ASX Runners of the Week: Ceretas, Pacgold & Hamelin Gold

It's all-out war again, and the inflation monster is back.

The peace table remains firmly off the agenda with the US and Iran trading blows into a second week and the Strait of Hormuz increasingly caught in the crossfire.

US forces reportedly struck a military site near Tabriz, while Iran continued firing on American facilities and allies across Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. 

Then there’s those Houthi brothers, who decided they’d also now like a piece of the action, lighting another match in the Middle East tinderbox that is looking increasingly flammable. As a result, the markets haven been left with one very obvious question hanging: how much longer before this starts really hurting the global economy?

Oil traders didn't wait around to find out. Brent crude surged a staggering 15 per cent, punching above the unease mark of US$100 (A$151) a barrel, up from around US$87 (A$132) at the start of the week.

Prolonged disruption through The Strait returned with a vengeance. It is the inflationary nightmare central banks could have done without, with every expensive barrel threatening to flow through into transport, power, food and ultimately interest rates.

And just as energy inflation returned, the trillion-dollar monikers started losing their lustre.

The market’s darling IPO of the year SpaceX has quickly slipped below US$115 a share this week - almost US$20 below its US$135 IPO price and roughly half its post-listing peak. 

The broader technology trade is looking decidedly less bulletproof too. The Nasdaq is hating the new financial year, despite mega market capper Nvidia bouncing around 7 per cent reclaiming its coveted US$5 trillion valuation. Even the world’s former largest company IBM has shed 30 per cent of its value, finding itself needing to evolve from its software epithet in an ever-accelerating Ai world.

After four years of the Magnificent Seven doing the heavy lifting for Wall Street, cracks are appearing. Profits may still be rolling in, but investors are becoming increasingly reluctant to pay any price for them.

And back home and the economic data is providing another headache for anyone hoping the RBA might soon get the rate-cutting party started. Australian employment surged by 76,300 in June, quite incredibly more than five times the 15,000 economists were expecting, while unemployment held at 4.4 per cent, giving the Reserve Bank another reason to keep its finger hovering over the interest-rate trigger.

The combination of a stronger-than-expected labour market and oil threatening to reignite inflation is hardly the recipe for an easy ride.

The copper price is emerging as a particular safe-haven amidst the turmoil by refusing to sit quietly, but perhaps the real surprise is that the market can still find anything to rally around – which is where’s this week’s Runners come in providing a welcome reminder there are still corners of the market making noise.

The first is a biotech newcomer which stormed into first place this week, offering a little pulse from a sector that has spent the better part of two years being left for dead.

CERETAS LTD (ASX: CTS)

Up 142% (25c – 60.5c)

Taking out Bulls N' Bears Runner of the Week is medical devices newcomer Ceretas, which made a spectacular ASX debut, with its shares more than doubling from the 25c listing price.

The University of Queensland spinout raised $8 million through IPO to push its portable ultrasound technology to clinical trials with the initial focus squarely on applications for Alzheimer's disease and dementia. 

The company says it has already demonstrated the technology's safety in a Phase 1 trial involving 12 Alzheimer's patients, following more than a decade of research at UQ's Queensland Brain Institute.

This isn't your conventional diagnostic ultrasound machine.

Ceretas says it is developing a portable, therapeutic focused-ultrasound device designed to actually treat neurological diseases, rather than simply diagnose them. 

Its immediate target is neuromodulation - using low-intensity focused ultrasound to regulate or modulate brain circuits and nerves linked to memory, cognition and behavioural symptoms.

That technology is now heading into a Phase 2 clinical trials, with the randomised, double-blind controlled studies for its CERE-CALM study targeting behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia in Alzheimer's patients.

And the company insists there is more to come, as it continues preclinical work on using its ultrasound platform to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier, potentially allowing drugs to reach parts of the brain that are notoriously difficult to access. 

If successful, Ceretas could have multiple bites at the neurological disease market, with one platform targeting both brain stimulation and next-generation drug delivery.

