Public Company News

Aurum Resources is on the cusp of becoming a bigger shark in the West African gold pond after circling fellow ASX-listed Mako Gold with an all-scrip bid at a whopping 112 per cent above the market price. Mako’s share price surged nearly 80 per cent on the back of the news that would create a major African gold explorer with cash reserves of AU$20 million.

Legend Mining is priming the drill bit for the Magnus prospect within at its Rockford project in WA after picking up four highly-conductive plates using its advanced high-powered fixed-loop electromagnetic survey. The most significant plate, with conductance measuring up to 5000 siemens, sits at the edge of a gravity anomaly and 550m below the deepest drilling to date, hinting at an undetected, but mineral-rich target.

Buxton Resources has unveiled high-grade iron rock chips from its Narryer project in WA’s Gascoyne region after reconnaissance sampling at its Stonehut magnetite prospect returned iron samples grading more than 41 per cent across a 2km strike. Assays included samples of up to 47.2 per cent iron, considered high-grade for magnetite, and the company will now launch follow-up programs to establish the prospect’s potential scale.

Lycaon Resources is a step closer to launching a maiden drill campaign at its fully-owned Stansmore polymetallic play in Western Australia’s prospective West Arunta region after locking in a drilling contractor for the work. The company has appointed Subiaco-based Topdrill just a day after confirming final heritage and works permit approvals, paving the way for it to begin drilling early next month.

Carnaby Resources has identified its undrilled San Quentin prospect as a new copper target, with rock-chip grades going up to 6.7 per cent at the Greater Duchess project it shares with Latitude 66 in Queensland. Sitting 2km to the south-east of the JV’s Nil Desperandum copper discovery near Mount Isa, management says San Quentin is showing 800m of outcropping mineralisation.

Quantum Graphite has extended its land grab at the Uley project in South Australia, increasing the ground area to 117 square kilometres at the site near the State’s historic fishing town of Port Lincoln. The company is on the hunt for deposits of flake graphite to supply the critical mineral into its Sunlands Power joint venture for conversion into thermal energy storage cells.

South Perth-based mining giant IGO has passed the $350,000 exploration expenditure threshold required for it to grab a 51 per cent slice of Buxton Resources’ promising Copper Wolf project in Arizona. And IGO can now continue on to grab another 19 per cent interest in the joint venture project it shares with Buxton by spending a further $5 million.

On a massive turnover of more than 105 million shares, White Cliff Minerals' stock surged more than eight per cent today after the company revealed multiple copper rock-chip samples grading more than 50 per cent from its Rae project in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The maiden field program confirmed large-scale, high-grade copper occurrences at both the company’s Rocket and Thor prospects.

Xanadu Mines has unveiled a prefeasibility study of biblical proportions at its Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert, including a pre-tax US$1.4 billion NPV, an IRR of 31 per cent at spot commodity prices and a mine life of nearly three decades. The study confirms the project’s potential as a globally-significant, low-cost, long-life mining operation.

In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the more notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including African Gold’s 33m at 2.4g/t gold at its Didievi project in Cote d’Ivoire. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Nexus Minerals and Great Southern Mining, both from WA’s Goldfields region.

Lycaon Resources has secured its final heritage and program of works approvals to clear the way for drilling at its multi-element Stansmore carbonatite project in Western Australia’s West Arunta region. The heritage clearance survey, which was completed in July, relates to the company’s three priority Stansmore, Volt and Ions targets where it is chasing niobium, rare earths and iron oxide copper-gold.

The European Central Bank, followed by the US Federal Reserve and then the Bank of China, have all confirmed that a new era of falling interest rates has arrived. Historically, small cap equity markets have consistently outperformed during times of monetary easing and these latest central bank moves suggest the period of small cap underperformance may be coming to an end.