Sorry for sounding like a broken record.
But it’s the same old story. The new week brought yet another US President Trump assassination attempt, the Strait of Hormuz remains shut, shut, shut and the price of oil is up, up, up. We are nearly back to the early Iran war highs of US$130 per barrel of Brent, with oil touching US$125 this week.
The ASX floundered and Australia remained stuck in the mud, stranded with dwindling oil reserves, while the tech-heavy US market surged ahead to even higher all-time highs. The situation is so dire down under that the NSW Labor government moved to reopen the state to new fossil fuel exploration. The decision, citing an energy shortfall, overturns a decade-long ban, despite forecasts showing renewables and battery storage are supposed to reduce future gas demand.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit fresh record closes multiple times, led by the usual suspects. Nvidia retook its $5 trillion crown with aplomb, alongside strong earnings reactions from the magnificent seven techs.
The US market is still rewarding AI infrastructure bets despite eye-watering capex and power demands. Fortunately for the US, they are the world’s biggest oil and gas producer and they have accepted that if they want to run their mega AI data centres, wind and solar won't supply enough energy density to get it done. Imagine that: a government that can accept reality rather than “playing ostrich” and sticking its head in the sand.
The Reserve Bank of Australia is now understandably expected to press ahead with further multiple rate hikes, as a fresh surge in inflation - driven by energy constraints - keeps pressure on policymakers and Australian consumers under the thumb.
Runners of the week were all things AI, battery and critical metals, as a drone battery specialist took out top spot and a couple of Greenland-based resource projects pushed their way onto the list.
1414 DEGREES (ASX: 14D)
Up 217% (1.8c – 5.7c)
Running away with the honours this week is 1414 Degrees, 1414 Degrees, which exploded after its nanoparticle battery tech delivered a 50 per cent boost over traditional graphite, targeting the defence drone industry.
The surge followed a recent technical visit to George Washington University by the company’s chief technology and operations officer, Peter Yaron, which yielded some seriously improved results on commercial graphite anode chemistries.
1414 says its SiNIL technology is being developed as a drop-in upgrade to existing graphite-based lithium-ion battery anodes.
The goal is to replace conventional silicon oxide additives without forcing manufacturers to change their established battery-making processes.
It’s a clever approach that differentiates SiNIL from costly high-silicon anode technologies, which often require complex and expensive manufacturing.
Instead, 1414 is targeting improved performance through a simpler and potentially much cheaper manufacturing pathway.
The company says it has now achieved a specific capacity of 530 milliampere-hours per gram (mAh/g) in its test cells, a whopping 50 per cent improvement over standard graphite.
1414 goes on to exclaim that this is just the tip of the iceberg, with performance rapidly moving towards 600mAh/g and beyond.
For a drone, that 50 per cent capacity increase translates directly into extended range, increased payload and/or shorter charging times – the three performance variables that commercial and military drone operators care most about.
The global commercial and military drone market is projected to reach US$160 billion by 2030, driven by geopolitical tension and the crazy adoption of drones in defence since the Ukraine war.
1414 doesn’t need to capture a large share of the market to generate meaningful commercial activity. The first few supply chain relationships will likely matter more than the size of the addressable market, with conversations already underway.
PATHKEY.AI LTD (ASX: PKY)
Up 92% (3.7c – 7.1c)
Runner-up this week was Pathkey.AI, after it unveiled a tech takeover of Singapore-based Chipforge, an AI-driven semiconductor hardware design and verification platform developer.
The proposed acquisition extends Pathkey's work on AI beyond clinical trial design and drug discovery and into semiconductor engineering, applying a similar agent-based architecture to another data-intensive workflow.
Chipforge is developing a platform that translates high-level design intent into verified, synthesisable hardware code, targeting a design process that can otherwise take 12 to 24 months and cost millions of dollars.
The company's stock ran almost 100 per cent, however, it would seem there may have been some early rumblings of a perfect partnership in the run-up to the announcement, with the shares sneaking up from 2.2c just a couple of weeks ago.
