ASX edges higher as trade talk hopes boost energy and mining stocks
The Australian sharemarket was moderately higher in lunchtime trading as US market futures rose on confirmation American and Chinese trade officials will meet, spurring optimism trade tensions between the world's two largest economies could ease.
The ASX/S&P200 added 16.50 points, or 0.2 per cent, to trade at 8167.90 as of 12.43pm AEST, bolstered by gains from energy and mining stocks, with seven of its 11 industry sectors advancing. The Australian dollar fell back below US65¢, trading at US64.87¢.
Index futures for Wall Street's S&P 500 gained 0.7 per cent, rebounding from the market's losses overnight, after US officials said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and chief trade negotiator Jamieson Greer would meet China's top economic official in Switzerland on Saturday in what could be a first step toward easing the trade war disrupting the global economy.
Meanwhile, China reduced its policy rate and lowered the amount of cash lenders must keep in reserve, as Beijing increases efforts to help its economy caught in the trade stoush.
The looming trade talks helped boost the energy sector on the ASX, with by oil and gas giants Santos and Woodside up 2.2 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively, and refiner Ampol up 1.4 per cent. Oil prices pushed higher again after rallying more than 3 per cent on Monday.
Similarly, the mining giants gained as iron ore – Australia's biggest export – climbed 1.2 per cent overnight. BHP, the world's largest miner, rose 1.4 per cent, while Fortescue and Rio Tinto were both up 1.6 per cent.
The financial sector was also in the green, boosted by National Australia Bank, which jumped 2.2 per cent after posting a 1 per cent rise in cash earnings to $3.6 billion for the March half, better than market expectations. The other big four banks were mixed, with ANZ up 0.4 per cent, CBA up 0.1 per cent and Westpac down 1.4 per cent.
Investment bank Macquarie Group was down 0.1 per cent after the markets regulator ASIC called it out over 'significant compliance failures' in its futures dealing business and over-the counter derivatives trade reporting.
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Sydney Morning Herald
16 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
ASX Runners of the Week: Eclipse, Bryah, Bastion & Codeifai
The updated resource area is restricted to a relatively small portion of rare earths-endowed carbonatite. A 2023 exploration program included trenching and shallow drilling, but was constrained to within 12m of surface. The company last year laid its hands on 23 drill core samples from six diamond holes hammered into the site in 1950. The holes were drilled to a maximum depth of about 200m by cryolite miner Kryolitselskabet Oresund to test for a potential iron ore deposit. Laboratory analysis from the core samples returned the impressive numbers, resulting in a gargantuan leap in the mineral resource. Sitting in geopolitically stable Greenland with deep-water access, Gronnedal sits on a sliver of a massive carbonatite complex, with mineralisation open in all directions expected to stretch well past 500m deep. Eclipse is gearing up to drill deeper and wider, chasing what could be a globally critical supply of rare earths. That could be particularly significant given the US is chasing new rare earth supplies and Trump's latest musings about snapping up Greenland for its critical mineral deposits. With clean energy demand surging and only six historic drill holes underpinning the resource, Eclipse's Gronnedal could be the kind of blockbuster that sends shareholders to the moon. BRYAH RESOURCES (ASX: BYH) up 240% (0.5c – 1.7c) Gold explorer Bryah Resources had a tremendous week to come in second on the ASX Runners list. The company stormed the bourse with a cheeky 240 per cent surge in its share price, thanks to a shareholder mutiny to send the boardroom brass walking and bring in new directors to get working on its shiny new Canadian gold project. The drama kicked off with a section 249D notice from heavyweight shareholder Yu Yonglu, who holds an 11.8 per cent stake or 102 million shares in the company. Yu launched a strike to oust directors Leslie Ingraham and Ian Stuart on Monday, proposing seasoned minerals veterans Nicholas Katris and Bishoy Habib steer the ship. Katris and Habib