There was supportive news to the cause of sprawling pharma services group Open Orphan (ORPH), for the start of the new week. The first news is that the company proposes to make a distribution in specie of the entire issued share capital of its wholly-owned subsidiary Orph Pharma IP Company Limited to Poolbeg Pharma Limited, in return for the issue of new shares by Poolbeg to shareholders of Open Orphan on the register at close of business on 17 June 2021. Of equal, if not more interest is news that audited results for the year ended 31 December 2020 will also be released that day, when Open Orphan will also update shareholders on the progress of the anticipated admission to trading on AIM of Poolbeg.
With the likely extension to lockdown conditions in the UK announced today, testing stocks such as Avacta (AVCT), have been and are set to remain on the front foot. The latest from the developer of diagnostics and innovative cancer therapies is it has received notice of registration of its AffiDX® SARS-CoV-2 antigen lateral flow test in the EU allowing the Company to place the product on the market in all 27 countries of the EU for professional use. Shares of Avacta ended the week up 40p to 259p, heading back to April peaks through 290p.
While Bitcoin app specialist Mode Global (MODE) has perhaps only had mixed success in promoting the idea that punters would use its services to by the cryptocurrency over the myriad contenders in the field, it may be that the latest news from the company will be the silver bullet fans of the stock have been looking for. The LSE-listed fintech group said that it has signed an MoU with THG Plc, which will see THG brands offering Mode as an additional payment option for customers. The result of this is set to be an innovative payments and rewards experience to THG's customers.
Another company looking to push a fresh agenda has been resources development group Oracle Power (ORCP). Here while its coal project in Pakistan continues to tick towards a denouement, we hear of progress at its 100% owned Jundee East Gold Project, located in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia. The latest comes in the form of positive results from the orientation soil geochemistry programme. The company said that this confirms it is on the right path to unlocking the potential of this new unexplored area. The next step is that the soil sampling programme will now be expanded to better inform a maiden drill programme which should lay the foundations for a JORC Resource.
Sticking with Australia and with Gold, it was interesting to see decent progress for shares of Wishbone Gold (WSBN) as they stretched back towards all time highs near 20p once again. This has been delivered after a recent premium placing in the stock at 14p and news at the beginning of the month that an initial Program of Works for its Cottesloe Silver Project has been approved by the Western Australian Government's Department of Mines. The POW is designed to test for potential precious and base metals mineralisation on multiple targets previous identified from historic exploration.
It would appear that things continue to accelerate on the fundamental front at plastic waste to hydrogen play Powerhouse Energy (PHE). The company said that the engineering consultancy, SWECO, has been appointed to prepare concept design and an Environmental Impact Assessment report for the waste-to-hydrogen project in Konin, Poland. Hydrogen Utopia International signed an agreement with SWECO on June 9th 2021. Powerhouse said this appointment follows the non-binding Heads of Terms which it signed with HUI in November last year for the application of its technology in Poland.