Runners of the Week: Entertainment Rewards, Litchfield, Morella and TrivarX

The global home of resources companies - the ASX - has been on an uninterrupted and hopefully unending tear of late.

The index flirted with the 9100 point mark on Thursday for the first time in history, once again on weak data and the promise of easing interest rates.

Australia’s GDP growth on the other hand continues to slow, as the unemployment rate climbed to a high of 4.5 per cent, figures unseen since the annuls of covid.

Nobody told the ASX though. All things mining and minerals are driving the market’s surge as the great gold run continues. Last week’s staggering $6000 price breach was replaced by a new mind boggling $6700 dollar an ounce high on Friday. 

In fact gold has now moved to second place on Aussie exports just behind the mighty iron ore. Lines outside gold bullions have been stretching around the block in Sydney and Perth, as the public moves to lock up the good old fashioned physical stuff.

Global markets feel like they are teetering again, US banks are copping a beating as bad loans bubble to the surface and investors attempt to decipher Trump’s latest China tariff threats in a ping pong match of global proportions.

All this global uncertainty has brought a brief halt to the US market’s run though. Although the S&P 500 is still up around 40 per cent in the last six months, a concerningly high figure that would have even the most adept analysts struggling to justify as P/E ratios flirt with the heavens..

Not withstanding the fever pitch around gold and even critical minerals, the Bulls N Bears’ Runners winner this week is takeover-torched entertainment minnow that ballooned on its biggest backer's buyout. Back to minerals and a Northern Territory copper-zinc explorer struck thick intercepts that lit up the base metals board. A rubidium rare metal hopeful has pulled up near-perfect extractions from its Aussie pegmatites. And a brain scan biotech junior bolted on an isotope imaging acquisition backed by a seriously high-profile biotech big hitter.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears ASX Runner of the Week is… Entertainment Rewards. Credit: File.

ENTERTAINMENT REWARDS LIMITED (ASX: EAT) 

Up 950% (0.2c – 2.1c)

The Bulls N’ Bears’ Runner of the Week is entertainment rewards provider, Entertainment Rewards (EAT). The longtime ASX battler shot out of its labouring share price funk on Thursday after it got a ten-fold takeover bid from its biggest backer and shareholder. 

Suzerain Investments already held a handy 65 per cent of EAT and decided enough was enough and lobbed a conditional off-market takeover bid on the table Wednesday to grab the rest at 2.2c a share. 

That represented a 1000 per cent premium over last week’s 0.2c close and valued the company at some $28.8 million. 

The board was all ears too, backing the privatisation and calling it a fair deal for shareholders who have been long ignored in an ASX hooked on miners and banks. 

Entertainment Rewards does what it says on the label, it runs a platform dishing out loyalty perks like movie tickets and hotel stays to boost customer retention for businesses across Australia and New Zealand. 

It’s about locking in loyalty in a cutthroat leisure market, where loyalty is nearly impossible to command. 

Suzerain is a British Virgin Islands-based fintech investor, which flipped a $22.5 million convertible loan to equity in EAT back in January, saving the company $2.81 million yearly in interest and securing a 65.85 per cent stake. 

That cleaned the balance sheet up and paved the way for this eventual full buyout. 

The news came through after-market Wednesday and punters jumped on the screens Thursday, pushing shares to 1.9c at open, then peaking at 2.1c intraday. A 950 per cent surge from 0.2c close last week. 

Suzerain sees EAT thriving off the ASX and under its private Virgin Islands control. If the deal clears, this could be a clean exit for a loyalty play lost in a market mad for metals. Quite a tidy deal for a quiet corner of the ASX.

Reverse-circulation drilling at Litchfield Minerals’ Oonagalabi project in the Northern Territory has revealed finely disseminated and minor semi-massive copper-zinc mineralisation, visually estimated to contain about 2.3 per cent copper and 2.7 per cent zinc. Credit: File.

LITCHFIELD MINERALS LIMITED (ASX: LMS) 

Up 527% (18.5c – 116c)

Taking home the silverware in this week’s Bulls N Bears Runner of the Week is a Northern Territory copper-zinc explorer turned discoverer  -Litchfield Minerals. 

The company has had a week to remember after hitting paydirt from surface on Monday, reporting a whopping 104-metre copper-zinc sulphide hit from surface at its Oonagalabi project in the Top End.

It unveiled handheld pXRF readings showcasing the 104m hit at an estimated 1.37 per cent CuEq, including 21m at 2.26 per cent CuEq from 144m, packing predominantly copper and a bit of zinc. 

It’s disseminated chalcopyrite and sphalerite visuals have proven the company’s IP anomaly theory as a solid guide.

A theory that would send its share price skyward for a second time to end the week. 

Litchfield says every hole drilled across its campaigns hit copper, pointing to a system with scale and serious potential. 

On Friday it added a 111m hit to the list at its VT2 conductive plate, a 500m long target some 1.5km east, that threw up more visuals of semi-massive and massive sulphides heavy with chalcopyrite and sphalerite (copper and zinc sulphides) and the market just loves that term, “visual”.

Oonagalabi lies 120km northeast of Alice Springs and sits in the Strangways Metamorphic Complex near the impressive Jervois deposit with 14 million tonnes at 1.77 per cent copper. 

