Sunday Edition: 17th August

Disclosure: S3 Consortium Pty Ltd and its associated entities may hold direct or indirect interests in securities referred to in this publication and may receive fees or other forms of consideration from entities mentioned. These interests and arrangements may create a potential conflict of interest in the preparation of this material.

The information contained in this communication is provided for general information purposes only and may relate to speculative investments. It does not constitute financial product advice, and has been prepared without taking into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider obtaining independent financial advice before making any investment decision.

While we continue looking for new US-based critical minerals (and also silver) projects the big news overnight was that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the USA.

This was for the first time since 2015.

While no ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine was agreed, the meeting is a sign that the key players are now coming to the negotiating table.

While the lifting of economic sanctions on Russia will likely be a part of any peace agreement, we are watching closely to see what part natural resources will play.

Mainstream media highlighted again this week that US gaining access to Ukraine’s critical minerals may play a part in a peace and security deal:

(Source, The Telegraph)

We have seen over the past several months how big (and sudden) of a priority it is for the US to rebuild critical mineral supply and industries.

And it looks like the US is even willing to look abroad for some of its critical minerals supply - interesting for any decent projects in US friendly locations...

(cough cough SGQ giant REE deposit in Brazil)

Also this week the US Department of Energy announced a further $1BN package to support domestic critical minerals, recycling and mining within the US.

And the big focus was on metals recycling... like our Portfolio company ION specialises in.

You can read our full coverage in our Saturday Weekender: DoE $1B Push: Could ION be the Surprise Winner?

Minbos Resources (ASX:MNB)

MNB is building a phosphate mine and fertiliser plant in Angola that’s forecast to generate around US$55M EBITDA per year over a 20-year mine life.

This week MNB signed a Heads of Agreement (HOA) with FertiAfrica for packaging and granulation services in Angola for its phosphate product.

MNB is in the middle of construction of its phosphate mine in Angola, and recently completed pouring the concrete slab that will be the foundation for its phosphate plant.

Once in production, MNB expects to generate ~US$55M in EBITDA per year (base case, on average) mine, over a 20 year mine life.

One thing we found interesting about the deal that MNB signed this week is that MNB will have the ability to produce “locally manufactured NPK fertilisers”, opening up its markets for more products.

Right now, MNB’s product is limited to its phosphate rock (the P in NPK).

While the N (nitrogen) and K (potassium) are also elements that farmers are interested in when growing their crops.

While MNB’s phosphate rock product works extremely well in the Angolan and Sub-Saharan Climate, the ability to produce NPK fertiliser opens up the door for more export opportunities.

The deal with FertiAfrica will see MNB access fertiliser granulation services at Fertiafrica’s facility in Angola.

This will be the first time Angola produces locally granulated fertilisers using MNB’s phosphate as the prime ingredient.

The facility will granulate, bag and warehouse fertiliser products which will be distributed to both small hold farmers and large scale farmers.

(Large scale farmers in particular like the granulated fertiliser products)

MNB’s Managing Director Lindsay Reed was quoted: “This agreement marks a pivotal moment for Angola’s fertiliser future”, with the outcome to deliver local production, local jobs and products specifically tailored for local conditions.

Here is Lindsay Reed on the national news in Angola signing the deal:

(watch the video here)

GTI Energy (ASX:GTR)

Our US uranium investment GTI Energy (ASX: GTR) has locked in NASDAQ listed Snow Lake Energy as one of the company’s major shareholders.

Snow Lake is taking a 9.9% stake in GTR - coming in on the same terms as the recent $4.5M placement at 0.35c.

Snow Lake has invested ~$1.5M into GTR at 0.35c, and will also have the right to appoint a director to GTR’s board.

Shareholders voted this through on August 13th.

Snow Lake already owns half of the Pine Ridge uranium project which borders GTR’s Lo Herma ISR uranium project’s northern border in Wyoming, USA.

GTR’s projects sit to the south of the area Snow Lake will be exploring (in yellow):

The Lo Herma project already has a JORC resource estimate of 8.57m lb of uranium with a drill permit recently approved plus drill rigs secured for a drill campaign to take place next month.

The reason we think Snow Lake is taking positions in assets in this part of the US is because of the project’s proximity to Cameco’s Smith Ranch - which is the biggest ISR uranium processing facility in the USA.

