Sunday Edition: 21st June

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.

Any forward-looking statements are uncertain and not a guaranteed outcome.

Below you can find short overviews of all the content we wrote last week, plus links to each full note.

Further down, there’s also some links to other interesting stuff we came across on our travels around the internet.

Yesterday’s Saturday note: China got out to a lead. The $70 trillion rare earths comeback starts now.

Quick Takes: BPM, ION, 2x AL3, OD6, PKP, HTG, SGQ, ILA, VKA, PR1, PNN, WCE

Deep Dives: PNN, RCM, IIQ, TG1

Other content: LKY, EIQ, EMD, HAR, ILA, WCE, PR1, VKA, PNN, BKB, IVR

LKY is holding a webinar on Wednesday 24th June at 12PM AEST / 10AM AWST with MD & CEO Kerrie Matthews. A Q&A session will follow. We will be tuning in to see what LKY has planned.

LKY Live Investor Webinar Registration Link

BPM hit 20.95g/t gold in extensional drilling at its WA gold project.

This week's results were from the second phase of drilling on the project - following up last year’s drilling campaign which hit gold in all 24 holes drilled.

Last year included a really high grade 9m intercept with an average gold grade of ~7.77g/t.

This week's hits extended the mineralisation to across ~300m strike length and down to depths of ~250m. IF the next batch of assays come in then the structure could get bigger to the north west too.

Interesting side note - BPM’s big greenfields target “Bonnie & Clyde” is getting closer to being drill ready.

BPM is expecting to drill that prospect next quarter.

(source)

ION recovered heavy rare earths from e-waste in the USA.

ION almost 3x’ed its recovery rates from previous testwork.

This should improve the economics of the modular rare earth processing plants that ION is targeting a commercial roll out for late next year.

The testing was done under the binding agreement ION has with the USA’s biggest e-waste recycling companies, Colt Recycling - who handle ~40 million pounds (~18 million kg) of e-waste annually.

The big kicker from the ION news this week was the early results for other heavy rare earth elements including holmium and gadolinium.

Heavy rare earths - the most supply-constrained, highest-value rare earths.

These are elements that go into producing magnets for EV motors, F-35 fighter jets and guided missile systems.

China controls almost 100% of heavy rare earth supply globally - the US is now playing catch up

(Read more on the rare earths macro backdrop in our note from yesterday: China got out to a lead. The $70 trillion rare earths comeback starts now.)

(source)

AL3 appointed retired US Navy Rear Admiral David Goggins as a US board advisor.

Most of AL3’s sales in the US have gone into the US Navy’s shipbuilding and submarine supply chains.

Now, AL3 has appointed a board advisor with 34 years experience in that specific space.

David spent 34 years in the US Navy leading the design, construction and sustainment of nuclear-powered submarines and served as Program Executive Officer for Attack Submarines, so he was effectively the admiral overseeing US attack submarine construction.

Before that, he was the Virginia-class submarine program manager (overseeing the delivery of three submarines) and also worked on the next-generation Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program.

Most recently, he was the US Navy's Special Assistant for the AUKUS partnership where he led the US side of the trilateral Australia-UK-US submarine effort.

In other words, he has spent his entire career inside the exact corner of the US defence world that AL3 is trying to sell further into.

(source)

AL3 also completed an initial ~$4.5M order for Huntington Ingalls Industries this week (America’s largest shipbuilder).

AL3 still has a second order of ~$9.9M for four more systems which are tracking on time for delivery to Huntington in early 2027.

OD6 produced low impurity fluorspar from its US project in Nevada.

This de-risks the asset by demonstrating that higher grade acidspar can be relatively easily produced, which is needed to capture lucrative US defence and technology contracts.

Also given the low impurity levels, OD6 could potentially bypass processing entirely and sell directly as Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) for lower-grade metallurgical "metspar" applications.

High-purity acidspar is the premium industrial product required to manufacture hydrofluoric acid, needed for AI semiconductor chip etching agents, advanced lithium-ion battery chemistries, nuclear fuel processing, and military aerospace hardware.

While OD6 progresses toward drilling, it will be interesting to see if the government funding opportunities heat up in the background.

(source)(source)

PKP achieved a third straight month of positive EBITDA.

That is now three months of increasing revenues AND six months of positive trending EBITDA.

We also liked that production guidance was increased by another 100,000 units to 1.6M.