Mapping stretches the Oonagalabi Formation for 3km from its Silverado to Bomb Diggity prospects with soil anomalies and outcrops hinting at more open strike. 

It’s a serious system, with downhole electromagnetic surveys kicking off next week to pinpoint the high metallic core for drilling, while lab assays on Monday’s hit are set to land in four weeks.

All important grades will decide the system’s validity, as copper, gold and silver prices soar. 

Litchfield’s shares shot out of the gates on Monday, up 300 per cent to 74.5c, before hitting $1.16 by Friday for a 527 per cent jump from the 18.5c Friday close on a whopping $25 million traded. 

This is a system screaming big potential in a copper-hungry market with zinc riding shotgun. If the assays and DHEM deliver, Litchfield could flip from explorer to major player and fast. 

Morella Corp has announced staggering metallurgical results for its rubidium pegmatites in Western Australia. Credit: File.

MORELLA CORP LIMITED (ASX: 1MC) 

Up 349% (2.45c – 11c)

Grabbing the little bronze Runners of the Week statue this week is little known rubidium player Morella Corp, after the company turned heads with its rubidium testwork from Edith Cowan University. 

Hydrometallurgical testwork on its Mt Edon samples in WA’s midwest showed 89 per cent rubidium extraction under “roast-leach” conditions, a top-tier result for pulling this metal from pegmatite, a geological feature made famous by lithium.

Tests confirmed Morella’s rubidium was hosted in microcline, not tricky micas like lepidolite, which gives it a key edge for processing both lithium and rubidium in pegmatites. 

Purified rubidium carbonate fetches a staggering US$1,040,000 (A$1,600,000) a tonne, a number that puts pretty much everything in the shade including copper, nickel , lithium and well, pretty much everything.

It is used to feed things like high-tech glass electronics, defence, biomedical and other lucrative uses. 

At Morella’s Mt Edon project just 5km southwest of Paynes Find in WA, drilling hits have returned up to 0.59 per cent rubidium in 15 of 17 holes drilled.

 This week’s extraction proof of concept sets Mt Edon loose among Australia’s top rubidium players with the company now turning its eye to a scoping study on costs and flows while locked-cycle tests check stability reagent use and repeatability. 

Beneficiation, like density or optical sorting, is next to cut feed volumes and boost efficiencies and will likely turn the lab wins into real-world plans. 

Morella says it fits perfectly with its battery metals portfolio, adding a high-value sidekick to lithium in a world hunting non-Chinese rubidium supply. 

Morella’s stock got all stratospheric during the week, rocketing up 349 per cent on Monday to a high of 11c from 2.45c on $1.3 million traded -  a tidy volume.

If optimisation holds and economics stack up, a pilot plant could fire up by as soon as mid-next year, delivering an Aussie rubidium stream to the already flush critical minerals markets.

With demand for EVs, turbines and gadgets rising, Mt Edon’s grades, scale and extraction advantages make Morella something of a dark horse to watch in the coming critical minerals boom. 

TrivarX Ltd has announced an acquisition and $4.2 million capital raise, cornerstoned by biotech heavyweight Daniel Tillett. Credit: File.

TRIVARX LIMITED (ASX: TRI) 

Up 218% (1.1c – 3.5c)

Rounding out Bulls N’ Bears Runners for the week is diagnostics outfit TrivarX, which bolted this on a brain cancer imaging tool from biotech household name Nucleics. 

The company’s latest Stabl-Im tech is designed to use stable isotope labelling to spot replicating brain cells via standard MRIs, catching tumours and metastases early without radiation risks. 

Brain metastases hit 20 per cent of adult cancer patients, particularly those with lung and breast cancer, but current MRIs miss sub 2-3mm growths, delaying early treatment. 

TrivarX says its Stabl-Im changes all that with safe repeatable scans targeting a neuro-oncology market which is set to top US$2.5 billion (A$4 billion) by 2030. 

TrivarX also features its own mental health screening roots and is building a precision diagnostics stable that slots it in beside the big market caps in oncology tools, tackling neuro gaps in a market with plenty of money to go around. 

The acquisition was accompanied by a $4.2 million placement at 0.8c – delivered by western suburbs entrenched upstart Perth broking firm, JP Equity Partners. Notably, the raise was cornerstoned by Nucleics founder Dr Daniel Tillett who threw in $500,000. 

Tillett is the biotech brain behind Race Oncology’s climb from a $5 million to a $750 million cap since 2019. He will lend his technical nous for pre-clinical and clinical work for the imaging tech from his Nucleics biotech brand. 

Funds from the raise will cover the transfer of intellectual property, manufacturing quality control and Phase 1 trials. As TrivarX angles for its precision imaging in tumour patients to get on the FDA’s loved up list, it is also looking tp get on the EU fast-track by as soon as next year. 

Punters piled into the stock during the week to join the incoming biotech big hitter on Thursday, as TrivarX’ soared up 218 per cent from 1.1c last week to a high of 3.5c on intraday trades. More than $4 million in paper traded hands and the company’s share price held strong to close out the week.

If Phase 1 clears and Tillett works his magic, TrivarX could mirror Race’s rise in the biotech sector, which has been bleeding elsewhere but seemingly blooming here.

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