Big Drill Hits: The best lithium, gold and copper intercepts for the June quarter

Welcome back to Weekly Big Drill Hits – A curated list of the most intriguing intersections made by ASX-listed explorers.

Believe it or not, we've been tracking drill hits for a little over four months and pleased to present the ten biggest hits for each commodity for the June quarter.

Before we dive in, here are a few key points for reading the tables:

• The data comes from custom watchlists and may not cover all drill results

• The "Interval" reflects the length of the core

• The "from" reflects the interval start

• Only the highest grade-thickness intercept is shown (per announcement)

• The data is for illustrative purposes only. Please see the announcement for full context of the drill results

Lithium

Data date range: 27 March - 30 June

Lithium spot prices bottomed in late April and almost doubled from lows of 160,000 yuan a tonne by the end of the June quarter. To add some perspective, a bellwether name like Pilbara Minerals (ASX: PLS) rallied 24% last quarter.

The lithium leaderboards were headlined by mid-cap explorers that demonstrated a steady stream of wide and high-grade intercepts. Most of which were among the best performing lithium stocks for the quarter.

• Patriot Battery Metals (ASX: PMT) +19.0%

• Leo Lithium (ASX: LLL) +105.8%

• Azure Minerals (ASX: AZS) +342.7%

• Delta Lithium (ASX: DLI) +122.1%

Gold

Data date range: 27 March - 30 June

A bonanza gold hit doesn't always translate into share price gains. Here are the names that have topped our leaderboards but struggled to see share price upside in the June quarter:

• Catalyst Metals (ASX: CYL) -18.95%

• Lion One Metals (ASX: LLO) -17.95%

• Golden Rim Resources (ASX: GMR) -9.7%

This can be due to reasons such as:

• Issues with the underlying project (e.g. underwhelming Mineral Resource)

• Geographic headwinds (e.g. Africa-based explorers tend to trade at a discount)

• News flow (e.g. the company is constantly announcing high grade drill hits and the market is losing interest)

Narratives can be pretty important here. So here are two examples of companies that have demonstrated both a) big gold hits and b) an interesting story.

Dateline Resources (ASX: DTR) shares bottomed in late May after the company announced plans to sell its Gold Links Mine in the US. Dateline is set to receive up to $12 million from the sale and more importantly, the removal of almost $18 million in liabilities. The transaction (alongside the third best gold hit) helped the stock rally as much as 136% in the June quarter.

Gascoyne Resources (ASX: GCY) is another interesting turnaround story. The stock resumed trading in March after raising $50 million to progress its Never Never deposit (previously in a five month suspension). When it resumed trading on 9 March, the stock fell around 40% to 10 cents. It took the stock a few weeks to stabilise but with the help of a steady stream of wide and high-grade hits, rallied 78% in the June quarter.

Copper

Data date range: 27 March - 30 June

More broadly speaking, it was a relatively uneventful quarter for copper stocks. Spot prices also fell around 8.2% last quarter amid ever-so-hawkish central banks, weak Chinese economic data and growing demand concerns.

The share prices from those that topped the copper leaderboards also struggled in the June quarter:

• 29Metals (ASX: 29M) -28.7%

• Carnaby Resources (ASX: CNB) -17.3%

• SSR Mining (ASX: SSR) -8.5%

• Hot Chilli (ASX: HCH) +5.2%

Xanadu Mines (ASX: XAM) is the only stock on the copper hits list to have experienced a strong run in the June quarter, up 113%. The $135m market cap company is developing its 50% owned Kharmagtai Project in Mongolia. The project has a Mineral Resource of 1.15 billion tonnes, comprising of 3.0 million tonnes of contained copper plus a 8.0 million ounce gold by-product. This ranks the company as the second largest copper resource on the ASX (behind Sandfire Resources).