Small caps news round-up

Natural resources investor Metal Tiger and Australian firm MOD Resources updated the market on their diamond drilling programme in Botswana on Thursday, advancing the project towards what it hoped would be commercialisation. The companies, traded on the AIM and ASX respectively, are 30%-70% partners in the joint venture project in the Kalahari Copper Belt.

Drug discovery and development company Summit Therapeutics posted its first quarter results on Thursday, with cash reduced and losses widening. The AIM-traded firm, which is advancing therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and C. difficile infection (CDI), had cash and cash equivalents of £10m on 30 April, compared to £16.3m on 31 January.

Shares in Kefi Minerals are down about 5% as it further cut the funding requirements and finance costs for developing the Tulu Kapi Gold Project in Ethiopia. The Saudi Arabia- and Ethiopia-facing gold exploration and development firm said it remained on track to execute syndicated financing documentation at the end of third-quarter 2016.

Boxhill Technologies, operator of the Weather Lottery and payment processing software business, has received winding up petitions from Eupay Group, a company that previously supplied it with payment services. Shares in the AIM-listed company, which is led by former LibDem chairman Baron Timothy Razzall, fell 18% in a matter of minutes to 0.151p after the announcement on Thursday afternoon.

Shares in North River Resources were down about 10% as it booked an impairment-laden set of full-year results that saw pre-tax losses widen to £9.8m, from a loss of £3.3m. The numbers included a £6.7m impairment of goodwill, from zero a year earlier. The company, which also flagged the need for a short-term working-capital fundraise, said it remained committed to bringing the Namib Project into production.

Eckoh has won two US contracts, worth collectively around $7m spread across three years, while also extending its US distributor agreement with telecoms group West Corp. One of the new contracts, the second major deal won via the reseller agreement with West this year, will see Eckoh provide secure payment services to a global insurance company in the Fortune 500, valued at a minimum of $2m evenly across three years.

Collateral management and regulatory reporting solutions provider Lombard Risk Management announced on Thursday that it has signed a deal with a “Global Systemically Important Bank” for its flagship regulatory reporting solution. The AIM-traded firm said the win was the first to be secured by the company with such a bank following the agreement with Oracle America, announced on 18 March.

Xaar has launched its long awaited thin-film Piezo platform (P4) and confirmed the agreement of a partnership with Japanese technology giant Ricoh to accelerate the development of thin-film printheads. Xaar's 5601 printhead, the first of the P4 family to be made available to customers at the end of 2016, is expected to open up major new markets for conversion to digital printing and is a key component of management's ambitious £220m-by-2020 revenue target.

Brain health company IXICO announced on Thursday that its Cygnus study has joined the high-profile Dementias Platform UK (DPUK). The AIM-traded firm described Cygnus as a real-world digital data collection study from people with cognitive impairment and dementia.

Conveyancing and financial intermediary platform provider ULS Technology celebrated the launch of a new partnership on Thursday, as independent mortgage firm John Charcol prepared to launch a new conveyancing service built on ULS products. The AIM-traded company said the new platform - dubbed John Charcol Legal and built on the ULS eConveyancer platform - will see it receive a fee for each completed transaction.