Sunday Edition: 8th November

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.

🔔🔔 BREAKING NEWS 🔔🔔

Our Investment OD6 Metals (ASX:OD6) now has FAST-41 permitting status for its Nevada critical minerals project.

We found it listed on the US government’s Permitting Dashboard here.

We only saw it this weekend while the ASX has been closed.

Tomorrow will be the first chance the market can react to OD6’s new FAST-41 status.

FAST-41 is a special accelerated USA permitting and development framework for projects considered “critical” and essential for US national security.

Basically the equivalent of the US federal government saying ‘this project matters - we need it developed, everyone move faster’ - from a permitting and building perspective.

Now OD6 has FAST-41 status, by the 20th of November (in 12 days) we should see a firm permitting timetable posted on the US government website for OD6's project.

We think this is pretty big news for OD6 as another US fluorspar project received an up to US$250M supply contract from the Pentagon.

We think a big reason for this funding was because it was the only project fully permitted to start mining in the US at the time.

Now OD6 has the FAST-41 status, we should see OD6 have an advantage when it comes to development and permitting timelines.

(See the US government’s permitting dashboard for OD6 here)

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: The US midterms are done, so where’s the rally everyone promised?

Quick Takes: IVZ, ION, AUZ, VKA, IVR, OD6, BUY, SPA, PUR

Deep Dives: PNN, BPM, ILA, AW1

Other content: PNN, ILA, SGQ, AL3, EMD, LKY, PUR, SPA, MNE, WCE

IVZ's Petroleum Production Sharing Agreement (PPSA) was gazetted.

The PPSA is what governs the legal, fiscal and operational framework for IVZ’s project.

It's the first and only one ever signed in Zimbabwe’s history.

Gazettal means that the government has officially published (and recognised) the PPSA.

IVZ will now drill its Musuma-1 target (1.2tcf gas and 73M barrel oil unrisked, prospective resource) - with a complete framework on how any discovery would be developed.

IVZ expects to be drilling in "November 2026" - which means drilling could start any day within the next ~22 days.

(source)(source)

Then on Friday IVZ had announced that the “rig-up” is underway at the well site - so not long left now.

(source - IVZ socials)

ION is now listed and trading in the USA.

Our 2026 Small Cap Pick of the Year ION is now trading on the OTCQB Venture Market (the US over the counter market, a step below a NASDAQ or NYSE listing) under the ticker IIONF.

Which means US investors can buy ION shares in US dollars through a normal US brokerage account, without setting up ASX access first.

Good timing with ION really starting to build momentum around its US rare earths venture.

You can check out how its trading over in the US here:

(ION OTC trading details)

AUZ - Neighbour $2BN Sunrise announced a Final Investment Decision on its scandium project.

Sunrise expects to have its project in production by the second half of 2028 - IF/when that happens, we think it will be good for AUZ because it will be the world’s first primary scandium mine.

Hopefully making it easier for other projects nearby to come into production...

IF scandium demand goes parabolic, it will be easier to bring on similar deposits right next to infrastructure than it will be to go and discover/develop new ones.

... Project’s like AUZ’s - which sits on the same geological intrusion and has higher grades relative to Sunrise's deposit:

(source)

VKA laid out a five-part plan for its US tungsten project restart.

VKA's Nevada project produced tungsten in the 1940s and 50s - production stopped in 1956 when the US government suspended its tungsten buying program.

VKA wants to restart production - and laid out a five step plan to get there including:

1. Getting to a resource - drilling is ongoing, with 45 of the permitted 63 holes completed.
2. Metallurgy - testwork has already produced a 56.9% tungsten concentrate at 76% recovery.
3. Processing - two routes are being looked at, a modular ~300,000 tonne per year plant or toll treating through a third party facility.
4. Permitting - A mining permit application targeted for late next year.
5. Growth - VKA has much more land at the project to explore plus five other projects in the state

The first of those that we think could get the market's blood pumping is drilling results - expected over the next few months.

(source)

IVR secured heritage clearance for its 57M ounce silver project.

IVR owns 100% of a 57M ounce silver JORC resource estimate in South Australia, at an average grade of 73g/t.

Heritage clearance covers all of the areas inside IVR’s Mining Lease Application lodged in August.

This would have been the key milestone for getting a Native Title Mining Agreement completed for the project.

IVR is now expecting to have the project fully permitted next year.

(source)

OD6 sampled 93.7% fluorspar ahead of its first drill program.

The 14m at 93.7% fluorspar came from channel sampling at the Big Jim target at OD6's Nevada project - work done while OD6 waits on its drill permits.