GTR will be undergoing a 40:1 share consolidation, and will be changing its name to America Uranium Limited, with the ticker code AMU.

With the shareholder vote successful, GTR will soon lodge the name change and consolidation with the regulator to officially become America Uranium Limited (ASX:AMU).

Titan Minerals (ASX:TTM)

Our Investment Titan Minerals (ASX:TTM) keeps hitting more gold at its Dynasty gold project in Ecuador.

At Dynasty, TTM has a 3.1Moz gold, 22Moz silver JORC resource estimate.

TTM has three rigs actively drilling on that project, and aiming to upgrade that resource closer toward a 5M ounce target.

TTM is planning to upgrade its resource later this year.

Earlier this week, TTM hit more gold outside of its current resource estimate with the best hit being a 31.6m hit at 2.2g/t gold, 5.4g/t silver.

Here is where the new drilling came from AND a look at all the new mineralisation TTM has been hitting outside of its current JORC resource:

With three rigs running on site we are looking forward to seeing TTM put out its resource update later this year.

We are especially looking forward to seeing what comes from the deeper orange section from the image above - the porphyry mineralisation which TTM has only just started looking at more closely.

TTM recently announced that it would run geophysical surveys to try and locate the source of all the near surface mineralisation.

(looking for the giant copper-gold porphyry which feeds the gold and silver TTM has already found)

James Bay Minerals (ASX: JBY)

Our US gold Investment JBY just released more drill results from its drill program at its project in Nevada which has a 1.37M ounces gold resource estimate.

JBY hit gold intercepts up to ~27.4m thickness with grades of ~1g/t gold.

JBY is drilling to try and upgrade the shallow portion of the project which makes up ~384k ounces of the total resource figure.

This drill hit extends the resource in this region through a step out hole ~100m to the north of the existing resource.

We circled the new hits in orange in the image below:

JBY is in the middle of a drill program trying to extend its resource out towards its tenement boundary.

Also of note is that JBY is currently building out the road access to the top of the hill closest to that tenement boundary.

(Source)

Once the road access is built, JBY can drill right near the boundary:

Sun Silver (ASX:SS1)

Our US silver and antimony Investment Sun Silver (ASX:SS1) keeps finding more antimony within its giant 480M ounce silver equivalent JORC resource.

SS1’s project is the biggest pre-production silver asset on the ASX and in the USA.

Now, it's looking like that resource could also have a pretty important antimony component to go with it.

This week SS1 announced assay from two holes - Hole MR122 (41m at 0.1% antimony), and Hole MR097 (18m at 0.1% antimony)

Both those results are well above the average grades of the current biggest antimony resource in the USA - ~$2.9bn Perpetua Resources project which has average grades of ~0.06%-0.07% antimony.

After the results, SS1 has confirmed antimony mineralisation across an area of its project that is ~2.4km long and 1.4km wide.

Here is how it looked before and after:

SS1 still has over 35 historical holes submitted for multi-element assaying and SS1 expects to have more results out on the antimony front this quarter.

(Hopefully the re-assays lead to a maiden antimony resource estimate for SS1)

Mithril Silver and Gold (ASX:MTH)

This week our Investment Mithril Silver and Gold (ASX:MTH) has released an update on its US listing.

MTH is now trading on the OTCQB Venture Market under the ticker ‘MTIRF’.

This is in addition to its existing ASX (MTH) and TSX.V (MSG) listings which will remain.

The MD of MTH gave a brief quote on the reason for the additional listing:

(Source: Today's Announcement)

We like an OTC listing because it opens up access to US investors and gives them the opportunity to invest in a resource that is in their backyard (just south of the border really).

The company can now put effort into attracting US based investors now that they have direct access to investing in the company.

With gold hovering for a few months now near all time highs and silver teasing us near 14 year highs, this gives US investors an additional silver related company that they can invest in for exposure:

Of course while these charts look good, commodity prices are notoriously fickle and go down as well as up, so caution is always advised when looking at small cap resource stocks.

Solis Minerals (ASX:SLM)

Solis Minerals (ASX:SLM) has 4 “shots on goal” this year to make a copper discovery in Peru.

SLM is currently drilling with a diamond rig, meaning that if SLM gets lucky and hits the right type of rocks, we could see a trading halt or an early announcement for visuals any day now...

