Sunday Edition: 27th September

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 published 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: Beaver Creek, a Trade Truce Extension and $100 Oil

Quick Takes: BPM, PUR, HAR, PNN, AW1, AVM, AL3, WCE, AUZ, IVR, TRI, LSR, ROC

Deep Dives: EMD, BUY (New Investment), VKA, AUZ

Other content: ION, ILA, CND, AW1, MTH, PNN, SGQ, OD6, IVZ, MNB, ONE

BPM started maiden drilling at its giant never before drilled WA gold target.

We have been waiting for this one since November last year.

BPM is now drilling a ~6km long gold anomaly that’s never been drilled before, in a similar geological setting to the ~8Moz Tropicana gold deposit.

BPM is going for it too... 10,000m across 65 RC holes - so we should definitely know soon if BPM has made a major discovery or not...

(as always, no guarantees of success in exploration).

Drilling should take around two months, with assays expected through Q4 2026 and into Q1 2027.

(source)

More on BPM:

Tom Woolrych is the Portfolio/Investment Manager at Deutsche Rohstoff, and he has once again given our shared Investment BPM a plug in the Money of Mine podcast earlier this week:

The Art & Science of Discovery Investing (Tom Woolrych) (Money of Mine)

Bonnie and Clyde is also the one he has also been waiting for...

PUR continued drilling at its lithium project in Argentina.

PUR's project already contains a 1.26Mt lithium carbonate equivalent JORC resource estimate.

Now, PUR is drilling hole #4 on ground PUR recently picked up.

IF this hole hits grades like the last one, the case starts building for a much bigger, higher grade brine system across PUR's ground.

(source)(source)(source)

HAR started drilling at its US gold project - one hole down already.

HAR's project sits on California's Mother Lode gold belt and has a JORC resource estimate of 402koz at 5.1g/t gold.

With this next round of drilling HAR will be aiming to upgrade that resource from inferred into a higher confidence status.

This will facilitate HAR moving into feasibility studies too.

The big surprise will be if HAR can get its other exploration targets into the current resource estimate (from South Spring Hill where there is an exploration target of 202koz to 308koz).

(source)

PNN defined a maiden exploration target for its rare earths project in Brazil.

The target: 9.2 to 10.7Mt at 7.8% to 9.2% TREO (total rare earth oxides) AND 1.3% to 1.6% magnet rare earth oxides.

Not massive from a tonnage perspective, BUT very high grade and similar in size to ASX listed Brazilian Rare Earths.

Brazilian Rare Earths is capped at ~$1.1BN.

PNN is currently capped at $64M, so things could get interesting when PNN delivers a maiden JORC resource estimate.

PNN expects to have a maiden JORC resource estimate by Q4 2026/Q1 2027.

(source)(source)

AW1 engaged Washington DC advisors to chase US government funding.

AW1’s project has the single biggest defined indium resource in the US.

Part of our AW1 Big Bet has always been that the company attracts capital from the US government or a strategic partner to progress its indium project.

AW1’s new advisor is GreenMet, founded and led by Drew Horn, a former senior US critical minerals and energy security official from Donald Trump's first term.

We already know AW1 has had unsolicited approaches from the Department of War, Department of Energy and local government - hiring GreenMet is about converting that engagement into something concrete (no guarantee any funding deal eventuates, of course).

AVM hit its highest silver grades yet at 4,120g/t silver.

That’s the highest individual silver grade from any of AVM's drilling at this project so far.

Deeper in the same hole, AVM also hit 12m at 7.5% combined zinc and lead, the highest grade zinc and lead intersection from the project to date.

The three southernmost holes all hit gold too, which suggests the high grade structure trends further to the southwest.

All of these results feed into a maiden JORC resource estimate for Gavilanes targeted for Q4 this year, hopefully upgrading the 22.4Moz silver equivalent foreign estimate.

(source)

AL3 joined an “Aerospace Prime” in an advanced aerospace manufacturing project.

