The small-cap space is always filled with explosive ASX shares looking to emerge as the next big thing. Here are the small-cap ASX shares that made headlines in February.
1. Province Resources Ltd (ASX: PRL)
The Province Resources share price surged an eye-watering 460% on 17 February. It's a Cinderella story for a small-cap ASX share to announce the right kind of acquisition at a time where there is significant investor appetite for green projects.
The company announced its intention to acquire Ozexco Pty Ltd. Ozexco holds 7 exploration licenses in the Gascoyne region in Western Australia, a region that is also one of the hottest and windiest areas with significant solar and wind potential.
The initial exploration and evaluation will be focused on the salt, potash, mineral sands and renewable hydrogen potential over the tenement area. This would make Province the first listed green hydrogen player on the ASX.
After surging from 2.6 cents to 14.5 cents in just one day, its shares have cooled down to close at 9 cents today.
2. BARD1 Life Sciences Ltd (ASX: BD1)
The BARD1 share price found itself running as high as 650% in just six days after the company announced that it's SubB2M technology could detect all stages of ovarian cancer and disease recurrence.
BARD1 CSO Dr Peter French said:
Whilst this data is preliminary, these excellent results reported by the researchers at Griffith University support the commercial potential of SubB2M for both breast and ovarian cancer monitoring and detection.
This is ground-breaking research since Neu5Gc is a highly specific marker for cancer and BARD1 is using SubB2M alone or in combination with other tissue-specific cancer markers to develop highly-specific tests for breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers.
BARD1 plans to develop and commercialise SUbB2M-based blood tests initially for monitoring patients already diagnosed with breast cancer for treatment response and recurrence.
The company expects to report the outcomes of its SubB2M test validation studies by the end of Q3 CY21.
3. Ioupay Ltd (ASX: IOU)
Ioupay was arguably the dark horse of the buy now, pay later (BNPL) sector. While BNPL shares across the board were surging at the beginning of February, Ioupay was quietly waiting to announce a game-changer.
On 9 February, the company announced that it had entered into a Merchant Referral Agreement with EasyStore Commerce to enable EasyStore's merchants and end-user customers to utilise Ioupay's BNPL payment services.
EasyStore services more than 7,000 merchants across the South East Asian (SEA) markets, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Some 5,000 of these are in Malaysia, with a growing portfolio of merchants in the US.
In 2020, EasyStore merchants processed a total transaction volume of approximately $435 million. The two companies have started integrating systems with BNPL payment processing capabilities to begin onboarding merchants and approved customers by early March this year.
It was almost as if the words 'buy now, pay later' were enough to send its shares into a buying frenzy. By 18 February, the ioupay share price had ripped 280% higher to a high of 85 cents before management decided it was time to announce a $50 million placement to support its growth initiatives further.
