ASX Runners of the Week: Mont Royal, Mount Ridley, HitIQ & XPON

Is the AI bubble bursting?

A hot market has turned ice cold this week, as the pessimistic doomsayers rear their heads.

In US markets, Palantir—the data analytics and big brother surveillance powerhouse—plunged 16 per cent this week. This was despite delivering a robust quarter of profitability, underscoring the market’s insistence on unrelenting, exponential growth. 

Meanwhile, Nvidia, whose market capitalisation now mirrors Canada’s entire stock exchange, declined nearly 9 per cent. wiping off a lazy $450 billion following Michael Burry of Big Short fame disclosure of a sizable bearish positions against both it and Palantir, reigniting scrutiny over AI-driven valuations.

Persistent inflation is also putting a dampener on markets, with the Bank of England and the RBA both putting interest rates on hold.

Higher than anticipated interest rates have the small end of town once again falling flat. The small caps index (XEC) is still copping it this week, after heading north 40 per cent to start the financial year. It has now shed nearly half of its gains in the last 3 weeks. 

Off the three-week lows came a little bounce on the ASX to close the week. Gold and silver prices were once again breathing life into resources, fuelling recoveries for our miners.

And finally, socialism has now spilt onto the streets of New York with the election of loud and proud “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani’s promises which include rent freezes, free childcare, free buses, forcing grocery stores to cut prices and pretty much everything state owned to be free has earnt him a landslide victory in the typically blue state. However, even free stuff costs money, the answer? Tax the rich! 

Once again, this week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runners was dominated by critical minerals fever. Rare earths, gallium and a dash of tech were the best performers on an otherwise seriously lacklustre week.

MONT ROYAL RESOURCES LTD (ASX: MRZ)
Up 680% (4.1c – 32c)

Burying the field and once again gracing the ASX boards this week is Mont Royal Resources. Fresh off a six-month reverse-takeover tango with TSX-V darling Commerce Resources, the newly minted Canadian critical-metals beast relisted Monday after filling up with a $10 million raise at 20 cents a pop for its rare earths tilt in northern Quebec.

The new look company now holds full ownership of the Ashram rare-earths and fluorspar deposit in northern Québec—one of North America’s biggest monazite-dominant carbonatite plays. 

The monster foreign-estimate of 204.3 million tonnes at 1.90 per cent TREO and 4.9 per cent flourspar, with 73.2 million tonnes indicated at 1.89 per cent TREO and 6.6 per cent fluorspar is one of a kind within the Canadian landscape. 

Mont Royal says more than $50 million has already been sunk into drilling, resource definition and development studies at the project, making it essentially a turnkey Tier-1 asset in a an equally prominent mining jurisdiction.

Ashram’s metallurgy makes the real difference here,. It shows simple flotation spits out a +35 per cent TREO concentrate at 65 per cent recovery.

An updated preliminary economic assessment is already underway to sharpen the pencil, chase government cheques and tee up offtake love letters. 

The company is also expecting a handy C$2.6 million exploration tax rebate before Christmas, courtesy of Commerce’s spend this year.

The stock took off on relisting, screaming up to a three-year high of 32c per share before settling at 25.5c to close the week —still a lazy 680 per cent above its February grave and compliance woes.

With US rare-earths demand still in overdrive and worries mounting about an eventual China export control, Mont Royal has parachuted into the North American supply-chain conversation at exactly the right altitude. 

MOUNT RIDLEY MINES LTD (ASX: MRD)
Up 186% (3.2c – 8.8c)

Last week’s chart topper Mount Ridley Mines has made it back-to-back weeks in Bulls N Bears Runners of the Week – no small feat. The week kicked off again with a bang as the rare earths explorer turned gallium giant again surged on news Allister Caird- ex-Locksley Resources critical minerals head – was coming on as Mount Ridley’s new CEO.

Caird’s CV includes CSIRO research, project development and his instrumental role in Locksley’s recent almighty ascendancy, as that US critical metals company ran from 1.8c per share to a high of 69c for a more than 3700 per cent increase this year.

