Around the Traps ... with THE FERRET 07:57, Tuesday, 14 June 2005
Sydney - Tuesday - June 14: (RWE Australian Business News) - ***************************
A sharp rise last week has focused speculator attention on OCCUPATIONAL & MEDICAL INNOVATIONS (OMI).
OMI was the original boom stock in retractable syringes a few years ago, rising above $4, but it's fallen on hard times.
A year ago the shares were changing hands around $1.85.
By May 3 they were down to 73c when the company issued an update saying progress on solving the manufacturing issues of the syringe had been slow.
Problems with the US scalpel distributor had still not been satisfactorily resolved.
Also, the company had been sued for damages by a former joint chief executive.
However, the "good" news was that the forecast loss for the year was still $4.36 million.
On May 13 the company advised that B.Braun had decided not to pursue with OMI the commercialisation of the OMI valve.
OMI shares naturally remained under pressure and bottomed out last Monday at 35.5c.
By Friday they were back to 55c, up 8c for the day.
The company issues updates bi-monthly and the next one is due in early July.
*****
Ferret and his co-toilers were left out in the cold when BigPond broadband went down (again!) on Friday morning just when things were hotting up in the sharemarket.
The BigPond complaints line was so busy it told us to bugger off and call again (OK, it didn't say bugger off).
Think about it ... it meant we could not get on to a number that, at best, would have got us onto a "your call is important to us", mile-long waiting list.
But we're not going to get mad.
We're going to be patient because we know EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT.
We read in the morning paper that day that new Telstra boss Solomon Trujillo has emphasised a customer-first philosophy.
He talks of "customer intimacy", and "market-based management", in which a company's strategy and product development "drive towards tailored solutions", based on "a deep customer understanding".
Telecoms must find ways to deal with myriad "markets of one".
Chief executive may come and chief executives may go but the mission statements roll on.
Oh, and by the way, the broadband was back in action an hour later.
*****
A couple of mineral explorers showed some welcome entrepreneurial flair on Friday.
RAMELIUS RESOURCES (RMS) issued a progress drilling report, and just so that readers would not fail to get the message, headlined the announcement with "0.75 Kg / TONNE GOLD INTERCEPT AT WATTLE DAM".
Gold by kilo, wow!
The company was reporting the analytical results of the visible gold and adjacent intercepts from the current infill drilling program at the Wattle Dam Project.
The highlights were 748 and 143 g/t gold in adjacent one metre intervals.
The gold-in-kilos ploy did nothing much for the shares.
That's because it had already been done.
After being untraded at 11.5c the previous Friday, Synergy hit 15c on Monday, 16c on Wednesday and 17c on Thursday, BEFORE Friday's announcement, and on turnover which was about 10 times recent averages.
On Friday the shares hit 20c before closing at 16.5c, a 0.5c loss for the day.
*****
SYNERGY METALS (SML) also wanted to get maximum effect and released a "SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT".
Synergy advised that SSDDH 017 at the Sunnyside Project had intersected a highly significant zone of mineralisation between 163 metres and 207 metres.
"The intersection contains abundant visible gold," it said.
"It is anticipated that the core from the identified zone of interest will be submitted to the assay laboratory on Tuesday of this coming week.
"Results are expected within seven days.
"Due to the potential significance and high-grade nature of the intersection, Synergy is arranging for its own technical representative to be present during the processing and analysis of the core."
Sounds mysterious.
Maybe Synergy should have had a representative at the stock exchange as well.
The shares rose from 7.5c to as high as 10.5c on Thursday, AHEAD of the "Special Announcment", before closing at 9.34c.
Trading was well above average.
On Friday the shares rose 3.1c to as high as 12.5c before closing at 11.5c.
(Comments and complaints to [email protected] - no requests for advice please.)