With exploration drilling, anything can happen - it is high-risk, high-reward.

The reward can be big, as seen with SLM’s regional peer AusQuest which made a big copper discovery earlier this year and re-rated 700%.

(The past performance of AusQuest is not a future indicator of SLM performance. There are plenty of exploration failures out there.)

We like this project that SLM is drilling now because the prize is a big copper porphyry.

And previous drilling came pretty close to finding just this.

Previous drilling (from the old owners of SLM’s project) returned intercepts of ~472m at 0.11% copper with 0.09g/t gold grades, from near-surface...

That is a giant intercept which we think the market would like if it was announced in isolation...

BUT it turns out the old drilling just missed the main geophysical targets on the project.

SLM ran an IP survey (geophysics) in 2022 which showed just how close that old drilling got to hitting something.

Higher chargeability (brighter colours) is usually a good marker for where to drill - basically in the big pink bits...

The bright purple is the centre of the geophysical anomaly, the old drilling is shown in red dots.

But notice something about the direction that the arrows are pointing (this is the direction that the holes were drilled)...

All of the old drilling was facing the wrong way.

SLM is correcting this on the current drilling...

Read more: SLM: Drilling our favourite targets now - copper discovery?

Iondrive (ASX:ION)

(this was written BEFORE the $1BN funding announced by the US DoE which focused heavily on minerals recycling)

Why was ION’s commercial director in the USA last week?

According to an interview with the ION CEO last Tuesday:

ION is "partnering with a number of companies to deploy our deep eutectic solvent to very selectively and efficiently recover rare earth elements and as we speak, our commercial director is in the US”. (listen to it here)

Rare earths...

in the USA?

Sounds good to us...

One of the fastest emerging macro thematics right now is US critical metals and the onshoring of critical mineral supply chains.

But there aren’t enough producing mines right now to satisfy national security needs.

We think that critical metals recycling will become a much bigger part of the US critical minerals story, as the government turns to technology to help.

(not just in US, but in other countries too as critical metals supply is increasingly weaponised in the new world of resetting international trade relations)

Recycling old “electronic waste” to extract the valuable critical metals is called “urban mining”.

It can allow countries to extract domestic supply of critical metals from old, discarded electronic equipment like mobile phones, TV’s, circuit boards, industrial equipment etc.

This week, ION announced a $3.9M grant (non-dilutive to shareholders) to scale up its tech and commence building their pilot plant for lithium, nickel and cobalt recovery from old batteries.

It's more than just those metals though...

Below is a larger list of metals that Deep Eutectic Solvents (which ION uses in its IP protected processing technology) have been tried and tested on in metals extraction and recycling - we’ve highlighted some of the key critical metals:

(Source)

Note: this chart shows metals amenable to Deep Eutectic Solvent chemistry in general, and have not necessarily been specifically tested by ION.

An energy efficient technology that can extract these metals could be very valuable to any country looking to improve their domestic supply of critical minerals through recycling.

The potential unlocking of that value is why we are Invested in ION.

Read more: ION secures $3.9M grant to build metals recycling pilot plant - US rare earths next?

RocketBoots (ASX:ROC)

This week our small cap AI tech Investment RocketBoots (ASX:ROC) signed a paid trial with an unnamed “Major Australian Retail Bank”.

(a small AI tech company signing on a major brand is not an easy thing to do. This is the third ‘big name’ paying client ROC has been able to sign up - the first two were Bunnings and Suncorp)

ROC has developed “Vision Artificial Intelligence” technology for giant companies to analyse and respond to in-store customer behaviours.

(basically this means using AI on live in-store camera footage to analyse customer behaviors, allowing the company to improve operations)

Here is our customary basic Google search when a company is not allowed to name a major new client:

This week’s contract news is for an initial trial across 6 sites for $68,000 in revenue to ROC, and assuming this goes well, will move to 19 sites for a total contract value of $234,000.

(with more potentially to be rolled out if things go well)

We estimate that ~$20.5M capped ROC has ~$65M potential revenue in their “advanced stage sales pipeline” (based on the June quarterly report, with some assumptions from us shown in the link below).

