Tungsten at all time highs. VKA acquires historical tungsten drill data for its ground - saving months of work and exploration spend.

Disclosure: S3 Consortium Pty Ltd (the Company) and Associated Entities own 95,000,000 VKA Shares at the time of publishing this article. The Company has been engaged by VKA to share our commentary on the progress of our Investment in VKA over time. This information is general in nature about a speculative investment and does not constitute personal advice. It does not consider your objectives, financial situation, or needs. Any forward-looking statements are uncertain and not a guaranteed outcome.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been a busy man lately.

As President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State and national security adviser, Rubio played a central role in the US storming Venezuela and capturing President Maduro.

And in breaking news, Secretary Rubio and his team are now readying themselves for the Department of State’s inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial, which is just 13 days away.

Partners from across the globe will be invited. The goal looks to be to strengthen the USA’s critical minerals supply chains:

(Source)

We think “the USA rapidly rebuilding domestic critical minerals supply chains” is going to be one of the biggest investment themes of 2026.

Tungsten is a critical military mineral, and is currently trading at all time highs.

The USA has zero domestic supply of tungsten.

One of the US Department of War’s top critical and strategic mineral priorities is therefore developing a domestic source for tungsten. (source)

Tungsten's extreme density, hardness, and high melting point make it vital for military uses, primarily in armor-piercing munitions (like kinetic energy penetrators and warheads) to defeat heavy armor.

So there’s strong tungsten demand in high tech sectors like defence and semiconductors.

As critical minerals supply chains violently transition from ‘globalisation’ to ‘localisation’, once again the USA has found itself caught napping on tungsten in recent decades.

China dominates global tungsten supply (~80% of the market) and (of course) has wielded its market dominance and imposed tungsten export restrictions.

(Source)

Five weeks ago we added a new small cap tungsten Investment Viking Minerals (ASX:VKA).

VKA is acquiring historically producing, high grade tungsten assets in Nevada, USA, just 200km away from the USA’s future national critical minerals stockpile.

VKA is capped at ~$17M, and is backed by the same team that delivered us success in Locksley Resources (ASX: LKY), now capped at $80M.

Today, VKA just announced the acquisition of ~2,816m of historical drilling data - 68 drill holes (8 diamond and 60 percussion) across three of its targets.

Getting this old data is a big technical shortcut, likely saving months of fieldwork and exploration capital.

The extensive historical mapping and cross sections will allow VKA to identify high grade targets and underground workings, enabling rapid 3D geological modelling.

VKA is moving straight into validation drilling aimed at bringing historical data up to modern JORC standards, to enable resource definition.

If the geology stacks up, we think VKA could get swept up in the tidal wave of interest in the USA building up its own domestic tungsten supply chain, which would facilitate access to larger chunks of funding.

VKA’s new projects have historic production of a combined ~123,000t at 0.54% tungsten oxide grades.

VKA recently took a 53kg metallurgical sample source from its historic open pit, which returned grades of 1.3% tungsten oxide.

The weighted average across all four metallurgical samples collected for testwork was 1.0% tungsten oxide.

That’s notably high grade - typically global tungsten mines operate with grades as low as 0.1-0.2%.

VKA’s tungsten assets sit 200km away from the biggest munitions depot on the planet

The map below shows where VKA’s projects sit in Nevada. A 200km drive away from VKA sits the Hawthorne Army Base in Nevada.

It’s not just any old army base though, this place is also:

• the biggest munitions depot on the planet, and;
• has just been announced as the location for the new USA national strategic minerals stockpile.

Covering nearly 150,000 acres with thousands of storage magazines, the depot stores vast quantities of ammunition for the U.S. military. Established in 1930, it's a key strategic asset for the U.S. Army's ammunition enterprise, handling storage, demilitarisation, and training.

That sounds like just the place that is going to want a decent amount of local high grade tungsten supply.

It’s happening now actually - a few months ago the Department of War gave $6.2M to a company near VKA to fund a study to build a tungsten mine.

The state of Nevada has been good for our Portfolio, we have had a lot of success investing in Nevada - with our Investments in Sun Silver (ASX: SS1) up 953%, and Black Bear Minerals (ASX: BKB) up 223%.

(the past performance of SS1 and BKB is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance of VKA)

VKA has opened the ‘newsflow floodgates’ in 2026 - in addition to today’s news on the acquisition of historical drill data, in the last 7 days VKA has:

• Delivered high grade assays up to 1.3% tungsten from its main Nevada tungsten project,
• Expanded its land in the project area, with new mining claims taking its total land holdings to circa 20km2, and;
• Started met test work on a high grade sample.

(Source)

Following the acquisition of the historical data, next, we want to see VKA:

• Align historical maps with the high resolution airborne survey data currently being collected
• Convert all the old paper logs and sections into a 3D digital environment to start building a geological model
• Once 3D modelling complete, use the data to finalise drill targets and submit a Notice of Intent to Federal Agencies to ultimately run a drill campaign.

We Invested in VKA because we liked that the new assets have a history of producing tungsten and because the projects haven’t been systematically explored in decades.

