Weekly wrap: WiseTech relief rally helps market to bounce higher

After days of fairly salacious headlines around WiseTech founder Richard White and his penchant for delivering mansions to girlfriends, the company pushed the entire Australian market into making a small gain.

News that Mr White would step aside as chief executive but will return in a full-time product and business development consulting role led to a rash of broker upgrades for WiseTech (ASX: WTC) and a 12.7% bounce in the share price to $112.

The original allegations of bullying and inappropriate conduct had led to an $8 billion sell-down for the technology stock, with investors fretting that Mr White would be forced to leave the company.

Mr White is WiseTech’s biggest shareholder and developed its core software product CargoWise so news he would continue with the company led brokers to slap buy ratings on the stock, with a resumption in its impressive growth trajectory now expected.

The lack of a massive share overhang if Mr White had left was also a major plus.

Not only did the rise in WiseTech shares propel the ASX 200 up 5 points, or 0.1% to 8211.3 points, it pushed the technology sector up an impressive 3.3% making it easily the leading sector.

Indeed, there was plenty of weakness evident in other parts of the market with five sectors including real estate, communications, consumer discretionary, consumer staples and industrials all recording losses.

Supermarkets slide

Consumer staples were dragged down by a weak performance by the supermarket giants with Woolworths (ASX: WOW) shares down 1.6% to $32.69 and Coles (ASX: COL) shares down 1% to $18.16.

IGA supermarkets supplier Metcash (ASX: MTS) shares dropped 3.3% to $3.19 after it foreshadowed more cost-cutting measures in response to weak trading in its hardware unit.

Big gold miner Newmont (ASX: NEM) had a shocking day, with its shares dropping a precipitous 13.6% to $70.74 after its earnings showed that the gold producer was struggling to deal with rising costs.

The big share fall came despite the company reporting the biggest quarterly profit in five years courtesy of rising gold prices.

MinRes thumped by super sell off

Not all companies with a troubled chief executive were as lucky as WiseTech with shares in Mineral Resources (ASX: MIN) falling 5% to $34.12.

That followed revelations in the Australian Financial Review that two board members including founder and managing director Chris Ellison, had bought mining equipment from the company at discounts to market rates.

Earlier revelations showed that Mr Ellison ran an offshore tax scheme for 11 years which was eventually confessed to the ATO and which involved fellow MinRes executives and sales of mining equipment.

The share weakness came as major investor AustralianSuper revealed it had rapidly reduced its stake in MinRes to below 5%.

Shares in HMC Capital (ASX: HMC) had a great day, rising an impressive 12.5% to $10.36, after it raised $300 million to help fund its almost $2 billion purchase of Sydney data centre developer Global Switch Australia.

Shares in sleep apnoea company ResMed (ASX: RMD) rose 5.9% to $37.73 after first quarter revenue rose due to rising demand for its sleep devices and masks.

Qantas (ASX: QAN) shares also enjoyed a rare day in the sun, up 1.5% to $8.03 on the back of a strong performance by Jetstar and stable demand for travel in the first half of fiscal 2025.

Small cap stock action

The Small Ords index slipped 0.54% for the week to close at 3172 points.

Small cap companies making headlines this week were:

Advance Metals (ASX: AVM)

Advance Metals plans to acquire the Yoquivo silver project in Mexico, which has driven a nearly 40% surge in its share price.

The acquisition offers a low-cost entry into the silver sector, complementing its existing battery and base metals assets in the USA.

Yoquivo holds promising exploration potential, with historic high-grade silver drill results and significant drilling data from Golden Minerals.

Advance has initiated a $30,000 non-refundable payment for a 7-day due diligence period, with additional payments totaling around $830,000 to follow.

Adisyn (ASX: AI1)

Adisyn is in formal negotiations to acquire Israeli semiconductor developer 2D Generation, aiming to leverage its innovative technology for defence, data centres, and cybersecurity markets.

The deal builds on a prior collaboration and allows Adisyn to control 2D’s intellectual property, focusing on capital-light semiconductor solutions rather than high-cost infrastructure.

2D Generation’s patented graphene coating technology enables advanced semiconductors with improved miniaturisation, lower power consumption, and enhanced computational performance.

The acquisition will be funded through a $3 million equity raise, with Sandton Capital Advisory managing the process and receiving options as part of their fee.

Yandal Resources (ASX: YRL)

Yandal Resources announced a high-grade gold discovery at the New England Granite (NEG) prospect, part of its Ironstone Well–Barwidgee gold project in Western Australia.

Early results from a 12-hole reverse circulation (RC) program revealed a 78m intercept averaging 1.2 grams per tonne gold, with mineralisation potentially extending over 170m and remaining open along strike and down-dip.

Managing director Chris Oorschot said the discovery, named Siona, validates their revised exploration model and aligns with the favourable gold price environment.

Follow-up drilling is planned within the next two weeks to further define the mineralisation and explore similar targets across the project area.

Vection Technologies (ASX: VR1)

Vection Technologies has partnered with Dell Technologies to launch its AI-based Algho platform across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, marking a $500,000 first sale of the platform.

The collaboration will introduce Algho to Dell’s salesforce and customers, with a formal launch at Dell’s Milan forum next month.

The partnership aligns with Vection’s $12 million acquisition of Italian AI company The Digital Box, enhancing its AI capabilities and expanding into business-to-business and business-to-government markets.

Vection is also developing future versions of the platform, including Algho4Edge for edge computing and Algho4DC for data centres, aiming for certification as a Dell open enterprise server solution by 2025.

Atomo Diagnostics (ASX: AT1)

Atomo Diagnostics has secured a $2.44 million grant from the Australian government to develop a rapid syphilis test for both professional and at-home use.

The new test, created in collaboration with the Burnet Institute, will uniquely detect active infections, addressing a growing public health need as syphilis cases in Australia have tripled over the past decade.

This follows Atomo’s success with its HIV self-test, the only one approved for home use in Australia, and builds on previous federal funding that expanded access to free HIV tests through vending machines and mail-out programs.

The company plans to leverage its established commercial channels to bring the syphilis test to market, capitalising on the increasing demand for consumer-focused STI testing solutions.

The week ahead

For once the Federal Government will be closely paying attention to a statistical release with the consumer price index containing the secrets to whether the Reserve Bank is likely to start cutting interest rates before the next election or afterwards.

The economic cycle is obviously really important during a cost-of-living crisis so any signs that sticky inflation is starting to finally fall into the RBA’s target range will cause plenty of sighs of relief from Labor MPs in Canberra who are anticipating an election next year.

This time it will be tricky to see how inflation is really trending due to government energy rebates which should help to drive the headline consumer price index to a 0.3% rise in the September quarter, with the annual growth rate easing to around 2.9% from the June quarter’s 3.8%.

That is ostensibly within the RBA’s 2% to 3% range but central bankers are unlikely to fall for any such smoke and mirrors and will want to see the CPI sustainably lower before cutting rates – most likely early next year.

Big tech names due to report

US action should provide plenty of market movements this week with many of the large technology names that now dominate the US market indices set to report profits.

That includes Alphabet, AMD, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Uber, so any upward surprises or disappointments will have a big influence on market direction.

Locally, there are about 40 companies hosting annual general shareholder meetings, so it will be a good week to see some forward guidance influencing individual company share prices.

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