AL3 will be participating in a 3 year project with a range of industry and research partners, including an ‘aerospace prime’ - an unnamed global aviation contractor, which manages the overall design, development and manufacturing of large-scale aerospace systems, including aircraft.

We googled “aerospace prime” and it was interesting to see some examples of aerospace primes (and there can’t be too many out there):

The aim is “achieving qualified aerospace tooling production capability” - basically, getting AL3's 3D printing tech qualified for use in aerospace supply chains.

We have said before that AL3's integration into the US Navy supply chain could open doors into other parts of the military industrial complex.

This sort of early stage qualification work is exactly what we want to see for that strategy to play out.

WCE was granted new ground next door to its WA silver mine.

WCE's project has a maiden JORC resource estimate of ~2.8M ounces of silver at ~617g/t, the highest grade silver project on the ASX.

The new ground, Elizabeth Hill West, directly borders the Mining Lease that hosts the old mine, with targets sitting within 1km of it.

The old explorers here were hunting nickel, copper and platinum group metals - several historic holes were never even assayed for silver.

The plan is to re-run the old data with a silver focused lens, run targeted geophysics and rank targets for first pass scout drilling.

(source)

AUZ appointed a specialist team to fast-track its scandium PFS - due Q1 2027.

$70M capped AUZ's project is one of the highest grade scandium projects in the world, next door to and on the same geological structure as $3.5BN Sunrise Energy Metals.

Aside from a big valuation gap, the key difference between Sunrise and AUZ is where the two projects are in terms of studies/permitting.

With a fast-tracked PFS, AUZ can close the gap to SRL quicker.

The PFS is targeted for completion in mid first quarter of 2027, with much of the existing scoping study work validated and carried forward, which accelerates the study.

Read more: AUZ: USA critical minerals on the menu as Trump and Xi meet in the USA

IVR kicked off a 30,000m drill program at its Paris silver project.

IVR's project has a 57M ounce silver JORC resource estimate at 73g/t.

IVR’s project is also at an advanced stage - IVR is focussed on permitting to get to a Final Investment Decision.

This next round of drilling will be to convert more of that resource into higher confidence categories.

More confidence in the early years of production is what financiers are more willing to fund, and generally means more attractive financing terms.

(source)

TRI progressed brain cancer imaging trial preparations - first patients Q1 2027.

TRI is trying to solve the “early detection” problem in brain cancer - standard MRIs usually only pick up tumours once they have grown to 2-3mm.

TRI's tech involves a patient swallowing a small dose of a non radioactive stable isotope that is taken up by replicating cancer cells, which a standard MRI can then see.

Design work for the pre clinical and clinical feasibility studies is now complete, animal studies have started and the investigational product is in hand.

The best bit of this weeks news - we now have a timeline to track (and follow):

(source)

LSR's final gold assays are in, ahead of a maiden resource estimate due in October.

LSR set an exploration target of 250,000 to 300,000 ounces of gold for its WA project, and LSR confirmed the results are tracking within that range.

The pick of the new assays came from deeper drilling, with 7m at 4.69g/t gold.

The maiden JORC resource estimate is due in the second half of October - so only a few weeks away now.

(source)

ROC's Mexican bank trial was successful - rollout negotiations have begun.

ROC sells Vision AI software that runs on existing security camera footage, helping giant retailers and banks cut theft and run their branches more efficiently.

The Mexican retail bank operates over 1,200 branches, and with the trial confirmed successful, discussions on a broader rollout are now underway.

(no rollout contract has been signed yet, and the scale of any wider deployment is still to be agreed)

When the trial was first announced around 12 months ago we ran a rough back of the napkin calc that a full rollout could be worth ~$3.5M per year to ROC (rough numbers only, no guarantee it converts).

Also in this update, an existing New Zealand retail bank customer signed on for another 12 months, extending that relationship out to 4 years.

(source)

Emyria (ASX:EMD)

Yep... that's our Investment EMD Executive Chairman Greg Hutchinson presenting in front of the US FDA.

