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It can be hard to keep an eye on all of the ASX explorers.
Here’s what caught eyes on Thursday when it comes to junior miners’ latest finds – and the crucial results data that can move share prices.
Price data is relevant as at 1.55pm AEST.
Niobium
WA1 Resources (ASX:WA1)
- Share price: $12.57 (+0.40%)
- Market cap: ~$841M
- 1Y returns: -42%
- Reported find: Assay results
- 30.6m @ 2.6% Nb2O5 fr. 79m depth
- 36.4m @ 4.9% Nb2O5 fr. 36m depth
- 14.3m @ 4.3 Nb2O5 fr. 53m depth
HotCopper favourite WA1 Resources has released yet another batch of drilling assay results from the Luni deposit in southern West Australia where the company holds its prime niobium landholding.
One of the best success stories of last year, WA1 was a permanent winner, it seems, from a Chinese critical export ban in the relatively recent past (before, perhaps, they became overdone.)
While WA1 was over $20/sh at one point, as of mid-May 2025, the price has receded to the ~$12-13.00 range as investors wait diligently for actual mining to proceed. We’re still a while off, perhaps reflecting the slight-but-not-too-pronounced jump in share price.
Copper
FireFly Metals (ASX:FFM)
- Share price: 93.5cps (+3.9%)
- Market cap: ~$529M
- 1Y returns: +7.9%
- Reported find: Assay results in Copper Equivalent (CuEq)
- 10m @ 6.4% CuEq
- 13m @ 4.3% CuEq
FireFly Metals has revealed its latest drilling results from the company’s Canadian Green Bay Copper-Gold Project (GBP) which centres around, not too unusually for a junior explorer, a historical mine.
These latest results came from a diamond tipped rig which are well known to travel to depths exceeding what a Reverse Circulation (RC) or AirCore (AC) rig can match, suggesting depths could be considerable. Notably, FireFly didn’t immediately state from which depth today’s results were plucked.
Helium
Blue Star Helium (ASX:BNL)
- Share price: 0.008cps (-6.25%)
- Market cap: ~$16.1M
- 1Y returns:-25%
- Reported find: Flowrate data from Jackson 2
- Flow rate since drill completion over 250 million cubic feet per day (Mcfd)
- Projected stabilised flowrates of 300-400Mcfd
- Helium concentrations of up to 1.22%
Let’s just get this off the bat: yes, you can drill natural helium deposits. It’s often easier than synthesising it at scale. To that end, Blue Star Helium finds itself in Nevada, tapping away at a helium gas deposit.
Sometimes coinciding with hydrocarbon deposits, sometimes not, helium wells may sound exotic but there’s more than one helium explorer on the ASX. The price of helium can rise dramatically when there are supply chain issues, which happen not rarely. Helium shortages appear to be constant.
Helium concentrations of only 1.22%, however, may have been lacklustre for the investing community, perhaps explaining today’s share price drop. There’s also the fact the stock is illiquid, and, currently in penny territory.
Gold
Lanthanein Resources (ASX:LNR)
- Share price: 0.002cps (-25%)
- Market cap: ~$3.7M
- 1Y returns: -70%
- Reported find: Assay results
- 4m @ 1.35g/t gold fr. 135m depth
- incl. 1m @ 3.6g/t gold
- 1.3m @ 0.55g/t gold fr. 287m depth
- 4m @ 1.35g/t gold fr. 135m depth
If those grades seem lacklustre to you, unfortunately, that appears to be why Lanthanein Resources wasn’t able to secure much optimism for its operations on the local bourse today.
In a context where grades are king, low grades at depth are only one part of the problem. The bigger issue is the extremely brief widths of sample on display by LNR today, which leave investors to wonder if that was the best part of the entire core.
Mix that in with the depths, and you’ve got what could be a pretty surefire turn-off for investors.
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