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Proactive news summary: Empyrean, Lekoil, Magnolia, Mariana, Ncondezi, Prem.African, SolGold, S&U...

Published: 17:03 20 May 2014 BST

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Resource companies grab the lion’s share of coverage normally on Proactive Investors, so let’s start today’s round-up with a finance company.

A recovery in consumer confidence has helped niche lender S&U (LON:SUS) post strong trading in its first quarter.

The motor finance division, Advantage, continues to set new records for growth, collections quality and profit, while the home credit business, Loansathome4U, is experiencing renewed growth, the company said ahead of its annual general meeting.

Mind you, finance is never far from the thoughts of fledgling resource companies and a couple made announcements on that subject today.

Gasol (LON:GAS) has agreed to act as guarantor to US$23mln of senior debt issued by 47%-owned associate Afrique Energie Corporation. The loan notes mature in November this year and carry an interest rate of 20% per annum.

The funding will be used to pursue a number of investments being currently contemplated by AEC, Gasol said.

Magnolia Petroleum (LON:MAGP) said the borrowing limit on its credit facility had been raised to US$2.75mln from US$2.1mln previously.

Elsewhere in the oil & gas sector,  Cenkos Securities has raised its price target for Empyrean Energy (LON:EME) by a quarter after the major upgrade announced for its 3% owned Sugarloaf project, in Texas.

Proved and probable (2P) reserves increased almost 50% as operator Marathon Oil stepped up the drill programme to between 100 and 110 new wells.

Cenkos said the most notable addition was the inclusion of 2C contingent resource for the Austin Chalk interval, which Marathon has indicated that it will co-develop across the acreage alongside the Eagle Ford shale.

A 90% owned Nigerian subsidiary of LekOil (LON:LEK) has struck a deal to acquire a 40% stake in oil assets in the Niger Delta, which could be in production within 12 to 18 months.

To acquire the stake in the Otakikpo marginal field LekOil Nigeria will pay US$11mln in cash and will commit to spending US$67mln on field development.

Unconventional gas group Cluff Natural Resources (LON:CLNR) has appointed Andrew Nunn as senior project manager to help progress its UK deep underground coal gasification licences into the drilling phase.

Nunn is a chartered geologist with over 16 years' experience in exploration, mining and geo-environmental projects in Europe, Australasia and Africa.

Moving on to the miners, early results from Mariana Resources’ (LON:MARL) drilling at its Soledad project have seen encouraging grades of copper, gold and silver.

The assays were the first from a 2000 metre (m) programme to confirm a breccia pipe style deposit at the Peruvian prospect.

SolGold (LON:SOLG) described the assay results from its sixth hole from the Cascabel copper-gold project in Ecuador as “highly encouraging”, and said the results are supportive of the company’s assertion its Alpala target is host to a “significant” copper porphyry system.

This sixth hole in the series was drilled 450 metres north-east of the previous hole and to a depth of just over 1,400 metres. While the assays didn’t return spectacularly high grades – SolGold describes it as extensive halo mineralisation – the results are supportive of SolGold’s refined magnetic model of Alpala.

Norton Gold Fields’ offer to acquire Bullabulling Gold (LON:BGL) has received only a lukewarm response.

Norton revealed that it has received acceptances in respect of its offer from holders accounting for just 6.6% of Bullabulling’s issued share capital.

Premier African Minerals (LON:PREM) said its issued share capital has increased by 11.4% following completion of the acquisition of AgriMinco subsidiary Mandalore Development.

As part of the deal to acquire Mandalore, which has a 30% interest in the Danakil potash project in Ethiopia, Premier agreed to issue C$1mln worth of Premier shares to AgriMinco. The new shares were valued at 0.9753p each, which means Premier issued 55.8mln new shares, taking the number of Premier shares in issue up to 488.1mln.

Staying in Africa, but moving on to power generator Ncondezi and its full-year results, as is common with companies at a formative stage in their development, Ncondezi (LON:NCCL) posted a loss for the year to December 31. The deficit was US$6.8mln. It currently has cash resources of US$5.1mln.

Over in the tech part of the market, Toumaz (LON:TMZ), the ultra-low power wireless semiconductor technology firm, said two of its digital radio modules have received the Digital Tick Mark.

The Digital Tick Mark is being introduced in the UK this year as part of the Government's long term strategy to develop a digital future for radio. The idea behind it is to assure consumers that an appliance bearing the tick mark is capable of receiving and playing digital audio broadcasts (DAB), DAB+ and FM signals.

Shares in AIM-quoted Totally (LON:TLY), which provides digital healthcare solutions, surged on Tuesday after it secured a further contract with the NHS.

The group already operates several NHS contracts for clinical commissioning groups (CCG's) including for Leicester City, Southern Derbyshire and Kingston.

The latest is expected to be worth £84,000 in revenue for the firm over an initial 12-months and is to host and maintain NHS England's shared decision making (SDM) website.

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