are the golden boys behind Trigg Minerals, an ASX antimony darling whose shares ran from 0.5c to 10.25c in under a year. Surprisingly, Bryah's share price leapt a massive 200 per cent at the start of the week, on an impressive 72.8M shares traded, to close at 1.5c by Tuesday afternoon. A massive 85.3M shares were traded on Wednesday, pushing the share price to a peak for the week of 1.7c and a tremendous 240 per cent gain over two days. Fuel was added to the fire in the form of Bryah's acquisition last month of the Golden Pike project in New Brunswick, Canada, which has a foreign resource of 214,800 tonnes at an impressive 9.6 grams per tonne (g/t) for 66,300 ounces gold. The project features some stonking historic bonanza intercepts, such as 13 metres at 43.07g/t and 10m grading a little over an ounce per tonne gold. The company says plenty of upside remains at the project with untested boulders assaying up to 244g/t gold. Golden Pike now looks like a priority target for a first drilling campaign. As gold prices continue to push all-time highs, Golden Pike looks ready for the shovel in a mining-friendly region with top-notch infrastructure, potentially positioning Bryah for a company-making discovery. Yu's boardroom coup appears to have been popular, with shareholders sipping champagne on the thought the two Trigg poster boys might soon be in their corner. Up 167% (0.15c to 0.4c) Bastion Minerals burst from the blocks as a late runner this morning to secure third place in this week's list. After closing at 0.15c on Thursday, the company's shares opened at 0.2c and sprinted to 0.4c on massive volumes, exceeding 200M shares traded by noon. Bastion has seen its daily share volumes swing wildly during the year, ranging from one share up to 55.7M shares traded in a day. Friday's volumes appear to surpass any previous frenzied trading levels in the stock. The company recently appointed a new leadership team to review all its existing projects. It also plans to acquire some early-stage Australian gold projects. All the new non-executive directors will assume hands-on roles in the absence of a management team and look to immediately kick goals for shareholders by focusing on projects with a traditional exploration earn-in model. Bastion previously reported on a non-JORC resource at its ICE copper-gold project within Canada's Yukon Territory. The resource stands at 4.56Mt grading 1.48 per cent copper and has significant gold credits, estimated at 0.15g/t to 0.85g/t. Late last month, the company said it anticipated receipt of a commissioned report for a JORC mineral resource estimate for ICE, which could have been a catalyst for today's price action. The company went into a trading halt mid-afternoon Friday, which will last until a response to an ASX price query and an announcement on the release date for the company's maiden JORC resource for the ICE project. CODEIFAI LIMITED (ASX: CDE) Up 120% (1c – 2.2c) Coming in fourth place for the week is brand solutions technology group Codeifai Ltd, which on Tuesday morning revealed news of a $570,000 share placement to professional and sophisticated investors. Like a footballer crumbling to the turf one hour after receiving a bone-jarring bump, the share price and trading volumes initially showed little response. A delayed reaction kicked in on Wednesday with volumes jumping to 7.5M shares traded for the day, accompanied by a 100 per cent surge in Codeifai's share price. The shares ran again on Thursday, driven by almost 6M traded shares, touching a weekly high of 2.2c a share for a tasty 120 per cent gain for the week. Codeifai recently pivoted to become a brand solutions specialist that develops and sells digital solutions using QR code technology through its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings ConnectQR and ProtectCode. The company says its Connect QR with AI-generated QR codes can produce revenue 24/7 and its ProtectCode solution, integrated with its own cloud-based platform, provides unique QR codes for each product to ensure authenticity. It has already generated millions of codes. QR codes are used for payment gateways, and the beauty of its SaaS offering is its ability to generate 24/7 customer signups. Codeifai was also hit with a speeding ticket from the ASX constabulary late Thursday and went into a trading halt, pending its response to the price and volume surge.