At the “Considerations for Potential Future Therapeutic Use of Psychedelic Drugs” hearing.

As “one of a limited number of in-person” speaking positions. (source)

It feels like EMD is slowly preparing itself to enter the US psychedelics scene.

That FDA hearing was on September 14th.

This week EMD appointed Dr David Shulkin - the former US Secretary of Veterans Affairs - as a Strategic Advisor.

The second US centric move by EMD in a week.

(source)

(more on why we like the Shulkin appointment in the article link below)

First, why is an ASX small cap leader speaking at a US FDA public hearing?

Because EMD is one of the only companies in the world running fully authorised, legal psychedelic therapy clinics.

EMD got that first mover advantage because the Australian TGA was first in the world to legalise psychedelic therapies back in 2023.

Ever since then EMD has been rolling out psychedelic therapy clinics across Australia.

EMD currently has:

TWO clinics operating in Western Australia, one in Queensland, one in Victoria and one about to open in NSW.

EMD also has a payer deal with Australia’s largest private health insurer, Medibank, plus eligible veterans can have EMD's treatment funded by the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA).

Meaning the two organisations pay for their members to receive therapies at EMD’s clinics:

(source)(source)(source)

EMD’s rollout across Australia has taken the business from ~$1.3M in revenues in FY25 to ~$4M in FY26. (source)

EMD is currently capped at $40M with $7.3M cash in the bank at 30 June 2026.

So far so good in Australia and we think those numbers can continue growing...

(Of course it’s a small cap stock we are talking about - no guarantees here)

BUT a big part of why we are Invested in EMD is because we think psychedelic therapies will eventually become more accepted and eventually legalised around the world.

And IF/WHEN it does, EMD will be one of the companies that is able to copy and paste its business model in said country quickly.

Now, the first part of that looks like it might be about to happen.

Read more: EMD presents at US FDA psychedelics hearing and appoints former US Veterans Affairs Secretary as “strategic advisor”

Bounty Oil & Gas (ASX:BUY) - New Investment

My first ever (successful) small stock was an oil and gas explorer in Africa way back in the 2010s.

And with oil prices and Middle East uncertainty surging right now - it looks like the window for markets funding, and rewarding, new mega oil discoveries is opening again.

ASX listed “blockbuster” mega drill campaigns have been few and far between lately - that seems to be changing now.

Given the size of the prize on this particular company’s offshore exploration project, we are looking forward to following its progress (and hopefully valuation growth) toward a big drilling event over the coming years.

Our latest Investment is:

Bounty Oil & Gas

BUY is acquiring an exclusive right to negotiate a “Production Sharing Contract’ on a deepwater offshore oil and gas exploration block in Liberia.

After this week’s raise, BUY will be capped at ~$16.4M (at 1.2c with over $4M in the bank).

(Moving up to ~$30M when transaction milestones are achieved and vendor shares are issued).

The vendors of this right expect that this negotiation and Liberia parliamentary approval should be concluded by January 2027 or shortly after.

Liberia is on the west coast of Africa, and the offshore geological profile happens to be almost identical to the eastern top of South America - in particular offshore Guyana.

Offshore Guyana is one of the world’s newest oil hotspots, delivering over ~13BN barrels of discoveries since 2015. (source)

Offshore Liberia and offshore Guyana are known as ‘tectonic conjugate margins’.

Liberia and Guyana were directly connected as part of the supercontinent Gondwana until they began rifting and pulling apart between 120 and 100 million years ago.

(source)(source)(source)(source)(source)

The energy supermajors who flooded to offshore Guyana and delivered multi-billion barrel discoveries have now started piling into offshore Liberia.

Here is what offshore Liberia looked like in 2024:

(source)

And here is what it looks like now:

(source)

The offshore exploration block BUY is negotiating on is next door to blocks held by two energy supermajors.

$279BN TotalEnergies on one side and $187BN Petrobras on the other.

Little BUY is wedged in between.

