Weekly review: market jumps to six-month high after strong week
The all-conquering Australian share market once again finished the week with a 0.2% rise, capping off four successive jumps to produce a 1.5% increase for the week.
That led the ASX 200 to 7259.50 points, which is a six-month high.
It wasn’t a unanimous rise with gains in nine of the 11 sectors overcoming falls in energy and materials but there was plenty of encouragement for investors with banks continuing their run on the back of strengthened profitability as interest rates continue to rise.
CBA leads banks higher
Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA) led the way higher, up 1.1% to a close of $109.20, but all of the banking stocks were higher as they attracted new investors.
Biotech giant CSL (ASX: CSL) was another good performer, gaining 0.25% for the day to close tantalisingly near the $300 a share mark at $299.72. It had hovered above that mark for most of the day following the release of news that its landmark gene therapy treatment for haemophilia B had been approved.
Job losses spur on Wesfarmers
Retail giant Wesfarmers (ASX: WES) saw its shares rise 0.6% to $49.16 after reports that there would be a round of redundancies at its popular warehouse hardware outfit Bunnings.
Up to 300 jobs will go with most of them at its national support centre and head office as it prepared for more usual trading patterns following the pandemic.
Some of the job losses will be through natural attrition and by not filling vacant roles but the restructure is also designed to move in-house training online with redundancies to be offered over the coming months.
Other stocks to do well included retailer Harvey Norman (ASX: HVN) and AGL (ASX: AGL), with shares in both surging more than 3% while ultrasonic probe disinfectant specialist Nanosonics (ASX: NAN) saw its shares rocket 11% on the back of broker upgrades.
Chinese Covid cases hit miners
It wasn’t all plain sailing on the ASX, with miners weighing down the index, with a 0.8% fall in the share price of BHP (ASX: BHP) typical of a broad spread negative tone for materials which sent the sector as a whole down 1.1%.
The main factor driving miners down was a new rash of Covid cases in China, which are expected to cut demand for raw materials due to strict lockdown laws.
Things were even worse among the lithium stocks with key supplier Allkem (ASX: AKE) seeing its share price shrink by a hefty 8.6% for the day, with similar falls across all of the miners.
Shares in small cap fashion retailer City Chic (ASX: CCX) fell more than 28% after the company released a trading update warning that margins were tightening.
Small cap stock action
The Small Ords index edged 0.87% higher this week to close at 2896.3 points.
Small cap companies making headlines this week were:
Codrus Minerals (ASX: CDR)
Codrus Minerals has signed a farm-in and joint venture agreement with private vendor Talgomine Minerals to earn up to 90% interest in the Karloning rare earth elements project in WA.
The company called the deal an “exciting growth and diversification opportunity” to explore for high-value metals such as praseodymium, neodymium, terbium and dysprosium which are critical to the manufacture of high-strength permanent magnets.
High-grade assays from Karloning include 5,740ppm dysprosium oxide, 2,658ppm neodymium oxide, 3,516ppm terbium oxide and 235ppm praseodymium oxide.
Blackstone Minerals spun-out Codrus last year to advance the Australian and US projects.
Archer Materials (ASX: AXE)
Supercomputers have been used to analyse Archer Materials’ 12CQ quantum qubit material and prove the unique nature of the technology.
The company has run “important simulations” more realistically and more efficiently than ever before to validate the qubit’s properties and confirmed its intrinsic, metal-like character.
Archer chief executive officer Dr Mohammad Choucair said the company’s technology had developed to a stage which calls for high-powered computers and draws on the “few people and institutions in the world that can perform this type of work”.
Southern Cross Gold (ASX: SXG)
Drilling at Southern Cross Gold’s wholly-owned Sunday Creek project in Victoria has revealed nine separate zones hosting gold-antimony mineralisation, along with at least eight new vein sets.
The zones were identified by a drill hole which intersected 305.8m at 2.4g/t gold equivalent (1.6g/t gold and 0.5% antimony) from 319.2m.
Within the 305.8m zone were 12 high-grade intersections averaging more than 20g/t gold, including five at more than 100g/t gold, with assays up to 181g/t gold and 9.7% antimony (196.3g/t gold equivalent) and multiple areas of visible gold.
Following the discovery, Southern Cross announced it had received firm commitments for a share placement to raise $16 million.
Shares will be issued at $0.58 each, reflecting an 11.5% premium to the 15-day volume-weighted average price and a 1.7% discount to the last traded price prior to the raising.