Most of PKP’s costs are “fixed” (plant, rent, utility bills etc) so more units produced should mean improving financials.

So hopefully that trend of increasing revenues and EBITDA continues into June.

(source)

SGQ raised A$60M for its Brazil rare earth/niobium project cornerstoned by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting for A$20M.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart owns 76.55% of Hancock Prospecting, with the remaining 23.4% held by the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust, which benefits her children.

This week it was revealed that Hancock Prospecting took a US$1BN stake in the SpaceX IPO (source).

A few days later Hancock Prospecting cornerstoned A$20M of SGQ’s $60M capital raise.

(source)

Hancock Prospecting now owns 10.5% of SGQ and is the single biggest shareholder.

SGQ sits in its portfolio alongside major holdings in the West’s two big rare earths producers - MP Materials and Lynas Rare Earths.

SGQ had ~$43M cash at 31 March 2026 and with the raise this week, cash on hand should be closer to $100M - funded for all the drilling happening on site.

Great timing from SGQ with that G7 rare earths commitment too - we covered more of that in yesterday's note here.

(source)

HTG expanded its US and European defence team - ready to pursue new contracts.

HTG made two appointments this week in order to accelerate its push into US and EU defence markets.

• A Washington D.C. based national security advisory firm - the same one that ran HTG’s United States Market Entry assessment, AND;
  
• Dr. Oleksandra Molloy - a specialist in uncrewed and autonomous systems as HTG’s new Defence Strategic Advisor.

Good to see HTG strengthening its EU capabilities, especially with HTG going for Brave1 accreditation.

Brave1 is Ukraine's government-backed defence-tech cluster (testing foreign vendors in real battlefield conditions). Think of it like Amazon for deliveries but it delivers pre-approved battle tech to locations in a battlefield.

IF HTG is accredited for use and now with Dr Molloy advising HTG, we could start to see some traction (and hopefully sales) out of the EU.

(source)

ILA received FDA Orphan Drug Designation for its treatment for Marburg disease

Orphan Drug Designations means that ILA gets the following for its Marburg treating drug:

7 years of US market exclusivity following approval,

• Exemption from certain FDA application fees, and
• Access to regulatory support throughout the drug's development.

All of that is on top of the Animal Rule eligibility that ILA received back in November.

So now, ILA has a fast-tracked approvals pathway (through the Animal Rule approvals process) and after this week’s announcement IF approved, has post-approvals support too.

IF ILA can get its drug approved by the FDA, it could also receive a tradeable Priority Review Voucher (PRV) which typically trade for ~US$200M, and potential US stockpiling deals worth ~US$100M to US$1.2BN in revenues.

Now it's all about getting the dose optimisation study and pivotal trial completed so an FDA submission can be made using that Animal Rule approvals pathway.

All of which is happening over the next 12 months - ILA is targeting regulatory submissions in Q1 2027:

(source)

VKA - X-ray ore sorting separated tungsten product from waste material.

If tungsten recoveries can be improved by a few % it can have a big impact on the economics of a project.

With the ore sorting, VKA is trying to take material and upgrade its grades/purity BEFORE putting it through its processing circuit - if the material going in is pre-sorted then processing costs are lower, and the output is a higher value product.

It also means less waste rock gets processed which ultimately means lower costs overall.

Assays from the pre-sorted material are due in a few weeks - that’s when we find out if the ore sorting did its job or not.

(source)

PR1’s carbon nanotube fibres (CNTF) have been shown to be 5.5x lighter than copper, suitable for use in drones, robotics and defence systems.

A few weeks back PR1 showed that CNTFs had 1.5x the conductivity compared to copper.

And now PR1 confirmed CNTFs are ~5.5x lighter than copper and 3x lighter than aluminium.

On a per-unit-mass basis it works out to have thermal conductivity ~10x copper and ~5x aluminium.

(source)

So PR1 is demonstrating that its technology in use cases where weight and heat transfer are a big bottleneck (like in drones, robots and unmanned defence systems) could represent a strong replacement candidate for copper and aluminium.

PNN received A$1.7M investment from an international resources fund at 14.5c per share.

PNN closed the week at ~13c per share - so the raise was done at a premium.

Nice to see a resources fund take a big position (hopefully a starter position) and be willing to do it without any big discounts or options.

Earlier in the week PNN started drilling its rare earth project in Brazil - hopefully we see those historic 8%+ total rare earth oxide (TREO) grades replicated with the current round of drilling.

