Good Afternoon and welcome to HotCopper Highlights wrapping up Week 23 of the year, I’m Jon Davidson and in this segment we look at the stocks and company announcements generating the most attention this week on Australia’s #1 finance forum website.
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It’s been another lacklustre week down under, I imagine you’re as tired of hearing that as I am saying it, so let’s jump straight into it starting with the most viewed.
One bright spot this week amidst ongoing market malaise has been ASX-listed modular data centre builder DXN Limited, which midweek shot to the top of everybody’s radar, up +650% since Monday as the company inked a $9M contract with an undisclosed US company to build it an AI-ready data centre.
DXN, one of very few credible data centre or AI juniors in the space, says it can deliver the customer a small-scale data centre within the next 6-8 months. How it travels from here you can look at as a sentiment gauge for the data centre thematic among the market’s smallcap enthusiasts, but if it comes good, the company could single handedly help boost the ASX’s sorely lacking AI credentials.
Turning to something we’re better at, gold mining, Northern Star this week saw green shoots as well as substantial coverage in the mainstream press after hedge fund investor Elliot Management read the company the Riot Act, or at least read its own 39 page report demanding Northern Star either sell its Kalgoorlie super pit stake to somebody who can do it better, or start catching up to its peers. After cutting output expectations more than once yearly across the last half decade, Elliot’s getting nervous about its $1B dollar stake.
Finally, WA-focused water mining and water services company Vysarn, attempting to claim ownership of vast amounts of groundwater in the Pilbara, climbed to nearly $1 a share this week for the first time after acquiring a company called Newground that further expands its plans to become a vertically integrated private water utility in the region.
And so what about the most discussed stocks?
Embattled biotech company Opthea came out of a year-long suspension this week following the failure of its Phase 3 lead candidate last year treating eye disease and plummeted from 60cps to below 2cps after the company revealed it now must go back to square one. That looks like a pivot into a lung condition mainly affecting women, and until the company does something solid, investors weren’t having it.
Elsewhere, in brighter news, 1414 Degrees, a company that used to develop molten salt energy storage applications, continued to remain hotly discussed after appointing a new suite of executives as the company continues trying to penetrate the US defence market in a new wind for the battery tech player.
Finally, dividend paying largecap JB Hi-Fi was hit this week by an increase to the minimum wage from Canberra as a basket of retail stocks typically associated with cheaper labour – or sales staff – dipped downward on the news. We saw the same thing in 2023 when the minimum wage was increased, and I doubt it will lead to long-term pain.
That’s HotCopper Highlights for Week 23 of this year, I’m Jon Davidson, have a great weekend, enjoy the public holiday if you’re on the east coast, and we’ll see you next week.
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