The results almost exactly match the 1947 records, when channel samples ran 90% to 94% over workings mapped across more than 220m.

Grades this high from surface could support a simple, low cost "dig and ship" operation as a fast path into production.

Drilling is still needed to prove what sits underneath.

Big Jim is now a priority target for OD6's maiden drill program, with permitting well advanced and drilling intended early next year.

(source

BUY appointed an ex-88 Energy COO and signed a drilling support MoU.

BUY has appointed Rob Benkovic as its Chief Operating Officer - Rob was 88E’s COO before joining BUY.

Long time readers will remember 88 Energy which went on a pretty insane run back in 2021 - up over 10x from our Initial Entry Price.

(past performance is not an indicator of future performance)

Before 88 Energy, Rob spent years at $22BN Apache on field development and reservoir engineering - Apache was one of the ASX’s most prolific drillers back in the day.

Now, Rob’s joined Dave Wall (BUY’s strategic advisor) who was 88E’s former Managing Director at BUY.

BUY also announced an MoU with AGR, an outsourced drilling team that has managed 780 well projects globally, giving BUY access to drilling capability without building a big internal team.

(source)

SPA's first new kids smartwatch in four years is launching this month.

Right now, SPA sells Australia's #1 best selling kids smartwatch.

This new model (Geo Watch) hits the shelves in time for the busy holiday and "Back to School" trading period and is the first update to SPA’s watches in four years.

SPA also confirmed it had two more models planned for March - April 2027.

Every watch sold is a low cost way to bring a household onto an SPA mobile plan or family safety app subscription.

SPA also confirmed a board restructure this week, with Andrew Grover (who we know well as Executive Chair of our Investment EIQ) to take up the Chair role.

(source)

PUR's lithium ore reserve went up 250%, with NPV upped to US$1.09BN in an expanded study.

PUR released an update to the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) for its lithium project in Argentina - here are the key numbers:

1. Ore reserve - up ~250% to 438,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE).
2. Production - a staged expansion from 5,000tpa to 17,500tpa of lithium carbonate, with Stage 2 designed to be funded mostly from Stage 1 cash flow.
3. Upfront capital - US$119M to US$136.5M.
   
   
4. US$1.09BN NPV (the original PFS was a US$364M NPV)

Lithium is a pretty volatile commodity to price into the future, heavily driven by supply-and-demand dynamics tied to the clean energy transition.

The main thing to note is that the NPV on the PFS Addendum is going up is largely because PUR used a US$27,300/t long term lithium price, well above today's ~US$13,700/t spot.

(source)

Power Minerals (ASX:PNN)

A $1.7BN NASDAQ listed critical minerals company just invested $5M to acquire ~8% of our ASX Investment PNN.

PNN is developing a rare earths asset in Brazil and is capped at ~$66M.

PNN has been delivering some of the highest grade rare earth drill hits we have ever seen.

This seems to have gotten the attention of NASDAQ listed Critical Metals Corp - which aside from a billion plus market cap, also happens to have ~$500M in the bank.

Critical Metals Corp has a Greenland rare earths asset, and a bid in a tender for “one of the largest rare earth and niobium projects in the world” in Kenya...

... and this week CRML agreed to buy an ~8% interest in a Brazil rare earths project through (our Investment) PNN.

Interestingly, the US government pressured the Greenland rare earth asset owner NOT to sell it to China, but instead to sell it to (PNN’s new investor) Critical Metals Corp:

(long snippet but it's worth a read):

(source: Reuters)

So it sounds like Critical Metals Corp (who now owns ~8% of PNN) has somewhat close ties to the US government.

As far as we could find - this is Critical Metals Corp’s first cornerstone investment into another company:

$5M into our Portfolio stock PNN.

The last ASX listed stock Critical Metals Corp did an M&A deal with, ended up 20+ bagging in the last two years.

(more on this in the link below, and also - past performance is not an indicator of future performance)

No other investor put money into this PNN round - so no short term flippers, just $5M into PNN’s bank account and a new, cashed up, USA listed critical metals big brother in the PNN canoe.

It looks to us like this is all part of a plan for Critical Metals Corp to become like a USA listed “BHP of critical minerals that the USA needs for AI, robots and advanced weapons”...

Commenting on the investment, the Critical Metals Corp Executive Chairman said:

“Power (PNN) is on the cusp of unlocking a major rare earths discovery at its Morro do Ferro Project in Brazil, with the Project delivering consistently exceptional rare earths grades from surface.”

