Mineral & Financial buoyed by Portuguese expansion
Mineral & Financial Investments Ltd (LON:MAFL) powered higher as its 49% associate TH Crestgate upped its stake in the Lagoa Salgada project in South Central Portugal to 100%.
Empresa Desenvolvimento Mineiro or EDM has sold TH Crestgate its15% stake.
EDM acts as sector operator for the Portuguese State and as"holding" company for the government's mining investments.
Jacques Vaillancourt, Mineral and Financial’s chairman said: "We understand from TH Crestgate, that the dealings with the Portuguese Government and its state owned mining company, EDM, have been exceptionally positive at every step.
Assuming Lagoa Salgada makes into production, full recovery of the various metals in-situ would be worth about US$144mln.
Shares rose 28% to 18.5p.
Cambridge Cognition to provide remote dementia testing
Cambridge Cognition Holdings PLC (LON:COG, is to apply its automatic speech recognition technology to clinical assessments to reduce trial variability and costs.
ASR will make language-based verbal cognitive assessments that are scalable, automated and consistent, which in turn will reduce human error between trial centres and between trial subjects.
The first products are expected to be available commercially in mid 2018 with the aim of enabling remote cognitive testing for health assessments.
Shares rose 10% to 115p.
Scotgold buoyed by jewellery sales
Scotgold Resources Ltd (LON:SGZ) was in demand as the owner of the Cononish mine in the Trossachs sold a batch of gold to two pre-eminent jewellery firms.
The agreement covers the second refining batch produced to date from Scotgold's bulk processing trial at the Cononish gold and silver mine.
Whilst the precise terms of the sale were kept confidential, the premium received was in excess of the 30% reserve stipulated for the Scottish Gold Rounds auctioned by ScotGold in November 2016.
Shares rose 12% to 0.53p.
Gatwick Gusher Mark 2 on track says UKOG
Shares in UK Oil & Gas Investments PLC (LON:UKOG) edged higher on Wednesday morning after the explorer confirmed directional drilling at its Broadford Bridge-1 (BB-1) well in the Weald Basin got underway earlier this week.
The BB-1 well, a mirror of Horse Hill or the Gatwick Gusher, which is testing the Kimmeridge Limestone at the site, has already been cased and cemented.
It has now reached 370 metres (1,200 feet) below surface in the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Beds, although the well will reach 1,900m once drilling has been completed. Shares rose 2% to 1.02p.
More red ink at Grafenia
More red ink at printing group Grafenia Plc (LON:GRA) as the transsition away from print continues to be painful.
Losses rose to just shy of £1mln as demand for print products continued to decline and the company reinvents itself in the web and digital markets.
“The outlook for print products is uncertain and current trading has been tough. Nevertheless, our efforts in scaling up Nettl bode well and we are increasingly encountering potential partner opportunities to sell the concept in international markets,” said chairman Jan-Hendrik Mohr.
Shares slipped 7% to 8.45p
Lidco gets US FDA approval
LiDCO Group plc (LON:LID) was top of the risers as it received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration for its new blood flow monitoring platform LiDCOunity v2.
LiDCO's new monitor contians high usage pricing software and combines all of its haemodynamic monitoring technology into one system.
The US market is estimated to be worth over US$100mln per year and hopes of its winning a sizeable chunk of that sent the shre price up 13% to 8.6p.
Tricorn cleaning up in nuts and bolts
A profits surge at nuts and bolts distributor Tricorn PLC (LON:TCN) gave its share price a healthy boost.
Sales edged up to £18.5mln in the year to March 2017, but operating profits swung to £497,000 from £33,000.
There was still a pre-tax loss of £287,000 after restructuring costs but the results were well ahead of market forecasts and Mike Welburn, chief executive, also reported a good start to the current year. Shares rose 5% to 20.1p.
Zambeef boshed by backdrop
Not such good news at Zambeef Products PLC (LON:ZAM) where profits collapsed to US$533,000 from almost US$9mln in the half year to March.
Sales were good, rising to US$118mln from US$99mln, but higher admin costs, a tough economic backdrop in Zambia and weak soft commodity prices took a heavy toll.
The second half should be better said chairman Jacob Mwanza. Shares tumbled 20% to 14.85p.
Proactive news headlines...
Marble quarries operator Fox Marble PLC (LON:FOX) expects its processing factory in Kosovo to start production next month, it revealed as it posted reduced losses of €2.76mln for 2016 from losses of €3.03mln n 2015.
Minds + Machines Group Limited (LON:MMX) said renewal rates for its .VIP top level domain (TLD) in China have been above the industry norm.
Providence Resources PLC has unveiled two “truly transformative” commercial deals with French oil giant Total SA bringing another “super-major” on board and giving a clear programme for its oil and gas exploration programme offshore Ireland.
Office productivity software specialist BOS GLOBAL HOLDINGS Ltd (LON:BOS) has drawn down £116,000 from its convertible note agreement with Innovation Corporation.
Alecto Minerals PLC (LON:ALO) has issued £800,000 worth of convertible loan notes to help fulfil the working capital requirements at its recently-acquired Mowana copper mine in Botswana.
Drug developer Midatech Pharma Plc (LON:MTPH; NASDAQ:MTP) has teamed up with Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis to help it in its quest to identify new brain cancer treatments.
Midatech has signed a global licensing agreement with Novartis for panobinostat which will allow the AIM-quoted firm to develop the oncology compound as a possible treatment for Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG).