Next generation technology investor Pires (PIRI) certainly lived up to this theme in updating on its investment in Pluto Digital Assets, which is in the run up to its IPO. Pluto recently announced a strategic partnership with NFT company, Terra Virtua Limited,, and sports tycoon Jon Smith OBE, to develop sports-focused NFTs. The partnership has already announced an NFT agreement between Terra Virtua and the Indian Super League. Pluto will have economic participation with respect to NFT revenues achieved through the Terra Virtua platform with respect to a range of global sports organisations.
Shares of precious metals trading and exploration company with assets in Australia, Wishbone Gold (WSBN) were up nearly 7%. Earlier this month the company signed a land access agreement with the Western Desert Lands Aboriginal Corp. At the time Chairman Richard Poulden said that the signing of the agreement was a big step forward for Wishbone’s plans to drill Red Setter and Cottesloe "as soon as we can.” Presumably, some in the market are expecting news here sooner rather than later.
It could be argued that buying a gas asset in the heat of summer is never going to be a wrong thing to do, particularly when you have done this a couple of months before what is generally accepted as being a gas prices crisis brewing for the winter of 2021. This is the fortunate position that Netherlands-focused gas explorer Parkmead Group (PMG) currently finds itself in. In July it bought a royalty associated with its existing interests in the Drenthe IV, Drenthe V and Andel Va licenses in the Netherlands from Vermilion Energy. Parkmead was to pay €565,000 through a cash payment of around €150,000 and the remainder being from a share of revenue from its Geesbrug gas field. The deal doubled Parkmead’s net gas production from wells to 15% from 7.5%. Shares of Parkmead added 5% to 60p.
The small cap stock market continues to illustrate how it will only mark up share prices if it really has to. This appears to be what we are seeing at clinical stage drug development company ValiRx (VAL). Earlier this month the company said it had entered an evaluation agreement with an unnamed London university to investigate a novel technology designed to treat breast cancer. Under the agreement, ValiRx will carry out a defined series of preclinical tests on the drug candidate molecule over the next nine months to validate the technology and determine suitability for commercialisation. This preclinical evaluation will investigate the action of the molecule against triple negative breast cancer and other indications. At the conclusion of the evaluation period ValiRx has an option to license the technology on pre-agreed terms, and perhaps this kicker is what has caused bulls of the shares to chase them 17% higher.
It is unusual to see a venture capital trust racing up the stock market leaderboard. But this is what Octopus Titan VCT (OTV2) achieved with a one day share price rise of 13.6% in the wake of its results for the six month period to 30 June 2021. During the period the uplift in Titan’s valuation was driven by the strength of performance delivered by the likes of Bought By Many, Cazoo, Chronext, Depop, Permutive and WaveOptics.There was also the boost provided by exits such as Skew being sold to Coinbase Global in April, the acquisition of WaveOptics by Snap, for over $500 million in May, and Depop announcing its acquisition by Etsy for $1.625 billion in June.