Big Drill Hits: The best gold, copper and uranium hits of the week
Northern Star and Bellevue top the leaderboards. But do drill hits really matter for large caps?
Source: iStock
Mentioned
KEY POINTS
- Northern Star and Bellevue top the gold hits leaderboards this week
- Exploration results tend to be incremental news for large caps
Welcome back to Weekly Big Drill Hits – A curated list of the most intriguing intersections made by ASX-listed explorers.
We'll be taking a deeper dive into gold hits as it was a relatively quiet week for lithium, nickel and uranium drilling results.
Lithium
There was only one drill result on our watchlist this week by Lithium Energy (ASX: LEL).
Our lithium drill hit tables to date have recorded only hard rock results. Moving forward, we will seek to incorporate brine results by converting them to standardised Li20 grades.
Copper
Date range: 1-5 May
Uranium
Date range: 1-5 May
Gold
Date range: 1-5 May
Large cap leaders: Drill hits are typically incremental news for large cap companies, that tend to merge exploration announcements with other news such as a resource or quarterly update. Northern Star and Bellevue may have topped the leaderboards, but these miners have bigger fish to fry
A troubled explorer: Last December, Gascoyne suspended open pit mining and ore processing operations at its Dalgaranga mine and its shares went into suspension for around 4 months to secure a $50 million funding package to progress its Never Never Discovery. When the stock resumed trading on 9 March, it fell 40% to around 10 cents. The 'exceptional high-grade' drill hit from this week inspired a brief 7.7% rally when the news came out. But the stock still managed to finish that session 2.3% lower.
Gascoyne 12-month price chart (Source: Market Index)
Interesting price action: Southern Cross Gold has made several high grade drill hits over the past 2-3 months at its Sunday Creek Project in Victoria. But this has failed to move its share price, which is down almost 30% year-to-date. The stock hardly moved after the latest drill announcement on 1 May. But the next day, it would sell down 18.5% on 1.57 million volume (410% its 20-day average volume).
Southern Cross Gold 3-month price chart (Source: Market Index)