Read more: Our New Portfolio Addition: Bounty Oil & Gas (ASX: BUY)

Viking Mines (ASX:VKA)

Markets are raging over tungsten.

Tungsten is used in armour-piercing ammunition, fighter jets, and the warheads of Tomahawk, Patriot and Precision Strike missiles.

China, Iran, Russia and North Korea control 90% of global tungsten supply (source).

The USA needs tungsten - and none of the above countries are exactly good buddies with them.

China alone has 84% supply dominance, and it has been restricting tungsten supply to the US.

The tungsten price is up around 500% over the last 2 years.

Over the last ~90 days, all of this happened in tungsten markets:

• US President Trump banned tungsten scrap exports,
• The UK government invested in a domestic tungsten project,
• Zimbabwe banned tungsten exports...

Then this week:

Just last week The US Department of War announced it is investing US$150M into one of the USA’s largest historic tungsten mines.

In Nevada, USA.

The same US state where our tungsten Investment, the $30M capped VKA sits, which has just announced thick tungsten drill hits UNDERNEATH its own historically mined tungsten project.

So this means that the tungsten mineralisation keeps going, deeper than what had already been mined in the 1950s.

(the mining at VKA’s project was actually stopped in favour of cheaper tungsten imports from overseas... oops)

AND today's VKA drill hits are at similar grades to what was historically mined:

(source - READ THIS WEEK’S VKA ANNOUNCEMENT)

These tungsten grades sit in the top tier globally amongst other tungsten projects/producers:

(source)

VKA also says it has SEVEN further drill results expected to be announced “in October” - so in the coming weeks.

The US government’s attention is now firmly on tungsten - possibly the most important military critical mineral.

(source)(source)(source)

And here is where VKA’s project sits in this mix:

(source)

We think that the US DoW funding has now de-risked the entire tungsten industry inside Nevada.

Because the funding will bring online a project that CURRENTLY does not have a big enough resource to meet the US$2BN stockpile contract.

Read more: VKA: Announces Thick Tungsten Drill Hits in Nevada, USA - 18m at 0.42% and 13m at 0.46%, proves mineralisation extends below historic USA tungsten mine.

Australian Mines (ASX:AUZ)

The long awaited one day meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump wrapped up this week.

The “trade war truce” has been extended by two months...

Chinese President Xi announced that he is gifting two giant pandas to the USA for a zoo in Atlanta (their names are Ping Ping and Fu Shuang).

...but not any heavy rare earths, tungsten, antimony or scandium.

We’ve been watching the conveniently timed “critical minerals” news releases out of the USA during the Trump-Xi meeting.

(of course a few juicy announcements were going to come out in the day before the meeting to help set the tone):

• Glencore landed a US$500M EXIM financing to help build the US critical minerals stockpile (source)
  
• US committed up to US$7BN in loans for Argentine energy, mining and infrastructure projects (source)
  
• Italy and the US signed a critical minerals MOU, with a working group on recycling and recovery (source)
  
• A US-Denmark-Greenland security deal was signed to tighten the screening of non-NATO/EU investments (source)
  

Great time to be an established critical minerals project - the attention and capital is flowing in.

And the now slightly extended USA-China “trade war truce” ends in 108 days...

(instead of the originally planned 47 days)

We all know how long it takes to build a mine. And if you don’t - it takes many, many years.

There is not much that can be done in 108 days aside from the USA continuing to throw more capital, attention, incentives and announcements at the critical mineral supply problem.

(which is great for critical minerals stocks)

In the last 2 weeks we have seen more investment into US sourced and produced tungsten.

Last week there was US$150M funding to restart a mine as a part of a US$2BN funding arrangement involving $850M Elmet.

A couple of days ago Elmet also signed a US$1.8BN offtake deal for the Hemerdon mine in the UK. (source)

Plus ANOTHER new one in the past 24 hours (a 4.99% interest in MSR for US$124.75M, a valuation of near US$2.5BN):

(source)(source)

And ~7 weeks ago $450M into a scandium company in NSW called Sunrise Energy Metals, now capped at $3.9BN.

