Chariot Oil & Gas Limited shares rose 41.76% to 2.32p 

 

The Atlantic margins-focused energy firm, Chariot Oil & Gas (AIM: CHAR)  , announced this morning a significant resource increase at the Anchois gas project, offshore Morocco.

 

After completing the reprocessing of 3D seismic data across the Lixus Offshore Licence in Morocco, Chariot reported significant improvements in image quality and in-depth control. 

 

This shows a positive impact on the understanding of the distribution and extent of the Anchois gas sands, demonstrating a 148% increase of total remaining recoverable resource.

 

Adonis Pouroulis, Acting CEO of Chariot, said the recent work on the Lixus Licence has confirmed to the business “the materiality of the Anchois Gas Field Development project.”

 

 

FirstGroup Plc shares jumped 25.5% to 52.10p this morning

 

Shares in the transport operator First Group (FGP)  rallied this morning following a weekend report that said its US operations have attracted interest from several major private equity firms.

 

According to The Sunday Telegraph, some of the world’s biggest buyers including Brookfield, Apollo Global Management and KKR are amongst those circling FirstGroup’s US divisions. 

 

I Squared Capital, owner of Irish energy giant Energia, was also named as a potential buyer. 

 

FirstGroup announced back in March that it would put up its bus and trail operations for sale after a long-running campaign to sell North American divisions, First Student and First Transit.

 

Coast Capital, an activist hedge fund with a 10% stake in the firm, said both are worth “notably more” than their book value of 100p per share, estimating a price of 165p for each.

 

Elsewhere, the group said last week that the Department for Transport has exercised its option to extend financial help for Great Western Railway to help it ride out the virus crisis.

 

 

Omega Diagnostics Group plc (ODX)  shares rose 22.43% to 65.5p

 

The medical diagnostics company unveiled to investors this morning that the self-test usability study for the  AbC-19™ Rapid test for COVID-19 was completed over the weekend.

 

The study was performed by Ulster University using around 2,000 volunteers and completed over the weekend. The test has already been CE-Marked for professional use.

 

Omega is on track to have production capacity in place this month to produce an initial 100,000 tests per week, scaling up to 200,000 tests per week capacity in October.

 

Later in the day, the Company responded to a press leak by BBI holdings which was subsequently retracted.

 

 

Destiny Pharma Plc shares jumped 13.27% to 55.5p this morning.

 

Clinical stage biotechnology firm Destiny Pharma (AIM:DEST)  entered into a collaboration agreement with SporeGen to co-develop a preventative treatment for COVID-19.

 

Under the agreement, the parties will share any costs and commercial returns from SporeGen's SPOR-COV product and plan to complete a pre-clinical programme with the aim of being ready to enter the first human clinical trials within the next 18 months.

 

Destiny’s expertise in pre-clinical and clinical drug development will be combined with SporeGen's understanding of Bacillus bacterial spores to progress the SPOR‑COV project.

 

According to UK Investor Magazine, DEST’s share price has soared 14.08% to 55.90p, hitting its highest point all year and clambering from its annual low of 29.00p at the end of July.

 

Avacta Group plc shares rose 5.91% to 176.88p this morning.

Avacta Group (AIM:AVCT)  is to launch a high-performance ELISA laboratory test for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in order to support global research efforts to combat COVID-19.

The ELISA test, which is capable of detecting the coronavirus spike protein in lab samples down to very low concentrations, will be made available as a kit so that researchers around the world can use it in their own labs to support research into the coronavirus (COVID-19).

Shares in Avacta Group have skyrocketed over 400% since March. The Company continues to work in partnership with Cytiva, formerly GE Healthcare Life Sciences against COVID-19.

“Avacta remains focused on the much larger opportunity of the saliva-based coronavirus antigen rapid test that we are developing with Cytiva and which is now in the process of technology transfer to our manufacturing partners,” said Dr. Alastair Smith, CEO of Avacta