It has been a volatile day for the ASX and in afternoon trade the market has tumbled slightly into the red.
But that hasn't stopped three shares at the small end of the market from pushing higher today. Here's why they are on the rise:
The Fluence Corporation Ltd (ASX: FLC) share price is up 5% to 40.5 cents. This morning the provider of decentralised water, wastewater treatment, and reuse solutions announced its first waste-to-energy harvesting project in Argentina. According to the release, the company will design and build a €1.7 waste-to-energy system for prominent beef processor ArreBeef Energia. The system will be designed and built using anaerobic digestion technology which has been developed by Fluence to produce biogas, as well as electrical and thermal energy. The system is expected to be installed and operational onsite by November 2019.
The Opthea Ltd (ASX: OPT) share price has jumped 7% to 63 cents after the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel biologic therapies to treat back-of-the-eye diseases announced that it has received a $12 million research and development tax credit from the Australian Taxation Office. CEO and managing director, Dr Megan Baldwin, commented: "This R&D tax incentive credit of $12 million increases the company's cash balances to over $36 million and will contribute to the execution and delivery of outcomes from our clinical trials of OPT-302 in both wet AMD and DME."
The ResApp Health Ltd (ASX: RAP) share price has rebounded 20% higher to 12 cents. On Tuesday the digital health company's shares more than halved in value after the release of disappointing results from its SMARTCOUGH C-2 study. The results of the study, particularly for pneumonia and bronchiolitis, were extremely underwhelming. Based on the results, I suspect that there are concerns now that its ResAppDx smartphone application has no future in diagnosing pneumonia and bronchiolitis.
