The Hong Kong investment market appears to be opening up again for Australian and Canadian resources players.
Peak Asset Management Executive Director Niv Dagan tells Mining.com.au there are a lot more inflows from Hong Kong funds and institutions through to the ASX.
After a six-year hiatus, the firm is heading back to Hong Kong for the Ignite Investment Summit, which is being held at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong on 26 and 27 March.
“Hong Kong was a really large market for us, where we saw a lot of ASX companies and management teams head to Hong Kong to really promote the story and to raise capital. We saw significant success,” Dagan says.
“But since Covid we haven’t seen too much flow from Hong Kong.”
Dagan says Peak – which is sponsoring the event and participating in two panels – sees it as a really interesting opportunity to reengage family offices, institutions, funds, companies and corporates to increase the firm’s distribution and reach into the Asian markets.
He says Hong Kong, compared to places like Singapore, is a lot more open to investing in small cap resources companies.
“We find that Singapore overall is a more conservative market, where ASX companies do go there but do find it difficult to, let’s say, raise their profile and raise capital, only because the Singaporeans tend to largely be more conservative but also invest more in infrastructure, property and larger companies,” he notes.
“So it makes it difficult for the small to mid-cap companies to really get engagement.”
However, in Hong Kong, Dagan says funds like Oasis Management Company, Marvel Capital, Trafalgar Capital, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and Fidelity Internationals’s Asia Pacific Equity Fund, as well as a few family offices, are “very astute” to the small-cap ASX market, and traditionally have supported the smaller end, especially mining.
“We definitely are seeing a lot more inflows from Hong Kong funds and institutions onto the ASX,” he tells this news service.
“I think from a timing perspective, with capital markets opening up, interest rates starting to fall, obviously a push into China and Hong Kong for a lot of different markets and other verticals, including mining and infrastructure, we think it’s the right place and the right time to be there.”
Some of the ASX-listed companies attending include Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR), Larvotto Resources (ASX:LRV), Jindalee Lithium (ASX:JLL), Trigg Minerals (ASX:TMG), White Cliff Minerals (ASX:WCN), Pursuit Minerals (ASX:PUR) and Estrella Resources (ASX:ESR).
Also attending is Vancouver-based Tinka Resources (TSX-V:TK), which owns the 16,800-hectare Ayawilca Zinc-Silver-Tin Project in Peru – considered one of the largest undeveloped zinc resources in the Americas.
CEO Dr Graham Carman will be meeting with a group of investors from Asia, a part of the world he says Tinka has never marketed before.
“We know that there is a lot of interest in China and the nearby Asian countries for our resource metals including zinc, tin and silver,” he tells Mining.com.au.
“We have a pretty full schedule of meetings with funds, corporates, Chinese companies and PE firms. Certainly a different audience to Australia or Canada.”
Fellow Vancouver-based Q2 Metals (TSX-V:QTWO) will also be heading to Hong Kong for the Ignite Investment Summit, which is two days of targeted one-on-one meetings between CEOs and vetted investors.
The event covers three sectors – resources, technology and life sciences – and is being attended by over 160 investors and 40 companies.
The Ignite Investment Summit coincides with the Hong Kong Sevens – one of Asia’s most popular sporting events.
“The city will be abuzz,” Peak’s Dagan says.
“There’ll be a lot of investors and funds, institutions coming through to Hong Kong on that specific few days.”
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: iStock