Our scandium Investment is the $70M capped AUZ, owner of one of the highest grade scandium projects in the world...

... sitting on the same geological intrusion as its direct neighbour, that same $3.9BN Sunrise Energy Metals.

Literally the same geophysical structure:

(source)

Sunrise has become what it is today because its backed by mining billionaire Robert Friedland AND Trump said this about the project:

"The Department of War is investing $400 million to expand production of scandium, one of the world's most valuable aerospace and defence materials, in Australia."

BUT... AUZ’s project has a higher grade.

AND the same targeted production run rate relative to Sunrise, yet its market cap is ~56x less.

AUZ is capped at $70M, Sunrise at $3.9BN. Here is a side by side of the two assets:

(source)

Aside from the large valuation gap, the main difference between Sunrise and AUZ right now is that they are at different stages.

Sunrise is a lot closer to being development ready... BUT we think that could change very quickly.

Read more: AUZ: USA critical minerals on the menu as Trump and Xi meet in the USA

SMM - Samsung Plans Battery Breakthrough in 2027: Is a “Silver Shock” on the Horizon? The anode-free design: Instead of a thick, bulky anode made of graphite or silicon, Samsung uses a composite layer of silver and carbon (Ag-C).

AFR - Australian fund manager Jeremy Bond (Terra Capital) mentions our Investment Iondrive (ASX: ION).

Bloomberg - China Rare-Earth Magnet Exports to US Drop

Bloomberg - World's Top Rare-Earth Magnet Maker Gives Xi Leverage

Reuters - China's rare earths dominance to overshadow Trump's talks with Xi, the US will remain reliant on China for rare earths well into the 2030s even as it rapidly builds its own mining and processing facilities.

Military Times - The Pentagon asked industry how fast it could make more weapons

Bloomberg - China Is Holding Sensitive F-35 Parts

CSIS - Project Vault Moves from Concept to Execution, on September 23, Glencore and Mercuria became the first two participants in VaultCo, the independently governed and run private company implementing Project Vault.

Mining.com - Glencore, Mercuria to help build US minerals stockpile with $1B EXIM financing

Fierce Biotech - US Department of War Bets $47M on Flagship Biotechs to Develop medical Countermeasure Technologies.

Bloomberg - Ebola Funding Commitments Reach $3 Billion, Africa CDC Says, the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is the worst in the nation’s history.

Bloomberg - South America Is Now Big Oil’s Top Hunting Ground, and South America is emerging as one of its favorite places to look.

We are Invested in CND with offshore exploration assets in Peru, and BUY who just moved into West Africa - considered the conjugate margin to Guyana where 13 billion barrels of oil has been discovered in recent times - the driver of the Big Oil buzz in South America.

Reuters - EU warns of energy price crisis, asks countries to consider curbing demand.

AW1 - 325,000t Copper | 23,763,000oz Indium | 1,290,000t Zinc

MTH - A Silver District with High-Grade Gold

PNN - Exploration Target Investor Webinar - September 2026 (CEO, MD and Exploration Manager)

CND - Oil & Gas Investor Webinar (MD webinar)

SGQ - Why Is the World So Dependent on Niobium? #SGQ #StGeorgeMining

OD6 - The Missing Link at Quinn | Dr Darren Holden (Founder & Geological Advisor interview)

OD6 - Managing Director & CEO Brett Hazelden on Quinn Exploration Results (MD & CEO exploration results interview)

OD6 - Managing Director & CEO Brett Hazelden on Quinn Drilling and Bulk Sampling (MD & CEO project update)

IVZ - site works at Musuma-1 with road upgrades, water supply infrastructure and wellpad preparation underway:

MNB - lifted another major component into place at its Phosphate Project:

ONE - posted a blog piece on how AI's future in healthcare would be won at the bedside, not by which model comes out on top:

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.