Alkemy Capital Investments (ALK) announces its unaudited financial statements for the 6 months ended 31 July 2023. ALK said the support received from third parties including major OEMs provides further validation of our proposed lithium refining strategy. The rapid completion of due diligence to the satisfaction of certain OEMs is testament to the quality of the work undertaken by its commercial and technical teams and confirms its wider business case. Its focus remains on supporting our potential partners’ lithium strategies and concluding commercial negotiations and will update the market in due course as these arrangements become binding.
Comment: VSA have recently said that Alkemy’s shares reflect little of the progress that the company has made. One would insist that the share price reflects none of the progress the company has made, and continues to make.
Beowulf (BEM) provided a comment on the Chinese government announcement dated 20 October 2023 with regards to the export controls on graphite products as from 1 December 2023. The company said that while the impact of the export ban imposed by China remains unclear, it does highlight the vulnerability of Europe and the rest of the world to the control China has on graphite and other minerals critical for the green transition. Grafintec’s strategy is to provide a secure, independent, and sustainable source of graphite for use in anodes for LIBs, which is fully aligned with the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act.
Comment: While one would doubt that the Chinese Communist Party is keen to help junior miners listed in London, the effect of its export ban has been one of the more helpful events of the space, and should spark an ongoing positive re-rate.
Metals One (MET1), which is advancing battery metal projects at brownfield sites in Finland and Norway, announces of ordinary shares in the capital of the Company by certain directors. Daniel Maling bought 75,000 shares, and Craig Moulton 67,000.
Comment: MET1 has already delivered the type of newsflow since its recently listed that inspires confident, and this is backed by the latest director share buying, as Messrs Maling and Moulton lead from the front.
E-Therapeutics (ETX) reported Interims to July, claiming rapid advancement with its AI assisted computational platform to discover life-transforming RNAi medicines across a variety of areas of high unmet medical needs. Revenue of £0.2m is irrelevant, but operating losses including £5.3m investment in R&D increased to £7m from £4.6m, although after deducting tax credits the reported loss is £5.6m. The platform offers end-to-end capabilities for the rapid identification of novel disease associated genes and drug candidates. This leads to disease-modifying therapies which should then be rapidly progressed to the clinical trials and increased revenue. The IP patent applications increased by a further 11, drug concepts are being advanced and collaboration milestones passed. They anticipate show casing additional data from the pre-clinical pipeline shortly. After a placing at 20p supported by the mighty M&G, cash on hand is around £24m, which should be a comfortable 6–9-month runway.
Comment: The mkt cap of £61m with the shares at a year’s low of 10.5p would be highly responsive to any positive drug development news.
Chaarat Gold (CGH), the AIM-quoted gold mining Company with development projects in the Kyrgyz Republic, announces an extension of the maturity of its secured convertible loan notes from 31 October 2023 to 31 July 2024. The company said Chaarat is appreciative of the continued support from its loan noteholders. The maturity extension, combined with the recently announced working capital facility from the largest shareholder, enables Chaarat to focus on achieving the Tulkubash Final Investment Decision in an expedient manner and subsequently implement broader financing to support further corporate and asset developments of the group.
Comment: Although it may be said that CGH cut it a little fine as far as getting the CLN extension, one would expect the shares to deliver a decent relief rally now that the company has been let of the financial hook.
Bezant Resources (BZT) announced the results of an updated Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate for the Hope and Gorob copper project situated within EPL 5796 in Namibia, Bezant Resources holds a 70% interest in the Project. The company said it was very pleased with the outcome of its work over the last two years and it now has a JORC (2012) resource, which its consultant agrees is both capable of significant increase and equivalent copper value. Concurrent with the work on the resource study it has been very active on all aspects of the factors which goes toward building a mine. It is confident that it now has sufficient information, resource modelling, financial modelling and environmental innovative approach to bring a small mine into production, whilst aggressively carrying out further exploration to increase the resource significantly.
Comment: BZT continues to make the kind of progress at Hope and Gorob which ordinarily might be regarded as company making. One would expect the market to start to honour the company with a market cap of £2.3m sooner rather than later.
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