Investors who had the foresight or perhaps a very reliable crystal ball to snap up shares in Vast Resources PLC (AIM:VAST) last week are sitting pretty, with the stock having doubled in value after the company finally got its hands on a diamond parcel that had been locked away in Zimbabwe for 15 years.
The long-disputed haul, held under seal at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe since 2010 by order of the Supreme Court, has now been released and is en route to Dubai for cleaning, sorting and a long-awaited valuation. Initial inspections have “exceeded expectations” and while the final carat count is still to come, the market clearly liked what it saw.
Vast called the release a “landmark success” and said the move shows Zimbabwe is open for business, at least for those willing to navigate the bureaucratic maze.
Up 20% on Friday, the stock has advanced 103% over the trading week, valuing Vast at a not so vast £14 million.
AIM sideways
Turning to the wider market, the AIM All-Share had a steady if unspectacular foreshortened week, nudging up less than a quarter of a percent to 671.36. While momentum has been upward over the last two weeks, the index still has some way to go to return to its 2025 high of 729 and remains around half the value it reached at the peak of the small-cap buying boom of 2021.
Its benchmark, the FTSE 100, managed a fairly decent 1.75% advance as it continues to recover ground lost after the Trump tariff assault sent global markets into a tailspin.
Sticking with the week’s risers, momentum continues to build behind Caledonia Holdings, which rose 70%.
Formerly Vela Technologies (AIM:VELA), the company announced it would ‘re-badge’ last month as it replaced the existing management and brought in £1.1 million of funding. The latter will allow it to pivot towards investment in the financial services sector.
Not-so-secret agents
Catenai continued its ascent with a 67% gain. In the process of raising £750,000 of new investment, the tech company is moving into the AI agent space, a red-hot market.
Agents are the next iteration of artificial intelligence and are designed to work autonomously and without prompting, carrying out the mundane, such as reading and answering emails to the complex including planning and executing large-scale media campaigns.
A new contract win late last week appears to have put a rocket under shares in data science group Physiomics, which jumped 38%.
Ceramic brake maker Surface Transforms (AIM:SCE) has endured a torrid start to 2025 as its commercial ramp-up proved anything but straightforward, leaving investors worried about its viability.
However, an update earlier this month seems to have settled nerves, for now at least, with the company reporting that its key customers remain “highly supportive”.
When in Rome
The message finally (albeit belatedly) appears to have got through, with the shares motoring 33% over the trading week.
Rome Resources Plc (AIM:RMR) marched 14% higher after announcing work would restart at its tin and base metals project in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a forced hiatus due to political unrest.
Now onto matters not quite so positive. RWS Holdings (AIM:RWS), down 41%, was the AIM All-Share’s biggest loser. The language services specialist reported a sharp drop in first-half profits and coupled that with a downgrade to full-year guidance.
Brighton Pier Group PLC (AIM:PIER), which owns the famous seaside attraction that provides its name, continued to flounder in the wake of its delisting from the market. Investors, those remaining at least, saw a further 41% wiped from the value of the business.
Next in the debit column comes under the heading: Does the punishment fit the crime?
Northcoders Group PLC (AIM:CODE), the technology training group, saw its stock fall 35% in the wake of its prelims on Wednesday. It is hard to tell what actually upset the market, other than possible skittishness over the renewal of a key contract by the Department for Education. “There is confidence, although not certainty, that decisions about future structures will have been made by then, with national extension conversations underway,” investors were told.
Final word
Finally, Helium One Global Ltd (AIM:HE1, OTCQB:HLOGF) seems to have slipped under the radar despite a welter of operational good news in recent weeks. The latest update concerned two key wells in Colorado. One has uncovered a 60-foot gas-saturated zone, while the other returned helium concentrations of 3.3%, which is well above the industry average.
The updates went by with barely a flicker on the share price terminal. At 0.95p, the stock is trading well below the 3.6p target set by Panmure Liberum.