The Age
16 minutes ago
- The Age
ASX Runners of the Week: Eclipse, Bryah, Bastion & Codeifai
The updated resource area is restricted to a relatively small portion of rare earths-endowed carbonatite. A 2023 exploration program included trenching and shallow drilling, but was constrained to within 12m of surface. The company last year laid its hands on 23 drill core samples from six diamond holes hammered into the site in 1950. The holes were drilled to a maximum depth of about 200m by cryolite miner Kryolitselskabet Oresund to test for a potential iron ore deposit. Laboratory analysis from the core samples returned the impressive numbers, resulting in a gargantuan leap in the mineral resource. Sitting in geopolitically stable Greenland with deep-water access, Gronnedal sits on a sliver of a massive carbonatite complex, with mineralisation open in all directions expected to stretch well past 500m deep. Eclipse is gearing up to drill deeper and wider, chasing what could be a globally critical supply of rare earths. That could be particularly significant given the US is chasing new rare earth supplies and Trump's latest musings about snapping up Greenland for its critical mineral deposits. With clean energy demand surging and only six historic drill holes underpinning the resource, Eclipse's Gronnedal could be the kind of blockbuster that sends shareholders to the moon. BRYAH RESOURCES (ASX: BYH) up 240% (0.5c – 1.7c) Gold explorer Bryah Resources had a tremendous week to come in second on the ASX Runners list. The company stormed the bourse with a cheeky 240 per cent surge in its share price, thanks to a shareholder mutiny to send the boardroom brass walking and bring in new directors to get working on its shiny new Canadian gold project. The drama kicked off with a section 249D notice from heavyweight shareholder Yu Yonglu, who holds an 11.8 per cent stake or 102 million shares in the company. Yu launched a strike to oust directors Leslie Ingraham and Ian Stuart on Monday, proposing seasoned minerals veterans Nicholas Katris and Bishoy Habib steer the ship. Katris and Habib are the golden boys behind Trigg Minerals, an ASX antimony darling whose shares ran from 0.5c to 10.25c in under a year. Surprisingly, Bryah's share price leapt a massive 200 per cent at the start of the week, on an impressive 72.8M shares traded, to close at 1.5c by Tuesday afternoon. A massive 85.3M shares were traded on Wednesday, pushing the share price to a peak for the week of 1.7c and a tremendous 240 per cent gain over two days. Fuel was added to the fire in the form of Bryah's acquisition last month of the Golden Pike project in New Brunswick, Canada, which has a foreign resource of 214,800 tonnes at an impressive 9.6 grams per tonne (g/t) for 66,300 ounces gold. The project features some stonking historic bonanza intercepts, such as 13 metres at 43.07g/t and 10m grading a little over an ounce per tonne gold. The company says plenty of upside remains at the project with untested boulders assaying up to 244g/t gold. Golden Pike now looks like a priority target for a first drilling campaign. As gold prices continue to push all-time highs, Golden Pike looks ready for the shovel in a mining-friendly region with top-notch infrastructure, potentially positioning Bryah for a company-making discovery. Yu's boardroom coup appears to have been popular, with shareholders sipping champagne on the thought the two Trigg poster boys might soon be in their corner. Up 167% (0.15c to 0.4c) Bastion Minerals burst from the blocks as a late runner this morning to secure third place in this week's list. After closing at 0.15c on Thursday, the company's shares opened at 0.2c and sprinted to 0.4c on massive volumes, exceeding 200M shares traded by noon. Bastion has seen its daily share volumes swing wildly during the year, ranging from one share up to 55.7M shares traded in a day. Friday's volumes appear to surpass any previous frenzied trading levels in the stock. The company recently appointed a new leadership team to review all its existing projects. It also plans to acquire some early-stage Australian gold projects. All the new non-executive directors will assume hands-on roles in the absence of a management team and look to immediately kick goals for shareholders by focusing on projects with a traditional exploration earn-in model. Bastion previously reported on a non-JORC resource at its ICE copper-gold project within Canada's Yukon Territory. The resource stands at 4.56Mt grading 1.48 per cent copper and has significant gold credits, estimated at 0.15g/t to 0.85g/t. Late last month, the company said it anticipated receipt of a commissioned report for a JORC mineral resource estimate for ICE, which could have been a catalyst for today's price action. The company went into a trading halt mid-afternoon Friday, which will last until a response to an ASX price query and an announcement on the release date for the company's maiden JORC resource for the ICE project. CODEIFAI LIMITED (ASX: CDE) Up 120% (1c – 2.2c) Coming in fourth place for the week is brand solutions technology group Codeifai Ltd, which on Tuesday morning revealed news of a $570,000 share placement to professional and sophisticated investors. Like a footballer crumbling to the turf one hour after receiving a bone-jarring bump, the share price and trading volumes initially showed little response. A delayed reaction kicked in on Wednesday with volumes jumping to 7.5M shares traded for the day, accompanied by a 100 per cent surge in Codeifai's share price. The shares ran again on Thursday, driven by almost 6M traded shares, touching a weekly high of 2.2c a share for a tasty 120 per cent gain for the week. Codeifai recently pivoted to become a brand solutions specialist that develops and sells digital solutions using QR code technology through its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings ConnectQR and ProtectCode. The company says its Connect QR with AI-generated QR codes can produce revenue 24/7 and its ProtectCode solution, integrated with its own cloud-based platform, provides unique QR codes for each product to ensure authenticity. It has already generated millions of codes. QR codes are used for payment gateways, and the beauty of its SaaS offering is its ability to generate 24/7 customer signups. Codeifai was also hit with a speeding ticket from the ASX constabulary late Thursday and went into a trading halt, pending its response to the price and volume surge.