We think those results, if confirmed, could bring a fair bit of market interest into PNN - especially with everything that happened this week in the rare earths space.

(Again - check out our Saturday note for a deep dive on what's happening at a macro level in rare earths here)

(source)

WCE - Technical review defines silver project as a potential "5-Element" silver system.

This means that instead of just silver, WCE’s asset could also host arsenic, cobalt, nickel and bismuth.

The same deposit style behind some of the major silver districts around the world like:

• Cobalt, Canada (~550M ounces produced),
• Freiberg/Erzgebirge, Germany (~300M ounces) and
• Kongsberg, Norway (~40M ounces)

The key takeaway for us is that IF correct, WCE’s deposit style is one where there is a tendency to form in clusters of similar deposits along major structures.

We already know WCE’s existing resource is very high grade - and IF this new interpretation is correct that could mean there are other similar style deposits across WCE’s ground.

One of the main reasons we Invested in WCE was to see repeat discoveries to its old Elizabeth Hill silver mine - one of Australia’s highest grade silver mines historically.

Hopefully the “string of pearls” exploration model WCE’s been referencing can deliver a repeat discovery:

(source)

Power Minerals (ASX:PNN)

Two years on from export bans on rare earths - two years for Western companies to work on building out new supply chains...

and China still controls ~90% of the world's rare earth magnet supply chain.

For the heaviest, most valuable rare earth elements like dysprosium and terbium, China controls ~98-99% of refined supply.

Those rare earths are the ones that go into magnets for missiles, drones, EVs, robots and AI data centres.

The US still hasn’t solved its rare earths supply chain problem.

China’s temporary pause on those 2024 export bans ends in November - not long now...

To try to find a solution, the US has turned to Brazil - home to the world's second biggest rare earth reserves (behind only China).

Here is what the Wall Street Journal reported last week:

(source)

The US has so far committed more than US$565M to Brazilian rare earths projects and just last month, USA Rare Earths agreed to pay US$2.8BN for a producing rare earths mine in Brazil.

Most of the activity is centred around one region in Brazil - Poços de Caldas.

Precisely where our Investment, the $44M capped Power Minerals (ASX:PNN)’s project sits.

PNN acquired this new project in this global rare earths hot spot back in March.

PNN’s project has multiple 60m+ drill intercepts where grades are above 8% TREO - from surface all the way down to the end of holes (ending in mineralisation).

Those are some of the highest grade rare earths we have seen on the ASX.

PLUS it's got up to 2% MAGNETIC rare earths grades too - the ones that go into robots, drones, fighter jets, AI datacentres etc, like the ones we mentioned above.

The WSJ article named two ASX listed companies ~$463M Viridis and ~$494M Meteoric.

$44M capped PNN’s project is in the same neighbourhood as both of those companies:

(source)

And this week, PNN started drill testing this project:

Read more: PNN has started drilling its Brazil rare earths asset, with historic hits of 60m+ at 8%+ TREO. Also up to 2% MREO (the robots, AI and military ones)

Watch more: Video of drilling on site with Exploration Manager Steven Cooper as drilling continues in Brazil.

Rapid Critical Metals (ASX:RCM)

The global markets are back.

A US-Iran MoU is signed and the SpaceX IPO was a success and is up almost 50%.

(but remember, markets can go up AND down. We'll take this positive sentiment swing for now)

Rapid Critical Metals (ASX:RCM) is currently drilling into the guts of a potential new parallel silver lode it clipped the edge of in previous drilling.

(to add to its 67 million ounce silver equivalent resource estimate across three projects)

We are waiting on early news or visuals, possibly any day now.

BUT...

Prior to acquiring its silver project a year ago... RCM was working towards acquiring and drilling another project for two critical AI semi-conductor and military minerals in Canada:

Gallium and germanium.

RCM hasn’t really talked about this critical minerals project since it acquired its silver assets and focused on silver a year ago.

But this week, RCM announced that it finally got the permits to drill it - seems like they have been quietly busy in the background while banging the drum on the silver.

And RCM says the gallium and germanium drilling is set to begin in a few weeks time, with first results shortly after.

(meaning no long waits and long lead up to drilling, RCM just got the drill permits - plus now we will have silver AND gallium and germanium drilling going on at the same time)

What we do know heading into drilling is that RCM’s project has some of "the highest germanium grades globally” - all from surface samples - 22.69% zinc, 40 g/t gallium and 1,500 ppm (0.15%) germanium.

