Sunda Energy PLC (AIM:SNDA, FRA:GHA0) shares are up 121% since New Zealand's regulator handed a 10-year petroleum mining permit for the Taranaki assets it is in the process of buying, with 48% of that coming this week alone.
The grant, on 13 August, has proved a slow burn, buyers nibbling away at a tightly held register and dragging the price steadily higher.
The authorities awarded the permit to Matahio NZ Onshore, covering the Puka oil and gas field and the Oru exploration prospect.
Sunda agreed in April to buy Matahio's parent company, which holds four petroleum mining permits in onshore Taranaki and produces around 1,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. Completion is pencilled in for September, subject to New Zealand government consent for the change of control.
Restarting Puka and drilling the Oru-2 exploration well are the centrepieces of the investment plan that follows.
Sunda, formerly Baron Oil, hit an all-time low in June after Timor-Leste's upstream regulator moved to terminate the production sharing contract covering Chuditch, long the company's flagship gas discovery. As you'd expect, it disputes the summary decision and is consulting lawyers.
While it does this, the New Zealand deal now carries the story.
Turning to the wider market, the AIM All-Share traded sideways this week, moving 1.58 points higher to 814.38, the mid-summer lull leaving little else to report.
On the up
Sticking with the week's winners, Galantas Gold Corp (AIM:GAL, TSX-V:GAL, OTCQX:GALKF) shares jumped 31% after Alpayana, a private Peruvian mining group with four decades of operations in Peru and Mexico, paid CAD$38.4 million for a 10.97% stake.
The shares were bought from a third-party seller at CAD$0.42 each, with Alpayana holding none beforehand.
The Toronto and AIM-quoted company is advancing the Indiana project and the Andacollo project in Chile.
GENinCode PLC (AIM:GENI) shares rose 29% after pilot data for its CARDIO inCode-Score genetic test, presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress, showed adding a polygenic risk score altered the risk assessment in 42.6% of 584 moderate-risk Catalan patients.
Just over a quarter shifted category outright.
Average cardiovascular risk fell from 7.30% to 6.04% over 8.5 months, with LDL cholesterol and smoking rates also improving.
Galileo Resources PLC (AIM:GLR) climbed 28% this week after sampling at its Ferber licence in Nevada flagged a potential porphyry system. For the non-geologists out there, these oddly-named deposits are the deep, sprawling copper accumulations that meet a lot of the world's demand. When they work, they keep working for decades. Outside experts think this one is big. Drilling follows.
On the slide
Shares in Forgent PLC (AIM:FORG), the explorer, fell 38% after a discounted £800,000 placing left existing holders diluted.
The trade-off is a bigger prize: the company has lifted its interest in the Peak Hill gold-copper project, in Western Australia, to 99% and will drill 8,700 metres across 130 shallow holes over 60 days.
The programme follows up encouraging gold and copper hits at Curley's and gives Cathedral its first drilling, an area where surface gold has graded up to 26 grams per tonne and nuggets have been recovered.
Winking Studios Ltd (AIM:WKS) fell 21% after the game art outsourcer lost its most senior link to Acer, its controlling shareholder.
Kao Shu-Kuo, chairman of Acer Gaming, steps down as a non-executive director on 8 September, having left his role as Acer's chief operating officer on 14 August.
His exit removes the board bridge underpinning Winking's artificial intelligence tie-up with the Taiwanese parent.
Shares in GenIP PLC (LSE:GNIP) fell 21% as half-year results flagged a 'material uncertainty' (the company's words, not ours) over its ability to continue as a going concern. The AI innovation-intelligence group ended June with $410,000 in cash, having burned $673,000 from operations, and saw revenue drop to $54,000.
A billion-pound throwback
Finally, here's a mid-cap that has progressed from the ranks of the small-caps and is headed for a significant landmark. And it's in a sector that one wouldn't normally associate with stellar growth; indeed, it is in a throwback industry that is redolent of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s when plantations were a regular stock market feature. Less so today.
MP Evans Group PLC (AIM:MPE) is headed for the £1 billion valuation mark, after a leisurely 5% rise this week, which adds to the momentum that has seen the shares advance 42% in the year so far. Followers of the palm oil specialist will also be aware 2026 hasn't been plain sailing, with a shake-up to Indonesia's export regime the source of short-lived anxiety.
Still, last month's crop update revealed a business in rude health with first-half production up 11% and prices holding.
The business is throwing off enough cash to fund a share buyback programme, which analysts and investors will tell you tends to be a hallmark of a well-run company (as well as an efficient way to return capital to shareholders).
Cavendish expects it to pay a dividend of 81.5p, which at today's share price equates to a yield of 4.5%.
