What a wild couple of days in markets. The red sea of despair on Friday had traders going glasses down and heading for the cricket to close out the week.
Just as things were looking up on a resilient “AI-bubble”, on Thursday, US markets pulled the handbrake on any chance of a recovery overnight.
After shooting up nearly 2 per cent at the open, the bears took the reins of the S&P 500, violently dragging down markets to a 1.5 per cent loss for a massive intraday swing not seen since the tariff war turmoil earlier this year.
Most of the week’s focus was on the company that would rank just behind the entire market caps of some of the top 10 global stock exchanges, Nvidia – which was just trailing the entire Mumbai Bombay Stock Exchange and the Toronto SE by market cap.
The AI market which has been positively flatlining on performance fears for the world’s biggest company, found the defib this week, as the AI giant served up another blockbuster performance, smashing expectations and kicking the market back into gear Thursday.
Just as things were looking up though, the US Treasury decided to delay a backlog of missing jobs and inflation data from a lengthy US government shutdown. Signalling a potential cooling off for jobs, leading to most commentators slashing any hopes of another rate cut being delivered next month.
On a positive note, the long winter for lithium could be lifting.
Prices began their march after China announced plans to double its energy-storage capacity within two years. As a 2025 comeback story Mineral Resources moved to sell its interests in the Wodgina and Mount Marion lithium mines to South Korea’s POSCO for a potential $3.9 billion price tag. The price represents a substantial 50 per cent premium to the consensus analyst valuation as the mining services and iron ore major works its way back from a card full of debt.
Another rough week and another small group of select movers and shakers for the coveted Bulls N Bears Runner of the Week podium.
This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runners list has a distinctly familiar resources tinge, with the juniors doing the heavy lifting while everything else bleeds. Copper, gas, mineral sands and a cheeky litigation payday stole the show on an otherwise grim week for the ASX minnows.
ALVO MINERLS LTD (ASX: ALV)
Up 178% (2.3c – 6.3c)
The Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the week is Brazilian copper explorer Alvo Minerals, after it reported a stonking 13m of visual copper mineralisation just 40m below surface, including the all-important massive sulphides in its first ever diamond hole at the company’s recently acquired Palma project.
That hole tested the down-dip extension of gossanous mineralisation exposed in trench 2 at its Touro prospect, which forms part of a surface copper trend extending for more than 1km along strike.
Drilling intercepted an unoxidized (fresh rock) zone with massive, semi-massive and disseminated sulphides including the copper bearing chalcopyrite from 51.5m to 64.6m, a downhole width of 13.1m.
Better yet, the intercept sits a full 100m above the deeper fixed-loop EM conductor plates the company still hasn’t even touched. Those plates are screaming out for testing and are looking pretty promising following Alvo’s first hole success.
Alvo’s Palma project (acquired only last year) already hosts a tidy 7.6Mt resource at 2% copper equivalent across three deposits – however Touro is completely separate and could be the gift that keeps on giving.
With copper and silver now on critical mineral lists, the US, EU and other Western nations are clambering to develop supply chains from non-Chinese sources.
When reaching Thursday’s high of 6.3c, its share price briefly traded up more than 178 per cent from last week’s close of 2.3c on more than $5 million in shares traded.
Decisive assays are six to eight weeks away, but the photos of core covered in lovely chalcopyrite have done plenty of the talking for now.
3D ENERGI LTD (ASX: TDO)
Up 87% (11.5c – 21.5c)
Snagging silver on the podium this week is junior gas explorer 3D Energi, which finally got the monkey off its back when giant partner ConocoPhillips confirmed gas in not one but two Waarre reservoirs at the Essington-1 wildcat offshore well in Victoria.
Wireline logs lit up like a Christmas tree thanks to 58.5m of net pay in the primary Waarre A zone and another 31.5m net in the secondary Waarre C, for a combined 90m of gassy sandstone in a basin that’s delivered monster gas discoveries for more than six decades.
3D Energi shares rocketed on the announcement, launching from an 11.5c close last week to a 21.5c high across the week on a staggering $8 million traded for the junior.
The company says its pressure data and resistivity spikes are already promising potential commerciality with services giant Schlumberger’s Ora platform now grabbing downhole samples and flow testing.
Conoco owns a majority 51 per cent and is operating the project with the Korean KNOC holding 29 per cent and helping pay for 3D Energi’s remaining 20 per cent stake.