West Australian
30 minutes ago
- West Australian
Ora Banda 35% lift leaves output just shy of 2025 WA gold target
ASX-listed gold producer Ora Banda Mining has flagged a hefty 35 per cent lift in its annual gold output to 95,000 ounces at its Davyhurst project in Western Australia's renowned Goldfields region. However, the company will land just shy of its 2025 production and cost guidance after encountering delays in a key mill upgrade. Ora Banda says gold production for April and May clocked in at 12,100 ounces and the June quarter is expected to deliver about 24,500 ounces. If June hits its forecast of up to 12,500 ounces, Ora Banda will end the financial year 5 per cent short of its lower end guidance of 100,000 ounces. All-in sustaining costs are tipped to come in at about $2600 per gold ounce, or 4 per cent above the company's previously guided high-end estimate of $2500 per ounce. Keen to emphasise the upside, management points out that the expected 2025 total represents a significant lift over last year's 70,000-ounce result and that recent processing bottlenecks are now behind them. A planned upgrade to install new lifters and liners to the mine's primary mill presented a key challenge in the past few months and the commissioning process dragged on longer than anticipated, disrupting output for April and May. With the works now completed, the plant is now nailing throughput rates of up to 4,000 tonnes per day. Meanwhile, the company is hitting its stride on the mining front. Production from Ora Banda's Riverina and Sand King pits is forecast to contribute a combined 14,500 ounces in June alone. Riverina is in steady-state production, while Sand King is ramping up following a restart. Ora Banda is also sitting on a healthy ore stockpile, built up during the processing plant's downtime. At the end of May, the company had 83,000 tonnes of medium-grade ore at 2.8 grams per tonne (g/t) for 7,500 ounces and 114,000t of low-grade material grading 1.2g/t for an additional 4,400 ounces. Three years ago, Davyhurst was treading water, churning out just 12,000 ounces of gold per quarter with grades barely hitting 1.5g/t. That changed when seasoned mining hand Luke Creagh took Ora Banda's reins as managing director. In a stunning turnaround, Creagh breathed new life into the ageing project, doubling production and proving the doubters wrong on an asset many had already written off as yesterday's story. Davyhurst now has two operating underground mines, with the Riverina deposit initially pulling much of the weight and half filling the 1.3 million-tonne processing plant. During the past six months, management's priority has moved to getting the company's newer Sand King deposit up to speed to fill the mill full of high-grade feed. The move will provide Ora Banda with another significant inflection point for increased production and cash flow. The company has also recently knocked it out of the park with some sizzling, high-grade intercepts at its new Little Gem discovery, south of its Riverina gold camp. Best hits at Little Gem included a whopping 22.7 metres grading 5g/t gold from 481m, including a red-hot 6.2m section running at 10.8g/t. The same hole kept giving, with a further 10.9m slice of 6.4g/t gold just 40m further down. Notably, the find appears to link up a chain of prospects from British Lion, through Little Gem and down to the 32,000-ounce Sunraysia deposit. The company beat a quick march back to site, with the drill rigs now smashing out a 16-hole follow-up blitz to see what other treasures may be lurking beneath. At the end of March, Ora Banda sat on an eye-watering cash pile of $80.7 million, giving it plenty of firepower to chase discoveries and fast-track extension drilling at Riverina and Sand King. The company is aiming to grow the project's 1.95-million-ounce global resource grading 2.6g/t gold. With the upgraded plant now hitting full stride and mining firing on all cylinders, Ora Banda looks primed for a big year ahead, backed by solid stockpiles and a clear runway to hit its 150,000-ounce annual gold target. Despite falling slightly short of guidance this year, Ora Banda's production trajectory remains firmly upward. With its key infrastructure hurdles now resolved, Ora Banda's push to become a mid-tier Aussie gold producer appears on track to continue. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