In 2024 China put export restrictions on critical minerals.

These restrictions kicked off the entire “US critical minerals” macro theme on the ASX and turned a few micro cap explorers into billion dollar companies (check out Dateline and Larvotto).

Two critical minerals that China banned exports of back in 2024 were:

• gallium - used in military semiconductors for higher power/frequencies, and;
• germanium - used in fibre optic cables and infrared military systems.

China has since softened the broader critical minerals export bans while negotiating a trade deal with the US...

(The export bans were turned into a licensing regime running to late November 2026)

... BUT one thing that stayed was the ban on selling gallium and germanium to "military end-users".

(source)

China controls roughly 98% of the world's gallium production and around 60% of its germanium.

So the US gallium/germanium supply problem is nowhere near solved - for the most critical of uses - national defence.

Read more: Gallium and Germanium? Permits in, drilling commencing in a few weeks... while we wait for moonshot silver drill results

Updated investor presentation: Validated System, Confirmed Targets, Active Permit - Prophet River Germanium-Gallium Project

Inoviq (ASX:IIQ)

Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest gynaecological cancers in the world.

Our $41M capped biotech Investment Inoviq (ASX:IIQ)’s ovarian cancer test detected 100% of early-stage (Stage I and II) ovarian cancers in a 500 sample control study.

With NO missed early-stage diagnoses.

At 99.6% specificity (meaning almost no false alarms).

For a disease that's normally invisible until it's too late, that is a really good outcome.

And now, after over 12 months of further work and tests by IIQ, over the next couple of weeks we should find out:

1. IF IIQ’s ovarian cancer detection test replicates that strong early data over a bigger trial (a 2,000‐sample clinical study has been underway), and
   
2. IF IIQ has a working pre-clinical therapeutic to TREAT ovarian cancer (IIQ has lab data on a therapeutic also coming this month).

Remember IIQ is capped at less than $60M right now.

Pre-clinical exosome & cell therapy therapeutics products (like what IIQ is working on) have in the past sold for between US$882M to US$1.2BN.

Both of those catalysts are due “this month” (13 days)

Read more: IIQ: Results due within 13 days...?

TechGen Metals (ASX:TG1)

This is a simple one.

For now, all you need to remember about TechGen Metals (ASX:TG1) is this:

1. Two giant, colourful blobs:

(source)

(These are geophysical targets showing there might be two massive copper-gold-silver deposits underground.)

1. TG1 is going to drill these blobs in a few weeks.

Massive colourful blobs. Drilling in a few weeks...

Massive colourful blobs...

Drilling in a few weeks.

The blob in the left image is 2.75km across - one of the biggest we have ever seen.

(and we see a LOT of blobs in ASX explorer pitch decks every week)

The copper price is running at all time highs.

Copper is critical for moving electricity in the global AI, datacentres and robotics buildout.

And after ~2 long years of pain-staking prep work, TG1 is finally drilling these two copper target mega-blobs in the next few weeks.

TG1 is capped at ~$8.7M following a capital raise of $2.7M it announced today.

Blobs? What on earth are we on about?

Exploration companies try to reward investors by drilling to make big metals discoveries.

When planning the first EVER drillhole, company geologists try to figure out where there is the highest chance of hitting metals by firing electromagnetic and magnetic signals into the ground.

Conductive host rocks (for things like copper, gold, silver) will send back a different response to plain old worthless rocks.

These signals are visualised on the images as colourful blobs, like what we showed above.

Our non-technical term for these EM-conductor plates and IP anomalies is... colourful blobs.

(that's what they look like on a map or image)

Companies put pictures of these colourful blobs in pitchdecks to raise money with which to drill said blobs...

The more colourful and bigger, the more enticing.

And investors like us see the blobs and think “imagine if that was copper”.

(we just went into the TG1 cap raise to see their blobs get drilled in a few weeks)

And hopefully TG1 makes a massive new greenfield copper discovery.

At TG1’s current ~$9M market cap, a successful discovery could deliver a significant re-rate in the company’s share price.

At the same time, drilling may result in no discovery, and TG1’s share price could go down.

(in which case TG1 has four other live exploration projects they are working on)

Read more: Microcap drilling two giant colourful mega-blobs (copper targets) in a few weeks. We just put into the TG1 cap raise. Copper running.