Conoco first joined 3D in 2019, around the time it was divesting its interest in the Darwin LNG project and associated offshore gas fields with the partnership finally culminating in today’s drilling some 6 years later.
Six wells are planned across two permits, with options for four more.
The Otway Basin is a 500km-long rift basin spanning onshore/offshore Victoria, South Australia and into Tassie
It has already yielded over 20 gas discoveries since the 1960s, with the offshore discoveries dominated by larger volumes, often in the same Waarre sands. Offshore undiscovered resources are estimated at 2-5Tcf – that’s a “T” for Trillion – and amazingly these huge gas resources come in at a nearly 80 per cent discovery success rate.
ZULEIKA GOLD LTD (ASX: ZAG)
Up 83% (3c – 5.5c)
Earning a hard-fought podium spot is West Australian gold sleeper Zuleika, which has finally slammed the lid on a five-year legal stoush with Catalyst Metals over its Plutonic gold mine, walking away with a monster $48 million payday and the sweet taste of justice this week.
For the market newcomers who perhaps aren’t aware of the 2020 stoush and how Catalyst ended up footing the bill, back when Zuleika was still called Dampier Gold, it had a deal to earn up to 50 per cent of certain ground inside what is now the 150,000 ounce per year Plutonic mine from then Vango Mining.
Vango Mining (later swallowed by Catalyst) allegedly reneged on milestones, royalties and JV rights apparently owed to Zuleika and fast forward five years of Supreme Court fun, Zuleika pockets $31 million in fresh Catalyst scrip plus $17 million cash and is re-invented.
To put that $48 million in perspective though, Catalyst’s Plutonic operation is now a bona fide Australian tier-one gold mine. Since Catalyst stitched together Plutonic, Plutonic East, Bryah Basin and a string of satellites, it is pumping out 150,000 ounces a year at sub-$2,000 an ounce all in sustaining costs, with a resource base nudging 5 million ounces.
Its market cap is now some $1.8 billion, nearly ten bagging off the back of the Plutonic restart, making Zuleika’s scrip well and truly worth holding.
Shares in the Annie Guo led Zuleika ran hard on the news, with its stock rocketing as much as 83 per cent on Monday to a five-year high of 5.5c on more than $800,000 traded.
Zuleika also owns 230km² of the legendary Zuleika Shear in WA’s Goldfields – the same structure that spat out over 20 million ounces historically and sits between Northern Star’s Kanowna Belle (still churning) and the old Paddington mill.
First drilling is locked in for early next year and the new cashed up war chest means it can swing the drill bit hard.
After half a decade fighting over someone else’s gold, Zuleika finally gets to chase its own elephants on one of the best postcodes in the game. They say tenacity is everything in the public company game and Zuleika Exec Chair Annie Guo has showed plenty of that over the last 5 years as she refused to concede to Catalyst, eventually coming home with the chocolates. While she is married to billionaire “prospector” Mark Creasy, she took up the fight with Catalyst before she even met Creasy and by all accounts, she has plenty of her own firepower and was more than capable of seeing off Catalyst all by herself.
MCLAREN MINERALS LTD (ASX: MML)
Up 74% (2.3 – 4c)
Rounding out Runners of the Week is mineral sands monster McLaren Minerals after it delivered a substantial upgrade to the mineral resource for its namesake titanium project in Western Australia’s Eucla Basin on Tuesday.
The new estimate of 529 million tonnes at 4.5 per cent heavy minerals represents a 90 per cent uplift in contained heavy minerals compared with the company’s 2022 resource, including a tripling of the upgraded indicated resources to 249 million tonnes.
The company says its upgrade positions it as one of the world’s largest undeveloped ilmenite-rich deposits and will feed directly into the company’s ongoing pre-feasibility study (PFS), which McLaren expects to complete in the coming weeks.
McLaren Minerals’ heavy mineral sands project covers 333 square kilometres on the western side of the Eucla Basin, adjacent to WA’s Fraser Range. It is about 5km south of the Eyre Highway and 350km by road to Esperance Port.
It shares marched upwards across the week from 2.3c last Friday to a 4c high on Thursday, for a 74 per cent gain on $3.7 million traded.
With ilmenite and zircon prices still performing well and the PFS due in weeks, McLaren is rapidly morphing from speculative sand pile into a serious development story. If the study spits out decent economics, this could be the next multi-decade mineral-sands cash cow.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Andrew Todd
