A little-known ASX gold stock has made its shareholders very happy over the past eight trading days.
The company in question is Far East Gold Ltd (ASX: FEG), which has a current market cap of just $46 million.
Though that's double what it was worth at the start of the month.
On 4 July, you could have bought shares in the junior ASX gold stock for 9.6 cents apiece. Earlier today, those same shares were changing hands for 20.5 cents, up 113.5%.
At the time of writing, shares are trading for 18 cents, up 5.9% in intraday trading.
Here's what's been spurring investor interest.
What's sending the ASX gold stock soaring?
The Far East Gold share price certainly won't have suffered from the surging gold price.
The yellow metal hit fresh all-time highs overnight, trading for US$2,474.5 per ounce. At the time of writing, that same ounce is fetching US$2,472.29. That sees the gold price up more than 20% so far in 2024 as investors up their bets of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.
While that offers some nice support, the ASX gold stock got its supersized boost on Monday, 15 July.
That's when the miner announced it had executed a Binding Term Sheet with PT Iriana Mutiara Idenburg to acquire up to 100% of the Idenburg gold project.
According to the release, Idenburg is an advanced, high-grade and highly prospective 95,280-hectare gold project, located in Indonesia's Papua province.
Far East Gold noted that the same province hosts world-class multi-million-ounce gold and copper deposits. And Idenburg already benefits from more than US$25 million in historical exploration, including more than 5,500 meters of diamond drilling. Yet only 30% of the area has been explored in detail.
Commenting on the acquisition that saw the ASX gold stock soar 16.7% on Monday and gain another 21.4% on Tuesday, Far East Gold managing director Shane Menere said, "It is rare to find a project of such calibre with a substantial historical database of work completed by many of the world's major gold miners."
Menere added:
The main reason the project was not advanced further in the past was due to previous forestry classifications over the major prospect areas which restricted open cut mining. These restrictions have now been removed, paving the way for further development of this highly prospective project, which we know from previous exploration, has returned wide and high-grade gold intervals in multiple instances from surface…
We are very excited based on the extensive historical database of exploration work and many high-grade drill intercepts that demonstrate the potential for Idenburg to host a multi-million-ounce company maker'."
With the past week's share price surge, the ASX gold stock is back in the green for 2024, up 29%.