Kitco - A World Gold Council survey has reported that a record 81% of central banks expect global reserve portfolios to increase gold holdings within twelve months.

World Platinum Investment Council - reported a 1,082 koz platinum deficit for 2025 and projects a fourth consecutive annual deficit of 240 koz for 2026, above ground inventories are now down to roughly four months of demand cover.

Reuters - G7 leaders have launched a new Critical Minerals Alliance and an IEA-backed crisis platform to reduce member nations' strategic raw supply reliance on China.

Bloomberg - Humanoid robot manufacturer EngineAI has filed confidentially for a Hong Kong IPO, seeking to capitalise on growing public market interest in AI and humanoid robotics, it raised US$200m in April last year in a funding round..

CNBC - Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has spun out Mind Robotics and plans to keep it separate from Rivian through a US$1BN industrial factory automation venture which contrasts against Tesla's in-house humanoid approach.

AFR - Local rare earth miners and developers are bracing for a massive demand spike following a new G7 pledge to break China's market monopoly.

mining.com - The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital committed US$500M to US based Phoenix Tailings to construct the "Freedom Facility," a domestic midstream rare earth separation and metallisation plant targeting production in 2028.

Tech Times - Lithium prices climbed back above US$25,000/t, forcing electric vehicle cost parity timelines vs ICE vehicles under pressure to what automakers had been forecasting.

Reuters - Speculative fund long positioning on copper contracts has spiked, driven by aggressive international investor demand for exposure to AI and global energy transition megatrends.

mining.com - Protesters have blockaded a key transport route at Rio Tinto's Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia, halting crucial copper concentrate exports directly to neighboring China.

Defense One - A Senate Armed Services Committee's draft NDAA permits creating a new four-star joint combatant command dedicated entirely to autonomous and robotic drone warfare.

Breaking Defense - Senate Armed Services Committee authorised a US$1.14TN defence policy bill, establishing a new four-star joint combatant command for autonomous drone systems.

CBC - NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says Canada and other nations will be expected to present credible spending plans at next month's summit following US criticism and suspension of a joint defense board.

Financial Times - Advanced, specialised medical AI tools Mira and Google's Amie matched or outperformed human physicians within controlled clinical simulation studies.

Our AI diagnostics Investment is EIQ - which has been running of late up ~400% since the start of the year in the lead up to an FDA decision on its own EchoSolv AI technology.

(past performance of EIQ is not an indicator of future performance)

SMH - Australia's first clinical trial using psilocybin for persistent concussion symptoms has officially launched, targeting chronic neuroinflammation and brain neuroplasticity through a major medical research grant.

A reminder this is the same type of treatment our Investment EMD provides where it’s currently expanding clinics nationwide and has an agreement with Medibank to cover treatment costs.

HAR - Haranga Resources (ASX:HAR) 402,000 ounces @ 5.1g/t and upside - Lodge Partners

ILA - Island Pharmaceuticals Ltd A busy month with continued progress - RAAS

WCE - Elizabeth Hill Silver Project Resource Growth Demonstrated - High-Grade Silver with Development Potential

ILA - COMBATTING URGENT VIRAL DISEASE THREATS - Asia Dengue Summit

PR1 - A great 2.5 minute video explaining just what PR1 is up to with its carbon nanotube fibres for use in tech heat management with Professor Daniel J. Preston, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University:

VKA - Viking Mines Ltd - Gold Coast Investment Showcase 2026

PNN - Power Minerals - Gold Coast Investment Showcase 2026

ILA - Island Pharmaceuticals - Gold Coast Investment Showcase 2026

ILA - Positive Dengue Trial Results Could Advance ISLA-101 Toward Phase 3 Studies

EMD - Emyria - Gold Coast Investment Showcase 2026

EMD held a webinar during the week hosted by The Armchair Analyst - Investor Webinar - June Company Update

BKB posted a video from site at its gold project in Nevada, USA...

And also a video discussing what completing a Maiden JORC Resource for the project can do, such as allowing mining studies to progress and evaluating restart opportunities which are clearly front of mind for BKB management.

IVR MD Lachlan Wallace and the team were out on site conducting final cultural heritage surveys with the Traditional Owners of the land where a proposed bore will be located.

Positive relationships like this are paramount to successful projects so it is great to see these steps being taken with the final survey here, 6 weeks and ~3000 hours clocked all up.

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.

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