In Brazil, the $66M capped PNN is drilling out its asset next door to Meteoric Resources (which ~$12BN Lynas just offered $968M for) and the $574M capped Viridis.

PNN’s plans will be accelerating now given the fresh lick of cash incoming.

We think PNN has a strong chance of climbing in value as it develops and de-risks its asset over the coming months and years.

Read more: PNN secures $5M cornerstone investment from $1.7BN NASDAQ listed Critical Metals Corp - US government watching?

BPM Minerals (ASX:BPM)

Two drill holes in...

This week our $25M capped Investment BPM just hit 4m at 20.57g/t gold and 8m at 9.23g/t gold:

(source)

Epic at a first glance:

What we don't know yet is IF BPM has hit isolated pockets of gold OR clipped the edge of something bigger - but we will soon, with a stream of assay results to follow this quarter and next.

Going into this drill program we had been comparing BPM’s giant undrilled target, a ~6km long ‘gold in soil’ anomaly, to two big gold discoveries in Western Australia.

The 8M ounce Tropicana gold mine and the Glenburgh discovery by $1.5BN Benz Mining:

(source)

BPM’s Bonnie & Clyde prospect covers a similar footprint BUT until now, had never been drilled before.

Below again is BPM’s first ever gold hit at Bonnie & Clyde, AND how many drill results are yet to come in (38 holes worth).

What we DON’T know is whether BPM has hit isolated pockets of gold today OR clipped the edge of something bigger...

That’s what the next batch of assays will tell us hopefully inside the next few weeks - the holes are drilled and assays are already in the lab.

The bull case would be seeing this (this would be an incredible result if it happened):

(source)

Of course this is complete speculation on our part - merely what we would like to see as long term BPM Investors - there might not be any gold at all.

It’s important to note that this is not a “twin-hole” or a “director’s special” - when explorers drill parts of a project that have been drilled before - knowing they will hit something good...

Read more: BPM: First result from giant WA gold prospect - 4m at 20.57g/t gold and 8m at 9.23g/t gold. Here’s what we want to see next.

Island Pharmaceuticals (ASX:ILA)

We think a lot of ASX small cap stocks have been beaten down from broader market sentiment - despite having made huge amounts of progress AND are close to announcing a major share price catalyst or two.

Like our 2025 Biotech Pick of The Year, ILA - who is developing an antiviral drug for bio-terror defence.

This drug could be stockpiled by governments to counter bioterrorism and / or used to stop major global virus outbreaks.

Like we are seeing now with the Ebola outbreak in Africa OR for weaponisable viruses like Marburg.

ILA has made huge amounts of progress over the last 18 months. The share price was nicely moving up...

but then it got caught up in the “indiscriminate small cap sell off” of the last ~2 months:

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

ILA acquired the drug called Galidesivir in 2025 - and the share price started going up.

(past performance is not an indicator of future performance)

Over 10 years ago, US government agencies deployed over US$70M in funding to develop and test ILA’s drug against multiple viral diseases.

Galidesivir ALREADY has Phase 1 safety data (in humans) and effectiveness (in animals) against Ebola, Marburg and also has lab activity against 20+ other viral diseases.

ILA decided to develop the drug for the Marburg virus first.

(The Soviet Union developed the Marburg virus as part of its massive, clandestine biological weapons program - Marburg virus was favoured over Ebola because Marburg proved more stable and adaptable for weaponisation and aerosol delivery.)

There is no licensed or FDA-approved specific antiviral drug or vaccine for Marburg virus disease.

The US Strategic National Stockpile has no stockpile of treatment against this virus.

ILA is working to develop the treatment and sell stockpiles to the US Strategic National Stockpile - a contract that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

ILA is working with a US Army research lab to conduct Non Human Primate clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of its drug.

This week, ILA announced its primates are just about ready to start stage one of the two stage clinical animal studies - the precursor for FDA approvals under the "Animal Rule" process.

(Animal Rule approvals are allowed when diseases are so dangerous that running multi-year human clinical trials is considered unethical - so the FDA can grant approvals on animal data alone)

So ILA has confirmed its dose optimisation study for Non Human Primates is locked in to start in early December...

... this is a 28 day study - so by doing the maths, we should be getting top line data in early January.

(source)

As we said above, ILA chose Marburg first because the virus is the only Category A bioterrorism threat (the highest level) with NO current vaccine or FDA-approved treatment.

There is no approved treatment and hence no biodefence treatment stockpile, and approval can be fast-tracked with the FDA.

Read more: ILA: Bio-terrorism defence and stopping virus outbreaks

American West Metals (ASX:AW1)

Another small cap stock with a beaten share price...

After two months of indiscriminate selling across almost every stock...

(even though most have made great progress over the last year or two)

In our opinion, the “Critical Minerals for the Global Buildout of AI, Robots and Advanced Weapons” investment thesis is still firmly in play.

One of our stocks leveraged to this investment theme is AW1.

AW1 has the biggest indium resource in the USA.

Indium is critical for building missile guidance systems, stealth coatings, fighter jets, radar systems and the lasers inside AI data centres.

And an advanced stage copper project in Canada - copper is critical in transporting electricity (i.e energy) - kinda important in AI and robots.

AW1 has not been immune to the broad and indiscriminate global sell off.

It’s currently capped at $34M and had $5.4M in the bank at September 30th - an Enterprise Value of less than $30M.

AW1 is trading at almost 1/10th of its copper project’s NPV and the market appears to be attributing very little value to its giant USA indium asset.

The copper setup right now:

AI, data centres, electrification are all causing a physical supply shortfall:

(source)

The setup for critical mineral indium:

Again, indium is critical for building missile guidance systems, stealth coatings, fighter jets, radar systems and the lasers inside AI data centres.

China refines ~70% of global supply and has had export controls in place since February 2025.

The US has zero domestic production of indium.

In January, the US Defense Logistics Agency launched a US$125M tender to buy American-made indium, doubled it to US$250M in July, then cancelled it in September - apparently because there was no supply.

Which has led to indium prices mooning:

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

Two weeks ago: $1 Trillion market cap memory and storage chip maker Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) invested into Indium Corporation for critical mineral refining and processing:

(source)

Our Investment AW1 has both metals - copper and indium.

The copper is in an advanced stage project.

This week AW1 released a Pre-Feasibility Study showing the following - on a 100% basis:

• Post-tax NPV of US$233M (at ~US$6.50 copper prices)
• Post-tax free cash flow US$338M
• Initial CAPEX of just US$81M
• And a 2.7 year payback

AW1 owns 80% of the project.

Click the link below for our key takeaways on that PFS later in today’s note

Anyways, pretty solid numbers for a $34M capped stock.

And...

AW1 also owns 100% of the single biggest indium resource inside the US.

An asset that has attracted "unsolicited approaches" from the US Department of War and Department of Energy.

Read more: AW1: The biggest indium resource in the USA + a PFS-stage copper project with US$233M NPV... capped at $34M.

Bloomberg - Gold Rebounds as Iran Diplomacy Hopes Send Oil Tumbling

AFR- Westpac sells its vaults even as demand for physical wealth soars

Mining.com - Lynas plans Brazil rare earths plant with state support

Good to see progress on processing in Brazil, in the same region as our Investment PNN.

Reuters - US strategy links Myanmar peace talks to rare-earth access

FT - US critical minerals push delivers a gold rush — for Washington lobbyists

Mining.com - Friedland takes aim at China's scandium grip with US-backed mine

WSJ - The U.S. Once Dominated the World’s Oceans. China’s Xi is Changing That.

Bloomberg - Pentagon taps robotics startup in push for cheap attack drones

Bloomberg - DR Congo Ebola outbreak death toll tops 5,300, pushing fatality rate above 50%

ILA is currently manufacturing additional supply of its Galidesivir drug with some to be transported to neighbouring Uganda, approved to be used in humans immediately.

SGQ - Sep Q'26 - a strong base for growth - Petra Capital

AL3 - 2026 Annual General Meeting - November 2026

EMD - September 2026 Quarterly Investor Webinar (Webinar update)

LKY - How Locksley Resources Builds Value at Greater Tottenham (Video feature on how Locksley Resources is building value at its Greater Tottenham copper-gold district.)

PUR - Record grades at Rio Grande Sur (CEO & MD interview)

PUR - 🔋60 Second Update from Aaron Revelle, Managing Director & CEO (CEO & MD update)

SPA - Launching its family safety app, with a co-branded offer for Vodafone customers (Product launch video)

MNE - South-West Connect Conference Presentation Busselton 29th October 2026 (CEO presentation)

WCE - Elizabeth Hill Scoping Study, Drilling and November Resource Update (CEO interview)

Commodities macro - Mining Stocks Are Oversold. Commodities Aren’t. (Money Of Mine)

AI impact - AI’s Stock Market Fallout, Google’s Profit Problem, and Altman’s “Hold My Beer” Moment

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.