Winners and losers: A look at the best and worst performing ASX stocks in April

The ASX 200 struggled to maintain its momentum in the second half of April, closing the month up 1.8% from a peak of 3.0%. Every sector was positive for the month except Materials, which fell 2.6% primarily due to a sharp pullback for iron ore prices.

When it comes to the best performing stocks (with a market cap of more than $300 million), a few themes come to mind such as strong trenders, M&A and a bounce for Covid winners. Whereas the worst performer list was dominated by resource names due to underwhelming March quarter results and weaker commodity prices. We’ll talk about these themes in more detail after you’ve had a chance to look at the tables below.  

Top performing stocks

Strong trending stocks: Impedimed, Mindax, Telix Pharma, Lindian Resources, Lindsay and Strike Energy are names that managed to break out of trading ranges last month. And when they did, they rallied hard.

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

Bouncing from rock bottom: Megaport, Codan, Cettire and PointsBet are stocks that would have probably appeared on this list three years ago – when interest rates were zero and nobody cared about profitability. These names are down 60-90% from all-time highs but staged a rather uniform bounce from lows. This was in parallel with better-than-expected results from high-profile US tech names like Microsoft and Alphabet. But the question remains: Is this a dead cat bounce, or is the bottom in?

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

Worst performing stocks

Underwhelming quarterlies: Syrah Resources faced cost headwinds, impacted by ‘inventory positions and minor operational issues’, which drove costs up to US$668 a tonne. The company said it will look to moderate Balama graphite production until ‘demand conditions and sales orders at economic prices warrant higher capacity utilisation.’

The copper dilemma: Aeris Resources is a small cap producer that’s struggling to break even due to high all-in sustaining costs at its two copper projects – Tritton ($5.96/lb) and Northern Queensland ($4.23/lb). While copper might be the backbone of themes like electrification and decarbonisation – it's not a good time to be in the bottom cost quartile. 

Iron ore: Singapore iron ore futures fell -18.6% in April to US$101.85 a tonne. This drove greater declines for marginal producers like Grange Resources and Mount Gibson Iron.