Insider Trades: Directors are buying shares in these 9 ASX small caps

Welcome back to the Insider Trades series – A summary of small cap mining director transactions that have taken place between 2 June and 29 May.

Top small cap director trades

Interesting Observations

CEO and largest shareholder load up: Omega Oil & Gas is backed by the billionaire Flannery family, which committed $4.2 million of the $15.1 million that Omega was seeking to raise as part of its IPO back in October 2022. Last week, Quentin Flannery – also a non-Executive Director of OMA – bought approximately $915,000 worth of shares. At the same time, CEO Lauren Bennett also purchased $19,950 worth of shares.

The Queensland-based explorer successfully wrapped up a drilling campaign that marked two major gas discoveries in the Surat Basin in Queensland last month – which seeks to derisk a prospective 3 trillion cubic feet of gas and 233 million barrels of oil. The stock is up around 21% to 23.5 cents since it started releasing drill results and updates in early April. It experienced a brief dip to 19 cents on 31 May, which was when Flannery and Bennett started buying shares.

Omega Oil and Gas price chart (Source: Market Index)

An emerging mid-tier goldie: Ausgold believes its on the right track to become Australia’s next mid-tier gold producer. The company is progressing the Katanning Gold project which is targeting 136,000 ounces of gold production per annum over the course of its 10 year mine life. A recent scoping study suggests a post-tax NPV of $541 million (current market cap of $120 million). The stock has mostly been trading sideways for the past 18 months but we’re starting to see insiders begin to nibble.

Ausgold 12-month price chart (Source: Market Index)

Rare earth hopeful obliterated: Hastings Technology Metals said its Yangibana project will now be developed in two stages, with the first stage focused on producing a rare earth concentrate from the mine. To make things worse, the Stage 1 cash costs were 44% higher than what Macquarie was expecting. This announcement triggered an almost 30% selloff across two days. Hastings has underperformed rare earths peers like Lynas, Iluka and Arafura by a wide margin – down 68.9% year-to-date. Executive Chairman Charles Lew bought $127,800 worth of shares last week – Is he seeing value after such a selloff?

Hastings Technology Metals 12-month price chart (Source: Market Index)