The USA administration is not standing still on critical minerals

Overnight the Trump administration announced its first critical minerals summit - this is happening on February 4th where Macro Rubio, Secretary of State will welcome ‘partners from across the globe to the State Department.

The goal looks to be to strengthen the USA’s critical minerals supply chains:

(Source)

Just last week President Trump invoked Section 232 authorities to force negotiations to:

"ensure the United States has adequate critical mineral supplies and to mitigate the supply chain vulnerabilities as quickly as possible."

(Source)

(Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 empowers the U.S. President to impose tariffs or other trade restrictions on imported goods if the Secretary of Commerce determines such imports threaten national security, initiating investigations into potential threats and allowing presidential actions like tariffs or negotiations to adjust imports and secure supply chains.)

Last week Special Assistant to the US president, National Security Council - David Copley just said at Saudi Arabia’s Future Minerals Forum:

“Over the next few years the US government will deploy hundreds of billions in capital into the mining sector”

(watch it here)

A couple of billion dollars last year and a few direct equity investments sent the ASX market into a frenzy last year.

How will the market for mining stocks look if “hundreds of billions” get deployed on mass by the US government?

We think the US government just underwrote a giant wave of capital that will find its way into metals/mining - and more specifically critical (especially defence and AI) minerals.

How tungsten fits in

We think tungsten could be the next critical mineral to capture the market and US government attention.

Tungsten is an ultra hard metal with a high melting point and so has military uses in munitions (bullets), vehicles and body armour, missiles and radiation shielding.

The USA is 100% beholden to imports of this critical military mineral.

China dominates global tungsten supply (~80% of the market) and in early 2025 put export restrictions on supply out of China. (Source)

It’s also relatively difficult to find tungsten exposures in the ASX micro cap space (especially ones with domestic USA assets).

We haven’t seen the deluge of small caps rushing into the tungsten sector (yet).

Our way of getting exposure to US tungsten is from our Investment VKA.

VKA’s projects have historic production of a combined ~123,000t at 0.54% tungsten grades.

One of the six - Linka - produced tungsten between 1955 and 1956 from a 360 tonne per day mill and an open pit mine - here is a photo of that old pit:

(source)

The $17M capped VKA’s connection to the $83M capped LKY

A big part of our Investment rationale here is to see VKA play out a similar strategy to what our Investment LKY has done.

It's a fairly simple strategy of ‘following the team that made you money before’.

LKY was one of our best performers in 2025.

In six months, LKY ran from 1.8c to hit a high of 69c, and is now around 22c (having raised $17M at 24c per share in late 2025):

(source)

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.

We are still Invested in LKY.

A lot of the people behind LKY are also involved in VKA:

VKA has a market cap of $17M.

LKY has a market cap of $83M.

VKA to become LKY 2.0?

We are hoping so.

We want to see the VKA team execute a similar strategy (and fingers crossed it happens at the time the market is willing to reward a hard and fast approach to produce US based tungsten supply).

Things like:

• Go hard and fast mapping and sampling its projects (including things like LiDAR surveys to get a full sense of what’s sitting below the ground).
• Define a redevelopment strategy (similar to what they did with LKY - a video like this for one of VKA’s projects would be great)
• Define a downstream tungsten strategy for VKA (similar to what LKY is doing with Rice/Columbia university and US based Hazen Research).

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.

Just last week, VKA expanded its project area to cover historical workings ~1.9km northeast of the main mining area and more of the magnetic high on the project.

So we could be seeing the first stages of that LKY strategy happen already (VKA putting its foot on the area with the historic workings).

(Source)

LKY’s antimony strategy is built around historic antimony workings...

We are hoping VKA can build its strategy around the ones on its ground (and if drilling into that geophysical anomaly discovers a monster deposit, that will be the icing on the cake for us).

So essentially we want to see VKA roll out the LKY “fast to market” playbook - by rapidly advancing a US project during a window of heightened urgency and investor, government and market interest.

The US Department of War wants tungsten...

In mid-2025 the Department of War (formerly known as the Department of Defence) gave Golden Metal Resources $6.2M to advance its tungsten project, right near VKA’s tungsten assets.

The Assistant Secretary of Defence for Industrial Base Policy - Dr Vic Ramdass said “developing a domestic source for tungsten is one of our top critical and strategic mineral priorities”:

(source)

IF the US Department of War is serious about getting that strategic priority done, it will need to pour a lot more than $6.2M into the domestic tungsten industry...

... AND we hope VKA is one of the companies to be benefiting from those capital flows.

Remember VKA’s new tungsten projects are ~200km away from the Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada - the biggest munitions depot in the USA (and the world).

The Hawthorne Army Depot is home to the same stockpile that the US Defence Logistics Agency (the Pentagon) was seeking information about the “potential acquisition” of tungsten “to add to the stockpiles”. (source)

The 9 key reasons why we Invested in VKA

Below are the 9 reasons why we Invested in VKA from our initiation note from December 16th, 2025.

You can read that December 2025 note in full here.

1. