Sunday Edition: 8th June

In our “Sunday Edition” emails we send you a quick summary of what we wrote, read, and watched during the week.

Without further ado...

Yesterday’s Saturday Edition

Commentary: Small cap stocks are back... a lot of green. Silver “triple top breakout”. USA based mining back on the menu.

Read our Saturday Weekender note here: Silver Spends Session Above $36

• CND finished reprocessing historic 2D data at its offshore oil & gas project in Peru surrounded by TotalEnergies, Occidental Petroleum and Chevron.
  
  The reprocessed data provides higher clarity seismic images that make it easier for CND to discover oil & gas reservoirs.
  
  We think that higher quality data will put CND in a far stronger position to secure a farm out partner for a big drilling program. The farm-out process is currently underway.
  
  
• TG1 finished drilling 6,355m of aircore over its WA gold project - with results just 4 weeks away.
  
  TG1’s project is near the Mayday Northern Gold Mine owned by $5.1BN capped Genesis Minerals and the Pennies Find Gold Mine owned by $115M capped Horizon Minerals.
  
  TG1 is currently capped at just $4.4M (with $1.3M in the bank as at the last quarter) which means the market isn't really pricing in any big exploration success. Any good results could be interesting here.
  
  
• GEN signed a non-binding MoU funding agreement for $3M with a “Multi-billion dollar sophisticated family office” based in the USA.
  
  The unnamed family office has deep ties to the North American iron ore and steel industry “with a history spanning 150 years" according to GEN’s announcement.
  
  We go into details on the proposed terms of the funding.
  
  
• PUR made its first shipment of lithium samples to potential offtake customers.
  
  PUR can now start qualifying its product with potential offtake/strategic partners.
  
  The lithium market is rough at the moment, but if PUR can do all of the technical work during the down cycle it could mean PUR is well positioned if the cycle were to turn.
  
  
• MTH released channel sampling results from its 5th target this week.
  
  Some of our team were in Mexico this week to visit MTH’s project.
  
  MTH is currently drilling with two rigs and has assays pending from two of its targets. Two more targets are going to be drilled next quarter.
  
  There are 8 targets in total over this massive area, in just one of those targets MTH has a JORC resource of 373k ounces of gold and 11M ounces of silver (which it is looking to double).
  
  (Keep reading to see our highlights from the site visit and a link to the full article)
  
  
• SLM also posted on LinkedIn yesterday that drilling has commenced for its gold-copper exploration program in Peru:

Inoviq (ASX:IIQ): Breakthrough data could enable mass market cancer screening

This week IIQ announced results of a landmark study showing its ovarian cancer test detected all stage 1 and 2 ovarian cancers...

With no missed diagnosis.

This means IIQ now has the opportunity to develop the first-ever population screening tool for ovarian cancer.

Currently, no ovarian cancer screening tests are approved by regulators - due to their poor early-stage detection abilities.

But IIQ could soon change all of that.

On Thursday night, this news went mainstream with Chanel 7 covering IIQ’s achievement:

(Source - Chanel 7 News)

IIQ’s ovarian cancer screening test achieved 77% sensitivity at 99.6% specificity in a case-control study.

This exceeded globally accepted clinical performance criteria for ovarian cancer screening in asymptomatic women (women that show no symptoms).

The market needs an early stage ovarian cancer test that can be used by all women (not just high risk ones), and IIQ may have just demonstrated they can develop it...

The big bet now for IIQ is for its screening test to be used by all healthy women periodically for a routine ovarian cancer check.

Read our full take here: IIQ: Breakthrough Result - Mass Market Cancer Test Next?

Iondrive (ASX:ION): Gold, silver, copper and rare earths from e-waste?

This week ION announced it will test its technology to extract high-value materials from Printed Circuit Boards.

That’s right, this old junk contains copper, gold, silver, palladium, and rare earth elements...

And ION’s technology could be the key to unlocking it.

One tonne of printed circuit boards contains >US$40,000 worth of gold, plus thousands of dollars of silver, copper, and palladium.

Here’s the numbers from a 2024 study - the thing is the gold price keeps going up - so it's much more now...

Results from ION’s initial testwork is expected in Q3 2025.

Read our full take here: ION to extract gold, silver, copper and rare earths from e-waste?

Mithril Silver and Gold (ASX:MTH): Silver price breakout during our MTH Silver and Gold Site visit

On Friday the silver price broke out past US$35 per ounce... and briefly hit US$36 per ounce.

This all happened while we were sitting in a tiny Cessna plane about to land on a mountain airstrip to visit our Investment Mithril Silver and Gold (ASX:MTH)’s project in Mexico:

MTH’s project has a 373Koz gold and 11Moz silver JORC resource, which it is looking to double.

The resource grades average around 4.8g/t gold and 141g/t silver - which are seriously high grades.

