ASX Runners of the Week: Yandal, Imagion, Falcon & Bayan

One thing is certain in markets: There are no certainties. 

Following last week’s forecast by the banks of an impending interest rate cut, the Reserve Bank said ‘stuff you’ to the forecasts and struggling mortgage holders by keeping rates on hold.

Meanwhile, across the Pacific, United States President Donald Trump was back to his old tariff tricks, most notably dropping a 50 per cent tariff on copper imports. The double-down tariff placed the red metal on a run to more than US$5.50 per pound for US-based futures and continued its July ‘metal of the month’ momentum.

Not to be outdone, the US Defence Department dropped a bombshell on Friday, stepping further into the rare earths game with a bold move to prop up the country’s world-class Mountain Pass mine in California. It pulled in a staggering US$110 a kilogram floor price for neodymium-praseodymium rare earth oxides - double China’s going rate - and accompanying billions in funding for magnet metals production lines. 

MP Material's Mountain Pass mine is the only light rare earths producer in the US and is now cutting ties with China’s Shenghe Resources, signalling a tectonic shift toward a bifurcated market that could supercharge Western rare earths operations.

Aussie critical minerals and rare earths heavyweights Lynas Rare Earths and Iluka Resources rode the wave, each surging about 20 per cent on the back of the Mountain Pass news and Trump’s executive orders. 

Though not everyone was popping champagne this week. Burgeoning biotech producer Botanix Pharmaceuticals took a brutal hit, with its share price tanking as much as 56 per cent after its new excessive sweating drug, Sofdra, posted underwhelming US sales figures. 

The drug’s early performance did little to dry the foreheads of some panicked shareholders, who were no doubt expecting it to conquer the market in six months flat. Oh well, one investor’s panic sell can be another’s bargain buy.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runners list is a mixed bag, featuring a scrappy biotech battler showing signs of a comeback, alongside the usual trio of junior explorers and nearology plays getting a boost from Trump’s Truth Social hype machine. Buckle up - it’s never dull on the ASX.

YANDAL RESOURCES LTD (ASX: YRL)

Up 147% (8.5c – 21c)

This week's Bulls N’ Bears’ runner of the week is Western Australian explorer Yandal Resources, which struck gold on Thursday with some scintillating early assay results from its Arrakis prospect within its Caladan project in the prolific Yandal greenstone belt. 

The company unveiled assays from the first 16 air core (AC) holes of a 12,500-metre drilling blitz across a monstrous 6.4-kilometre Caladan target, revealing a cracking 800m-long mineralised structure at Arrakis. It looks to be just the tip of the iceberg. 

The scale and grade of the hits are not earth-shattering, but implications of scale emerging at Arrakis suggest the initial 800m of results could extend for a potential 3km strike. That would be nearly as long as the Kalgoorlie Super Pit.

Standout hits include an 11m intercept at 2.1 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 90m and 12m at 1.1g/t from 45m. 

Hosted in a northwest-striking shear zone, the mineralisation shows very consistent grade and geology across three 400m-spaced holes, pointing to a single, continuous system within the 3km-long regolith anomaly. 

The juicy upside of Yandal’s discovery catapulted the company’s share price into action on Thursday. When the market had digested what the discovery could mean, its shares really started flying off the shelves, with the price rising to a high of 21 cents on Friday. This was up a very handy 147 per cent on last Friday’s price as punters scrambled to stake a claim in this gold-chasing dynamo.

The company’s Caladan target area, including Arrakis, forms part of Yandal’s broader Ironstone Well-Barwidgee gold project, strategically nestled 60km south of Northern Star’s former flagship Jundee mining complex. 

Northern Star has dominated the northern Yandal greenstones for the past 10 years, along the way gobbling up every major deposit uncovered in the area. 

In 2019, Northern Star acquired Echo Resources in an all-cash takeover valued at $242.6 million for its Julius and Orelia deposits. Australia’s biggest gold miner then scooped up the Milrose deposit to the north from Strickland Metals in 2023. Even if the gold at the historic plus 10-million-ounce Jundee mine is drying up, there is no shortage of neighbours in the region for Australia’s big goldie to gobble up.

With 10,200m of the 125-hole program already drilled and 84 more holes at the lab, Yandal is set to wrap up drilling in two weeks. 

With a robust $7 million cash pile and 470,200 ounces of gold resources outside of Arrakis, Yandal’s potential to be the next belt-busting gold system in the region could see this junior become the next target in the crosshairs of Australia’s biggest goldie.

IMAGION BIOSYSTEMS LTD (ASX: IBX)

Up 118% (1.1c – 2.4c)

Snagging second place this week is cancer imaging company Imagion Biosystems, which rallied on positive US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) feedback for its planned phase two breast cancer trial for its hyper-accurate imaging technology. 

The technology can detect an often aggressive type of breast cancer, HER2-positive breast cancer, involving a protein that promotes the growth of cancer cells.

The FDA’s constructive input into the study plan, with an in-person meeting set for next week, and an ‘investigational new drug’ submission slated for this quarter are serious advances for Imagion’s MagSense HER2 imaging agent. 

Imagion’s non-invasive technology uses nanoparticles to detect and attach to cancerous lymph nodes in HER2-positive breast cancer tissue to deliver incredibly precise images. 

