Osteopore knee-deep in massive share price rise

Creaky knees are the scourge of those people in society who are nearer to their twilight than they are to their time as a toddler.

And that may go some way towards explaining why a company trying to fix the dodgy leg joints saw its share price shoot sky-high on the ASX this week.

It is impossible to ascertain, but maybe it was a pack of mature shareholders who braved their knee pain and hobbled to their laptops and jumped into Osteopore’s stock, kicking it up more than a stunning 478 per cent this week. The share price jumped from last week’s close of 9.5c to burst to 55c after the company revealed it had kicked off its first-in-human clinical trials for its patented knee preservation technology in Singapore.

The company is trialling its “aXOpore” regenerative implant, which is essentially a 3D printed bit of synthetic bone that is made to order for patients unlucky enough to have iffy knees or who have suffered a severe bone injury.

Following a CT scan, the Osteopore engineering team design the implant and then after 15 days, it is delivered to the hospital for the surgeons to weave their magic. The printed lattice mimics natural bone and has interconnected pore space to host blood vessel growth, while holding up to the mechanical rigours bones are best known for. 

The human trial launch comes on the back of news released last month confirming market approval of the company’s technology in Vietnam and Singapore. It is music to the ears of many Singaporeans aged between 40 and 60 – a demographic which has an unenviable 10 per cent rate of knee osteoarthritis.

And those who invested in Osteopore shares would this week be having a good, old-fashioned knees-up (if they are capable). A $10,000 investment last week and a cash-out on Tuesday would have earned a healthy $47,000.

Back in the world of mining, Base Resources this week caught the eye of United States-based uranium and rare earths producer Energy Fuels, which agreed to acquire the former in a deal worth $375 million.

Base shareholders will receive 0.026 of an Energy Fuels share as well as a dividend of 6.5c for each share held, for total consideration of about 30.2c per share. That’s a 173 per cent premium to the 20-day volume weighted average price (VWAP).

The guts of the deal is based on the now imminent development of Base’s Toliara mineral sands project in Madagascar, with monazite ore from the project to form the cornerstone feedstock for Energy Fuels’ mammoth White Mesa mill in Utah. That product will be an essential part of Energy Fuels’ bigger rare earth oxides production facility at Mesa, which is modelled to pump out 21,800 tonnes of rare earths-bearing monazite per year.

ASX punters gave Base’s share price a hike of 138 per cent on the news taking it from 10.5c to touch 25c. Energy Fuels had a more subdued response on the Toronto Stock Exchange – its share price down 10 per cent by market close on the day of the takeover announcement.

Orion Minerals shot up the ASX boards on Monday morning following its revelation of a huge copper hit in diamond core from its Okiep project in South Africa going 49m at 4.89 per cent, with a 10m thick chuck grading a whopping 12.47 per cent.

To put that in perspective, the intercept is the highest-grade drill hit from the Flat Mines area and is one of the highest-grade copper intersections reported in South Africa in the past 40 years. Not bad going at a time when demand for the orange metal is surging and some analysts are predicting a 40 per cent growth in demand in the next decade.

Orion is working ground that has pumped out 105 million tonnes of copper-bearing ore during the past 100 years. A 1990s exploration rush led by Goldfields of South Africa saw that company release a mineral resource of 9.4 million tonnes grading 1.3 per cent copper for the Flat Mines area.

This week’s head-turning assays were from Orion’s second diamond hole at the project. The remaining three holes are in progress, with assays to underpin a revision to that historical mineral resource estimate.

Rincon Resources rounds out this week’s runners and while the company may be appearing last in the list, it is definitely not the least after it orchestrated a 155 per cent hike in a run that kept rolling right through to today’s market close. The company’s share price rocketed to touch 6.9c today after a gravity survey in Western Australia’s West Arunta region revealed four new targets and enhanced three existing ones.

With almost 78 million of Rincon’s shares changing hands today, it represented the company’s all-time biggest trading volume for one day.

The best of the anomalies is the Avalon target, a 3km-long east-west-trending gravity high with amplitudes similar to those seen at WA1 Resources’ Luni carbonatite that threw up high-grade niobium and rare earths assays after the company drilled some holes in it. 

The best assays from Luni have gone 7m at a mammoth 10 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO) from 58m. Recent niobium hits are as high as 3m at 4 per cent from 28m, 73m at 0.8 per cent from 57m and 7m at 3.6 per cent from 58m.

Rincon will be looking to replicate those hits when it puts a drill bit into Avalon once heritage clearance is obtained.

So, in a week led by 3D printed bits to fix creaky knees, the mining gods had some work to do in order to get some limelight. But monazite, rare earths and copper did the trick as ASX punters who got in early reaped the rewards.

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