MTH is currently drilling with two rigs on site and going after some more ultra high grade gold and silver hits to help grow its resource.

And assay results from recent drill holes are pending right now.

In today’s note we dive deep into some of the other target areas that MTH is looking to discover more gold and silver, and share some photos from our visit to site.

Read our full take here: Silver price breakout during our MTH Silver and Gold Site visit

Travel warning after Cook Islands declares dengue fever outbreak (9News)

Last week there was a travel warning for the Cook Islands as it declares a dengue fever outbreak.

We recently announced our Investment in Island Pharmaceuticals (ASX:ILA) who is developing a drug for dengue fever.

Globally, cases of dengue have doubled each year since 2021, and nearly tripled in 2024.

Now it is hitting Australia, with an outbreak in the Cook Islands and the first local case of Degue in Cairns since 2018:

Our take is that if Dengue hits Australia then it could mean more mainstream attention on the infectious disease, which means more attention on ILA’s solution.

ILA should have results from its Phase 2a/b trial in the next week or so.

Silver price soars above $36, its highest in 13 years (Mining.com)

Over the past few days there has been a big move in the silver markets, with the price of the commodity moving from $29 in April to $36 as of today.

While gold has been on a huge run, up nearly more than 100% in the last 18 months, the silver price hasn’t quite accelerated to the same levels.

This one is for the chartists out there, take a look at that epic cup and handle chart since the 1980s... is a breakout coming?

(For those that aren’t chartis a cup and handle is a bullish continuation pattern in technical analysis that signals a potential breakout to the upside).

Unlike the gold markets however, bringing more silver on is much harder as there are not many primary mines out there (it is generally a bi-product of copper or gold mining).

This means that if the silver price moves to astronomical levels, it may stay there, because bringing online more silver production won’t necessarily happen too quickly.

This is good news for those companies with in-ground resources like Sun Silver (ASX:SS1), who has the largest pre-production silver resource on the ASX, and Mithril Silver & Gold (ASX:MTH), who is looking to double its Mexican silver resource imminently.

Right now, our team are on site visiting MTH’s giant silver prospect and spending valuable time with management to get a full understanding of the project:

What are rare earth minerals, and why are they central to Trump’s trade war? (CNN)

Tensions between China and the US grew this week.

At the heart of the issue... rare earths.

The fact that China has yet to ease the export restrictions on 7 rare earth elements has caused big issues in both Washington and around the world with purchasers of rare earths and rare earth magnets.

Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while licence applications make their way through the Chinese regulatory system.

The level of urgency is extremely high with carmakers across Europe warning of potential global production disruptions (Global factory shutdown warnings over China’s rare earth ban - AFR).

On Friday, Suzuki halted production of its Swift line citing China’s rare earths restrictions (Source - Reuters).

Our rare earths exposure is St George Mining (ASX:SGQ), who is developing a rare earths and niobium project in Brazil.

(and more recently Iondrive (ASX:ION), who is looking extract rare earth elements from e-waste).

We think that as “rare earths” becomes a mainstream discussion it will positively impact companies like ION and SGQ who could potentially fill the supply gap left by China.

In a panel discussion, major resources fund RCF discuss the rare earth elements market, and the jurisdictional challenges posed by China’s dominance in the space:

Rare Earths 101 Panel Discussion (RCF - LinkedIn)

Meta to buy power from nuclear plant as AI demand soars (AFR)

Nuclear power has emerged as one of the biggest winners from the AI-fuelled surge in electricity demand.

There has been a lot of talk about it, but now it is starting to happen.

This week Meta (the parent company for Facebook), signed a 20-year contract with Constellation Energy to buy 1121 megawatts of energy.

Constellation Energy is the biggest operator of nuclear power in the US and is looking to potentially build more reactors to keep up with the forecast growing energy demand driven by AI.

Energy demand will grow, and nuclear power presents a very good option for AI datacentres given its reliability when compared to solar and wind (which are more intermittent in nature).

As demand grows, so will the demand for uranium, in particular US-based uranium projects.

We are invested in two: GTR and GUE.

While big tech in the US is going hard on nuclear energy, we think that the winds of fate may be blowing that way too for Europe.

Europe Reconsiders Nuclear Energy Policies (Oil Price)

Several European countries, including Italy, Spain, and Denmark, are reevaluating or overturning bans on nuclear power due to energy security concerns and grid challenges with renewable sources.

If nuclear energy is servicing both big tech in the US and base load in Europe (two big markets that weren’t even considered several years ago), it could be very positive for the uranium industry.

Kaiser Reef ASX KAU Presentation

Watch KAU executive director Brad Vilukas present at the Mines and Vines event in Melbourne hosted by Lodge Partners.

We attended the event and saw Brad present about both the newly acquired Henty mine in Tasmania and the A1 mine in Victoria.

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Bye for now.