Many Australian investors love to take a punt in the resources space, after all China's blockbuster demand for resources has kept the "Lucky Country" recession free for 27 years and has probably helped create a significant proportion of the reportedly 1.16 millionaires in Australia along the way.
However, most of that wealth has probably come from investing in or working on the blue-chip end of the resources market in big players like Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX: FMG), BHP Billiton Limited (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO).
However, there's also been a couple of huge winners to come out the speculative space with Fortescue the most well known, while lithium miners like Galaxy Resources Ltd (ASX: GXY) and Orocobre Limited (ASX: ORE) also had their day in the sun recently.
One small-cap miner that has climbed around 275% from 20 cents to 75 cents since its April 2018 initial public offering is UK-headquartered Adriatic Metals PLC (ASX: ADT).
It owns a "zinc-strong" polymetallic product deposit in Rupice, Bosnia, and recently raised $10.8 million from institutional investors at 55 cents per share to provide a cash balance of $17.3 million for investment into the zinc mining project.
It has around 150.5 million shares on issue to give it a market value around $113 million, although for the quarter ending September 31 2018 it had no revenue and an operating cash loss of GBP803,000.
Its zinc mining tenements also appear to be at an early development stage, which suggests it will have to consume a lot of capital before it gets to a potential production and commercialisation stage.
As you can probably guess I'm not a buyer of Adriatic Metals shares, but given the rocketing share price it seems some speculators believe in its potential.