The company’s phase one trial was completed in December 2023 and confirmed its safety across 13 patients. The recent phase two study was designed to refine dosing and imaging protocols. 

Imagion hasn’t travelled a smooth road and while the latest news is positive, it might not have left historic holders jumping for joy. Imagion’s phase one trial, launched in December 2020, struggled to recruit patients and took a gruelling 2.5 years to enrol 13 participants by June 2023. The results were delivered five months later. 

The company’s share price fell from a high of about$7 per share at the start of phase  one trial start to below 10c when the CEO resigned a month after the trial end. The company’s share price is now labouring at 1.5c per share, a little over a year later. That’s a brutal 99.998 per cent barbecue or ‘negative 450 bagger’ that might better be coined a shareholder bonfire.

But with signs of life on the horizon, punters piled in on Thursday. The company’s share price shot to an intraday high of 2.4c per share, up 118 per cent on last week’s close of 1.1c per share. Notably, more than $6.2 million in stock was traded on the day, a monstrous 280 million shares exchanged - more than the company’s entire 200 million shares on issue - reflecting some cautious optimism for this embattled biotech and potentially delivering an entirely new-look share register.

If Imagion navigates the regulatory gauntlet and delivers on its cancer-detection promise, this rally could mark a tentative step towards redemption. With a massive shareholder flush of 280 million shares traded on Thursday, the new look registry will have a much more rose-tinted view on the perennial underperformer’s outlook.

FALCON METALS LTD (ASX: FAL)

Up 117% (18.5c – 40.25c)   

Victorian goldie Falcon Metals made a late Friday charge to take out the final spot on Bulls N’ Bears podium this week. 

The company’s share price shot more than 100 per cent higher on Friday after unveiling its highest-grade gold intercept to date at its Blue Moon prospect within the Pyramid Hill project in Victoria. The company revealed a spectacular 1.2m hit grading a whopping 543g/t gold from 294.1m downhole.

The standout result, which includes a 0.4m subinterval at a ridiculous 1562g/t gold – three pounds and seven ounces - was delivered by a newly drilled wedge hole collared off the company’s original discovery hole that returned 12.2m at 8.4g/t from 293.8m.

Falcon says the bonanza-grade mineralisation sits within a quartz-sulphide vein and was targeted to confirm the geometry of a potential high-grade shoot. The results will be fed into future resource modelling and exploration planning.

Falcon managing director Tim Markwell described the intercept as “outstanding” and said the company is now planning further wedge holes to better define the shoot, which is interpreted to plunge steeply to the southeast.

That sounds like sounds like a decent plan.

Blue Moon sits in the northern section of Falcon’s Pyramid Hill tenure, squarely within the revered Bendigo Zone. The region is credited with historical gold production of more than 60 million ounces, yet is still considered largely underexplored at depth.

With its latest hit ranking among the highest-grade results seen in Australian gold exploration this year, Falcon is firmly back on the radar of market watchers hoping the Blue Moon could shine even brighter.

Now who sang that?

^{The world-class Mountain Pass rare earth mine sits just 4.5km from Bayan Mining and Minerals’ recently acquired project and has been the recipient of US$400 million in government funding this week. Credit: File.}

BAYAN MINING AND MINERALS LTD (ASX: BMM)

Up 100% (3.5c – 7c) 

Bulls N’ Bears’ final bell this week was clinched by Bayan Mining and Minerals, which took off like a rocket on Monday after it scooped up the Desert Star rare earths project in California’s Mojave Desert.

The hotly contested jurisdiction has been the home of multiple Runners favourites this year, following Trump’s executive orders to secure rare earths supply from the country’s only rare earths producing region.

Bayan’s project is 4.5km from the world-class Mountain Pass mine and 4.7km from Dateline Resources’ Colosseum project – Trump’s favourite to become the country’s second rare earths mine, despite being a gold project.

The company says Desert Star’s potassic alkaline intrusive echo Mountain Pass’ geology, with radiometric data flashing elevated pathfinder elements such as potassium, thorium and uranium signatures across its ground.

Bayan will now launch into desktop reviews and field reconnaissance with rock chip sampling within weeks to zero in on drill targets in this mineral-rich gold and rare earths corridor.

The company traded a whopping $2.9 million in paper on announcement, shooting up 100 per cent to a dazzling peak of 7c on Monday.

The excitement didn’t fade, as shares took another run on Friday, fuelled by news from the US Defence Department’s $400 million investment in Mountain Pass, including the $110/kg neodymium-praseodymium oxide price floor to bolster domestic supply chains.

This geopolitical tailwind, aimed at countering China’s rare earths dominance, supercharged Desert Star’s strategic value, placing Bayan at the heart of a critical minerals renaissance just as global demand surges.

Bayan also locked in a modest $250,000 placement at 4c per share to accompany the acquisition - a 14.3 per cent premium to its 3.5c close price last week.

With the US flexing its muscle in the rare earths race and Bayan’s claims primed for discovery, this 100 per cent surge could be the opening blast of a mineral motherlode for shareholders in a Tier-1 jurisdiction well and truly under the market microscope for US handouts and funding.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au