With the world waking up to the need for reducing unwanted plastic, anything to support this is to be welcomed, and investors have certainly given the thumbs up to a new deal by Sabien Technology Group to help do just that.
The company, which specialises in the heating, cooling, and transportation sectors, has agreed to act as the exclusive UK sales agent for City Oil Field Incorporated of South Korea, which makes fuel out of end-of-life plastics.
The agreement runs for a year initially, but Sabien said a longer-term relationship was anticipated, and future sales targets had been agreed in outline. It also has non-exclusive rights in other territories outside the UK.
The news provided a much-needed fillip for investors, with the shares up 45% over the last five trading days, valuing the business still at a micro £4.4mln.
Market newbie Caracal Gold (GCAT) completed another positive week on the London market, helped along by a well-received webinar on Thursday, and a good churn in the stock as new entrants to this well followed situation, mingled with former Papillon shareholders. Bulls of the stock have been pointing to a projected rapid increase in gold production to 50,000 oz a year and an increase in the JORC compliant resource base to 3 million oz plus.All of this for a market cap which is currently only around £20m.
Turning to the wider small-cap market, the AIM All-Share was down 1.2% over the week, which meant it underperformed the FTSE 100, which more or less kept its head above water over that time.
Another stock in breakout mode to end the week, after months of false dawns, has been MediaZest (MDZ). Here the shares finally responded to last month’s news from the audio visual services group regarding new project wins which have led to a notable improvement in the company’s performance during the second half of the financial year. Recurring revenue contracts have been the key here, with several renewals and new contracts signed in recent months.
Sticking with the winners, investors took a shine to Thor Mining (up 33%) in the run-up to and in the wake of the start of its drilling programme at the Kapunda Copper in-situ recovery (ISR) project in South Australia.
It is an innovative drill programme that is targeting copper-gold mineralisation relatively close to the planned ISR facility.
Thor holds a 30% interest in EnviroCopper Ltd which, in turn, is in a partnership with MinEx CRC for the project at Kapunda.
MinEx CRC, described as the world’s largest mineral exploration collaboration, is leading the drill programme which will use environmentally friendly Coiled Tube technology.
“It’s great to see mineral exploration collaborations between industry, government and research organisations, such as this Coiled Tubed drilling programme between EnviroCopper and MinEx CRC,” Thor managing director Nicole Galloway Warland said in a statement.
Shares in Galileo Resources were up 29% after it said a cash and shares deal worth around PS2.4mln to sell a licence in Botswana’s Kalahari copper was near completion.
In the oil and gas sector, there was a bounce-back to levels last seen in late June for shares in Jersey Oil & Gas (up 40%), though it was hard to discern just what was driving the fortunes of the ‘news-less’ North Sea oilfield developer.
Moving onto the fallers, fit-to-fly Covid testing firm Myhealthchecked, off a knee-jerk 38% over the week, was hit by the easing of testing rules for travellers that are double-jabbed.
According to a Daily Mail report, ‘hated’ PCR tests will be axed for half term holidays.
Shares of crypto-miner Argo Blockchain (ARB) closed the week up 20p, and are up by more than a third after last month’s failed bear attack on the company. The recent recovery in Bitcoin and all things crypto, as well as the company’s plans for an initial public offering in the U.S. have clearly helped distance Argo from the UK stock market’s school playground type shorting related jibes.
Renalytix, down 25%, was also buffeted by factors beyond its control. In the case of the kidney disease diagnostics firm, holders used wrangling over US reimbursement rules as a cue to book profits on an investment that had doubled in value in the 10 months to the end of July.
In the mining sector, Goldstone Resources was down 11% on Friday after saying it had thus far failed to bring its Ghana mine into production.
Approval from the country’s Minerals Commission for use of a nearby rented facility has yet to be granted, so Goldstone is accelerating plans to complete its own operation. Over the last five trading days, the London listed gold digger has lost around a fifth of its value.
Floating imminently (and therefore one to watch for) is a company called SpectrumX, which is harnessing the huge potential of a man-made version of hypochlorous acid, the body’s way of destroying bacteria and viruses.
Some recent data that may have flown under that radar could bode well for the product’s deployment in people with COVID-19 – opening up a rather large potential market.
It has been developed as SPC-069, a new therapy designed to treat viral, bacterial, and fungal infections in the lung and respiratory tract.
In preclinical assessments, a team at the Medizinische Universitat, Innsbruck, were able to show that SPC-069 was able to neutralise Wuhan and Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in just one minute. All tested viruses were neutralised in five minutes.
Insiders will likely be ecstatic with the result as the Innsbruck researchers gear up for a phase II human trial that will deliver the Covid treatment via nebuliser.