The funds will be used to grow the current fleet of three rigs to five in order to advance exploration at Sunday Creek.
Elevate Uranium (ASX: EL8)
The discovery of a new uranium zone has extended the total mineralisation at Elevate Uranium’s Koppies project in Namibia to over 19km.
The new zone is known as Koppies 4 and is believed to be a continuation of mineralisation at the Koppies 3 target identified in September.
Elevate said Koppies 3 and 4 have the potential to substantially expand the project’s total uranium resource.
A maiden resource was announced in May for Koppies 1 and 2 totalling 20.3Mllb of uranium oxide equivalent.
Investigator Resources (ASX: IVR)
Investigator is set to commence a resource expansion drilling campaign at its flagship Paris project in South Australia.
The project already hosts the highest-grade undeveloped silver deposit in the country, and this is expected to grow with new drilling results.
Drilling will be carried out against a backdrop of diminishing global supplies and increasing demand for silver’s use in technologies which will assist the world’s transition to net zero.
In other news, the company today announced it will earn up to 80% equity in the Molyhil tungsten project near Alice Springs in an agreement signed with Thor Mining.
The three-stage deal includes an initial expenditure commitment of $1 million over 18 months to earn a 25% interest in Molyhil and associated tenements, and acquire Thor’s 40% interest in the adjacent Bonya tenement.
Molyhil hosts a current mineral resource estimate of 4.38Mt grading 0.27% tungsten trioxide and 0.10% molybdenum for 11,800t of tungsten trioxide and 4,400t molybdenum.
It has previously been awarded “major project” status by the Northern Territory government.
Investigator said the deal provides a “strategic opportunity with identified exploration potential, resource upgrade and recovery improvements”.
Tungsten has applications in aerospace, steel hardening, cutting and drilling, armour plate, electronics and jewellery.
It is considered a rare and valuable industrial metal which is complimentary to Investigator’s silver commodity focus.
Global demand has seen the tungsten price rise over 50% in the past year.
Netlinkz (ASX: NET)
Australian technology company Netlinkz has secured a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX organisation to distribute its Starlink satellite-based broadband internet service to markets in Australia and New Zealand.
The high-speed, low-latency product will be bundled with Netlinkz’ proprietary virtual secure network (VSN) solution to offer a “new dimension of connectivity” to customers.
Remote and rural communities will be first on the priority list, followed by markets including Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar, Singapore, Japan, Pacific Islands, Africa and Pakistan.
E2 Metals (ASX: E2M)
Impressing investors on Friday was E2 Metals with news it was acquiring one of the largest undeveloped silver-gold resources, Pinguino, which is located in Argentina’s Santa Cruz province.
Pinguino is only 15km north of E2 Metals’ flagship Conserrat gold-silver in the region and the combined project make the company the owner of the largest undeveloped silver resource in the region.
The new project has a foreign resource of 82Moz silver equivalent and E2 Metals is acquiring it for approximately US$10 million via mix of upfront cash, shares and milestone payments.
Adveritas (ASX: AV1)
In the ASX-listed tech space, Adveritas is the latest company to be targeted for a takeover.
The company revealed on Friday, it had received an indicative proposal from Nasdaq-listed global major Integral Ad Science.
Adveritas is considering the proposal, which values it at $0.11 per share – equating to about $50 million.
Integral Ad Science has a US$1.52 billion market cap and analyses the value of digital advertising placements and has developed technology for addressing ad fraud.
Adveritas has created its proprietary and award-winning TrafficGuard omnichannel ad verification platform to prevent ad fraud.
The week ahead
There is little doubt about the biggest planned announcement for the coming week with Wednesday’s consumer price index for October one that could really move the market in either direction.
A weaker than expected number could add to confidence that the Reserve Bank of Australia may not need to raise interest rates as high and as quickly as some fear, while a headline inflation blowout to 7.4% or beyond could be a real challenge to the “pivot” brigade.
Other local releases to watch out for include retail trade, building approvals, construction, private sector credit, home prices, business investment and lending indicators which are expected to show a rise in home lending due to the rash of refinancing.
Overseas, it is a fairly busy week with Chinese purchasing manager indices expected to show a continued contraction while in the US there is a massive raft of figures including economic growth, home prices, manufacturing, employment, home sales, construction and personal income and spending.
The other left field thing to watch for is RBA Governor Dr Philip Lowe who is speaking on a panel to celebrate the Bank of Thailand’s 80’th anniversary.