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Good afternoon and welcome to HotCopper’s Market Close for Wednesday April 16, I’m Jonathon Davidson.
It started as another normal day, but during Wednesday intraday trade Trump effectively banned NVIDIA from exporting AI chips to China. NVIDIA dragged Wall Street upwards with it for most of last year, so expect more volatility tonight but not as bad as last week.
Looking at local sectors, Financials led the green up just shy of a percent while Energy led the laggards, down -2.6%.
Let’s turn to companies in the green:
HotCopper and broad market favourite Zip Co jumped around 17% on its latest Q3 earnings report with cash earnings before taxes up 219% to $46M. Shares closed at $1.73 each.
Bellevue Gold yoyo’d back up over 11% on Wednesday following Tuesday’s decline after major shareholder Macquarie flexed on the company prompting a capital raise over $150M. With the money, Bellevue wants to delay a plant expansion and cut jobs but mostly get rid of dodgy gold hedges to seize current spot market prices. Shares closed at 99 cents per share.
Lynas Rare Earths meanwhile jumped over four and a half percent as the market now tries to find the best companies to capitalise in the face of a recent move by China to further ban rare earth exports. While metals prices haven’t yet changed on publicly viewable benchmarks, Tuesday saw rare earths players across the board enjoy a boost. Lynas closed at $8.40 each.
And as for companies in the red:
Mineral Resources dipped nearly -9% in part driven by the surprise exit of two directors on its board handling governance, Jacqueline McGill and Susan Corlett. While the stock’s peers also dipped on Wednesday, the decline in MinRes was much more pronounced. If you’re wondering why they both left at once, your guess is as good as anybody else’s. MinRes closed at $16.64 each.
Sticking to the theme of embattled companies, Wisetech saw shares end flattish red down nearly a percent after controversial founder Richard White re-named himself Chief Innovation Officer, now hired on a ten year contract by the company he founded which will now pay him $1M a year. Shares ended at $84.13 each.
Finally, Rio Tinto ended in the red down over 2 and a half percent after revealing cyclone issues in the top end of WA had cost the company $150M and knocked around some 13 million tonnes of shipments. Shares ended at $108.33 cents each.
That’s HotCopper’s Market Close for Wednesday, I’m Jonathon Davidson, have a great night and we’ll see you tomorrow.