The move comes after Mt Ridley revealed last week its namesake deposit in Western Australia featured a previously overlooked critical gallium resource alongside its rare earths. 

Mount Ridley dropped an almighty maiden JORC resource of 838.7 million tonnes at 29.3 parts per million for 24,584 tonnes of contained gallium simply by re-looking at old drill data from a time when gallium was not a thing.

That’s one of the planet’s biggest known stockpiles outside China’s iron grip.

The market needed no second invitation, with Mt Ridley’s shares rocketing another 186 per cent on Monday to a high of 8.8c for a 186 per cent hike, extending last week’s 660 per cent rampage for a total 1660 per cent in a little over a week.

The company says its deposit sprawls across three zones within a 70-square-kilometre envelope northeast of Esperance, Western Australia—leaving a lazy 70 per cent of the 575-square-kilometre tenure still virginal for more gallium sniffing.
 

HITIQ LIMITED (ASX: HIQ)
Up 166% (1.5c – 4.0c)

Coming out swinging this week to land the final spot on the Bulls N Bears  Runners podium is tech disruptor HitIQ, after Monash University hand-picked its “PROTEQT” instrumented mouthguard for a $799,866 Australian Research Council brain-injury mega-study. 

The company says the three-year project will fuse real-time biomechanical head-impact data with advanced biomarker analysis to draw definitive red lines for cumulative concussion risk – potentially rewriting global sporting protocols.

Monash is locked in to buy 400 PROTEQT units in January next year which should be good for $200,000 in immediate revenues and a glowing stamp of academic credibility. 

HitIQ’s smart mouthguards—packed with accelerometers, gyroscopes and telemetry—feed live data into analytics platforms that flag dangerous impacts fast. 

The tech is already embedded in elite rugby, AFL and US college football programs, with this study set to catapult it into the clinical big leagues.

HitIQ’s shares launched out of the blocks this week, getting all skyward to the tune of 166 per cent from last Friday’s 1.5c close to a high of 4.0 cents on Thursday. 

The surge caps a brutal multi-year rebuild after the company burned cash chasing regulatory nods and sporting league buy-ins for a while, with sporting bodies not exactly eager to prove just how harmful head blows could be. 

With partnerships now spanning Harvard, Stanford and the NRL, plus a growing revenue line from unit sales and subscription analytics, HitIQ is morphing from speculative biotech to genuine future sporting necessity.

If the Monash data lands peer-reviewed gold and sporting codes mandate instrumented mouthguards, the addressable market explodes from millions to hundreds of millions. 

XPON TECHNOLOGIES GROUP (ASX: XPN)
Up 108% (1.2c – 2.5c)

Earning a well-deserved honourable mention in the Runners cavalcade is AI-marketing mash-up XPON Technologies, which levitated this week on………wait for it…..no news to the market. 

Its stock started creeping up on Tuesday before the fun police at the ASX held up a speeding ticket and a please explain, but the stock had already doubled in an hour.

XPON explained there was no funny business, instead touting its company turnaround, flipping from a $2.2 million quarterly cash bleed to a $0.99 million cash inflow from its quarterly last week. 

The recent activity report showed EBITDA also flipping positive to $0.12 million, propelled by the recent acquisition of Alpha Digital—a Brisbane performance-marketing crew that has been a channel partner for years.

Marrying Alpha’s SEO, paid-media and analytics muscle with XPON’s AI-driven customer-data platforms has birthed a one-stop marketing synergy stop. 

Clients now get hyper-personalised campaigns powered by machine-learning prophecy, resulting in much fatter margins to XPON and stickier recurring revenue.

The stock ignored the AI sector’s broader bloodbath, surging 108 per cent from Friday’s 1.2-cent close to a 2.5-cent high on more than $2 million worth traded.

Management insists there’s no undisclosed magic—just the market finally picking up that that profitability is no longer a five-year plan but a quarterly reality. 

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