3) hematite fines product across all three flowsheet options><0.5% Al) hematite fines product across all three flowsheet options.

But interest in the stock has been propelled in recent times instead by its bauxite prospects at the Niagara project, where it is planning a scoping study before the middle of 2025.

A resource estimate is due this quarter at Niagara, where AMD has reported a JORC exploration target of 170-340Mt at an average grade in the range of approximately 40-46% Al2O3, and 1-4% SiO2.

Guinean bauxite at similar specs is trading at a record high of US$130/t thanks to high demand in China and supply issues in the West African nation. Bauxite is the key feedstock for alumina and aluminium metal.

Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS)

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TMS is advancing its Barkly project in the NT’s Tennant Creek area, inking a landmark strategic copper and gold alliance with CuFe and Emmerson Resources last year to fast-track development.

The alliance aims to assess the viability of a single multi-user processing facility in the Tennant Creek region and will aim to complete a scoping study on development options for the Emmerson and Tennant Minerals 100% owned deposits as well as the CuFe operated JV deposits.

After hitting thick, high-grade copper and gold zones at the Bluebird discovery in June last year, TMS has another drilling campaign underway focusing on Bluebird lookalike targets and high-grade gold occurrences.

Drilling will include two rigs using RC and Aircore methods operating concurrently on three high priority targets.

Vertex Minerals (ASX:VTX)

(Up on no news)

Vertex owns the high-grade Reward gold mine at Hill End, New South Wales, just 40km from Newmont’s Cadia.

Its ground has historically produced more than 1.8Moz of gold. Reward has a resource of 419,000t at an eye-watering 16.7g/t gold for 225,000oz of gold.

Last year, the company acquired a 110,000tpa Gekko gravity gold plant and kicked off commissioning in recent weeks with an ore sorter to be installed this month.

VTX has been working hard at bringing the project online and reported last month that gold was on track for the end of January. The company’s shares have climbed over 200% in a year.

It will initially process 50,000t of stockpiles while it develops the Reward underground mine.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Vertex Minerals is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.