(ROC reported $746k in cash received in FY25, so even converting just 10% of our estimated $65M potential revenue in their ADVANCED stage pipeline would be a 8.7x increase on ROC’s last reported cash received number)

Note the key word here is ‘potential’ - ROC will still need to convert its sales pipeline into actual revenue, and it may not be successful in doing this. Just because a potential contract is in the pipeline does not mean it will convert to a signed contract.

Read more: ROC signs deal with major retail bank for paid trial of its Artificial Intelligence tech across 19 branches

Locksley Resources (ASX:LKY)

Trump called it last year...

He said on one of the most widely watched podcasts in the world (Joe Rogan) that we have “areas in California with incredible raw (rare) earth materials” “and I’m going to open it up” (source)

(source)

We can only assume he was talking about the ground in and around America’s only rare earths mine - owned by $20BN US listed MP Materials...

We hope this is right - because we are Invested in the $48M capped Locksley Resources (ASX:LKY | OTC: LKYRF), that has big parts of the ground next to MP Materials:

LKY already has rare earth drill targets on its smaller blocks surrounded by MP (to the south).

And this week LKY announced they are now trying to work up some rare earth targets on the much larger blocks to the north, two of them as close as possible to MP Materials mine:

(Source: LKY announcement)

LKY will now run structural and geological mapping, plus geophysics programmes on the areas shown above (we circled them in green).

Hopefully we get to see some nice looking rock chip samples as part of this field work too.

Read more: LKY chasing new rare earths target areas - as close as possible to MP Materials rare earths mine ...

Trump Administration Said to Discuss Taking Stake in Intel (Bloomberg)

The US government is continuing to pick national champions in critical industries...

The next winner? It looks to be Intel.

While there is no confirmation yet, the rumours are that the Trump Administration may look to financially support Intel’s planned factory hub in Ohio.

This move broadens the recent strategy of the US government to intertwine critical industrial sectors into localised end to end supply chains to strengthen national security.

FIRST, the US government’s investment in gold and antimony developer Perpetua Resource was put in place to secure the domestic supply chain of antimony (a critical mineral used in defence).

THEN, the US government’s investment in MP Materials, the largest rare earths producer in America, shored up the domestic supply of rare earths and permanent magnets.

NOW, the US government’s potential investment in Intel looks to secure the domestic supply chain of semiconductors and microchips.

Every week there are new announcements being made by the US government about investment into critical industries...

And we think investors are starting to take notice.

Just have a look at Vulcan Elements, who this week raised $65M to develop rare earth magnets:

(Source, Wall Street Journal)

Companies that are leveraged to the US critical minerals in our Portfolio include:

• RML: Exploration company right next door to Perpetua Resource (the US national champion for future antimony production)
• LKY: Exploration company right next door to MP Materials (the US national champion for future rare earths production)
• SS1: Building out a large antimony resource in Nevada alongside its 480Moz silver equivalent resource.
• ION: The Commercial Director was recently in the US to evaluate how its battery recycling technology can be used to extract critical minerals like rare earths.

The US government still has US$500 billion set aside from the recent ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ to support critical infrastructure.

Should government investment become a new normal, even just for the near term, we are expecting a wave of investment from US-based investors into the sector.

Early movers that can show some initial success may be in a position to take advantage.

88 Energy (ASX: 88E) - Catalysts on the Horizon (MST Access)

Oneview Healthcare (ASX: ONE) - 1H CY25 Result. Operating EBITDA in Line (Bell Potter)

Chinese lepidolite supply under question CG

St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) Founder & Executive Chairman John Prineas: - St George Mining (ASX:SGQ)

Global Uranium (ASX:GUE) - Wyoming Project Targets 24-51M Lb Exploration Potential - Global Uranium and Enrichment (ASX:GUE)

Inside Solis’ flagship Ilo Este project’s drill strategy - Solis Minerals (ASX:SLM)

A word of caution...

While we aim to highlight developments in the small cap space, investing in early-stage and small cap companies - like those we cover - is inherently risky.

These companies often face funding challenges, regulatory hurdles, and market volatility. Announcements may reflect aspirations more than guaranteed outcomes.

Things can, and often do, change.

Just because a company has signed a deal, released drill results, or appointed a new director doesn’t mean success is assured.

Always assume delays, cost overruns, or results that don’t pan out.

We’re here to share insights, not offer personal financial advice - so please do your own research and speak with a licensed adviser before acting on anything mentioned.

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Bye for now.