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West Wits Mining (ASX:WWI) has poured its first bar of gold after attracting a lot of attention in a few small-cap-minded forums on the internet (both HotCopper and digitally abroad), but the wider enthusiasm that pushed the stock to +325% YoY returns as of Wednesday, March 18, didn’t materialise.
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In fact, despite the traditional milestone, happy snap of gold bars and a statement of transition into becoming a producer, West Wits’ overall volume at lunchtime was well below the four-week average.
As of 12.30pm SYD, 7.8 million shares are trading hands versus a 4Wavg of 18 million – compare that to over 4B shares on issue. Which is likely part of the problem (both mathematically and reputationally).
Earlier, West Wits was even added to the All Ords index in the first rebalance of CY26; that doesn’t appear to have been enough to cause any great surge in enthusiasm that hadn’t already been staged in the half-year before.
All in all, its price is now back to where it was in CY21 – eyeing off 10cps.
That’s not to say it can’t travel further – it’s the ASX, to be fair. All we seem to do is sit around rewarding resource companies that start producing. It’s been a long wait for WWI to get its South African Qala Shallows project to fruition.
Qala Shallows is itself the first project of a larger omniproject called the Witwatersrand Basin Project in Gauteng. “The inaugural gold pour was completed at Sibanye-Stillwater’s Ezulwini Processing Plant on 17 March 2026 (South African time), marking West Wits’ first gold production,” the company wrote on Wednesday.
“We set a clear objective to deliver the first gold in first-quarter 2026, and the team has delivered on that commitment. With production now underway, our focus turns to ramping up operations and demonstrating the long-term value of this asset,” West Wits chief executive Rudi Deysel added today.
Unfortunately for WWI, perhaps, the ides of March (or, Trump) have effectively seen oil steal gold’s thunder and gold now sits at US$5,000k/oz – crucially, around where it’s sat for months, struggling to make a meaningful run on $6K/oz.
The gold hype of CY24-2025 appears to be facing its biggest obstacle yet, which this finance journalist sees evidenced by WWI’s Wednesday price action. We’re talking about producing speccy here, come on.
WWI last traded at 7.7cps through to lunchtime.
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