The word on the street was so strong that the fun police down at the ASX whacked a “please explain” on Pathkey’s desk as the share price seemed to be running all on its own.
Pathkey says it won’t need an accompanying capital raising either, as it already holds about $3.26 million in cash and expects around $840,000 in research and development rebates and other income over the next 12 months.
Pathkey looks like it’s cleverly locked up one of the most complex and valuable workflows in technology, in semiconductor hardware design.
Through Chipforge’s platform, it now has the potential to slash time and costs for multi-million-dollar chip designs, translating high-level intent into the lucrative hardware and code megatrend.
ECLIPSE METALS LTD (ASX: EPM)
Up 69% (1.6c – 2.7c)
Our final podium spot this week goes to rare earths dynamo Eclipse Metals, after it surged up 69 per cent this week on massive turnover of 140 million shares and a huge upgrade to its Grønnedal rare earths project in southwest Greenland.
The company tabled a hefty uplift in resource to 208 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides (TREO) at a grade of 0.72 per cent. The booming inventory has no doubt got President Trump absolutely salivating at the prospect of an enormous new metal source in his favourite critical minerals destination.
The update represents a 234 per cent lift in tonnage and a solid 12 per cent bump in grade compared to the historic resource reported last year.
The new resource contains a whopping 1.5 million tonnes of TREO. Crucially, that includes 456,000 tonnes of the highly sought-after magnet metals neodymium and praseodymium, making up a healthy 31 per cent of the total contained rare earths.
The Grønnedal project sits within Eclipse's broader Ivigtut project and is hosted by a large carbonatite system, the same geologic setting that hosts the majority of the world's most prolific rare-earth mines.
Set in the much-talked-about Greenlandic terrain, the project enjoys a prime position in a stable, mining-friendly jurisdiction that’s fast becoming a hotspot for critical minerals.
Eclipse Metals is rapidly emerging as one of the more significant rare earths plays in a Western-aligned jurisdiction. Hosted in a large carbonatite system and positioned in southwest Greenland, the project is perfectly placed to help the US and Europe reduce their heavy reliance on Chinese-dominated supply chains.
EUROPEAN LITHIUM LTD (ASX: EUR)
Up 63% (28.5c – 46.5c)
Rounding out the week’s runners is takeover target European Lithium after its NASDAQ-listed partner Critical Metals Corp (CRML) lobbed a casual $1.2B merger bid covering its Tanbreez rare earths mine in Greenland and the company’s Wolfsberg lithium project in Austria.
Critical Metals is a US-based critical minerals special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), founded with a clear mission: to become a strategic source of critical minerals, essential to defence, advanced manufacturing, clean energy and emerging technologies.
The two companies have already been in bed together for some time at the Tanbreez rare earths mine in Greenland, and the news of their merger led to a big Tuesday in trading, with the stock churning a whopping $65.1m in stock and 148 million shares changing hands.
Under the terms of the proposal, all of European Lithium’s shares will be acquired via a share scheme of arrangement at an exchange ratio of 0.035 CRML shares for each share.
If implemented, each European Lithium shareholder will receive Critical Metals Corp scrip valued at A$0.58 per share. If completed, they will hold 45 per cent of the merged entity, which shareholders will then be able to trade on the critical minerals-hungry NASDAQ.
As lithium prices continue to surge, it definitely doesn’t hurt that European Lithium also holds the fully permitted Wolfsberg lithium project in Austria on its books. The project is strategically positioned at the centre of Europe, with supporting infrastructure and supply routes to Germany's automotive heartlands.
By Australian standards, the 12.9 million tonne hard rock resource doesn’t seem like a needle mover, but the project grades at more than 1 per cent lithium and even has a fully-fledged definitive feasibility study supporting a 15-year mine life.
If the deal completes in the second half of 2026, European Lithium shareholders could gain exposure to a much larger, dual-commodity critical minerals platform on a premier US exchange, just as rare earths and lithium supply security continue to rise up the geopolitical agenda rapidly.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Andrew Todd