For a company tackling one of medicine's biggest unsolved problems, investors clearly liked what they saw, sending Ceretas soaring on debut and putting this UQ spinout firmly on the biotech radar.

PACGOLD LTD (ASX: PGO)

Up 82% (11c – 20c)

Snagging silver this week is junior gold producer turned self-funded copper-gold explorer Pacgold. 

That might be a difficult sentence to understand as it is usually explorers evolving into producers; however, this exciting South Australian stalwart has uncovered a potentially major copper-gold system beneath its existing gold resources in right in the heart of Australia's hottest copper jurisdiction in South Australia.

The unexpected but exciting news saw its share price surge to peak more than 80 per cent higher across the closing two days after it revealed high-grade copper-gold at its White Dam gold project near the SA-NSW border. 

The company’s latest copper riches had until now lain dormant beneath shallow oxide gold mineralisation at the project, hinting at a potentially project-wide copper and gold prize emerging at the gold-producing play.

Supporting the prospect of what may be ahead, Pacgold unveiled a suite of solid copper-gold hits, including a 20-metre hit grading 2.5 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.5 per cent copper from just 58m, featuring a stunning higher-grade core of 6m at 7.5g/t gold and 1.2 per cent copper.

The company says the new discovery is coincident with a magnetic anomaly that extends for up to one kilometre in strike, leaving plenty of meat on the bone for further exploration. 

Management believes that multiple other untested magnetic anomalies with similar structural settings exist across its vast tenure, at its nearby Rolling, White Dam East and Hannaford West prospects.

Pacgold also teased the market with indications that a hefty 59-metre section of visual sulphide mineralisation was yet to be assayed, with a further five holes from the program, all waiting in the wings for yet more copper-gold goodness.

The project sits only 80km west of the famed Broken Hill mine within the burgeoning Curnamona Province. And while the province is famous for hosting BHP's giant namesake lead-zinc-silver deposit, it is increasingly being recognised as an emerging copper-gold region with strong similarities to the Gawler Craton, home to BHP’s new flagship asset, Olympic Dam.

The area has seen a flurry of recent activity, highlighted by Sandfire Resources' major farm-in deal with Havilah Resources to earn up to 80 per cent of the nearby Kalkaroo copper-gold project in a transaction valued at up to $240 million.

With the drill rods still spinning, a geophysical survey lined up and a conga line of assays from visually impressive holes heading to the lab, Pacgold has plenty more news in the pipeline. 

And with copper prices ripping to record highs, stumbling across a copper-gold system in one of Australia's premier copper provinces could prove to be a far bigger prize than ever imagined.

HAMELIN GOLD LTD (ASX: HMG)

Up 70% (10c – 17c)

Rounding out our Runners is junior explorer Hamelin Gold, which delivered some stonking bonanza-grade hits from its Day Dawn Gold project just 10km from the giant Telfer gold mine in the Paterson Province of WA.

The first phase of reverse circulation (RC) drilling was designed to test the newly interpreted Aurora Lode, with the results confirming both the continuity and serious high-grade nature of the mineralisation. The hits were nothing short of spectacular, including 3-metre hit at a whopping 93.4g/t gold from just 9m, alongside hits of 3m at 10.9g/t from 7m and a 4m section running 21g/t from 27m.

The company's exploration model is drawing heavily on Telfer's geological blueprint, with Hamelin targeting domal folds in the rock structures that are believed to control the repeating high-grade reefs at the neighbouring monster. 

Notably there are another 13 assays due over the coming weeks, before a further 3000m RC campaign kicks off in August to chase the Aurora Lode down plunge and hunt for parallel lodes hiding along the broader mineralised corridor.

Surface mapping and sampling have already flagged a string of northeast-trending structures and quartz veins that could represent repetitions of the Aurora Lode, while shallow sand cover – uncommon in the region rather known for deep sand dunes - means the best of the system could still be hiding just beneath the surface.

With a high-grade system emerging within spitting distance of one of Australia's most famous gold mines, Hamelin has landed itself in the right patch of the Paterson. And in the land of giants like Telfer and Havieron, a 93g/t hit is more than enough to get the market's attention.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au