Shares of Expro Group Holdings N.V. (XPRO) got a nice little bump in Tuesday's premarket trading. The reason? The company just landed a pretty interesting gig. It's partnering with a firm called VERCANA GmbH to handle the geothermal well testing for a project in Germany with the very ambitious name of the Lionheart Project.
Think of it this way: someone's drilling a deep hole to tap into the Earth's heat for clean energy. Before you start building a power plant, you need to know exactly what you're dealing with down there—how hot it is, how much fluid is flowing, and what's in that fluid. That's where Expro comes in. They're bringing their GeoFlow Surface Well Testing package to the first well, called Schleidberg, to figure all that out.
More Than Just Heat
Here's the cool part (or rather, the hot part with a bonus). The Lionheart Project isn't just about geothermal energy. It's also about lithium. The idea is to extract both from the same underground source. This dual-purpose approach has earned the project a special designation under the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act, basically marking it as one of Europe's most important initiatives for securing key resources it often has to import.
For Expro, this is a strategic win that builds on its recent work in the European geothermal space. The company will run the operation through its teams that cover Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Caspian region, using their expertise in managing well flow and interventions.
"We are proud to support VERCANA GmbH and Vulcan Energy on this landmark geothermal development," said Andrei Ion, Expro's Managing Director for Europe, Mediterranean, and Caspian. "This partnership reflects the strength of Expro's geothermal capabilities and our ongoing commitment to delivering safe, efficient, and future-focused services across Europe."
What The Charts Are Saying
Investors seemed to like the news, giving the stock a premarket lift. Looking under the hood, the stock's technical picture shows some strength. It's currently trading 5.55% above its 20-day simple moving average and a more impressive 15.48% above its 100-day average, suggesting a positive longer-term trend. Over the past year, shares are up a hefty 67.54% and are trading closer to their 52-week highs than their lows.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is sitting at 60.19, which is considered neutral—not overbought, not oversold. Meanwhile, the MACD indicator is at 0.1157, which is above its signal line of 0.1117, a configuration that often suggests bullish momentum is in play. Put together, these signals hint at the potential for the stock to keep moving up. Traders might be watching a key resistance level around $18.50, with support likely around $16.50.
