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Anson Resources (ASX:ASN) has seen its shares fall nearly -6% on the back of a fresh lithium chloride offtake deal it’s inked with California-based Nusano, a radioisotopes player predominantly focused on the medical imaging market.
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Nusano, it turns out, has a plan to turn Anson’s lithium chloride into products for its own product line. I conducted a cursory desktop research process into that. Lithium is used in nuclear reactors; it is thought to assist the body in retaining iodine (based on what I can make of a complicated medical paper), and at least one other piece of research has also tied lithium to radioprotective effects in mice.
Radioisotope solutions, for the uninitiated, are a component of nuclear medicine used most notably in PET scans, which are often used by doctors to image cancers growing within the participating patient’s body.
The radioisotopes, radioactive material but with low risk profiles, spread through the body and, in essence, make cancers glow for the camera.
It’s not the typical kind of end-user that lithium offtake deals end up with, and that may, or may not, be part of the market’s clear disinterest on Monday. Or it could be that the company’s MOU is non-binding, which means that at this stage, it’s really more of a proposed offtake deal.
That could very well be what investors are punishing here, and also perhaps because Nusano just doesn’t have the same sex factor other still-in-the-wings potential offtake partners possess, such as LG Energy Solutions.
There was also the fact Anson sprung a surprise cap raise on investors back in mid-November, the second it’s launched since August, which led to a bit of malaise. Since then, the company has been somewhat quieter on the HotCopper forums.
And while I can’t know for absolute sure, this Market Link finance journalist wouldn’t be surprised if that was the catalyst that has led to lower liquidity volumes for the stock evident on Monday (and when compared to recent history). As at 3pm AEDT, less than $500,000 worth of shares had traded hands.
(Though, an apparent cooling off of lithium hype that came on the back of the battery metals’ recent upswing on major benchmarks last month is likely playing a role, too.)
ASN last traded at 6.4cps.
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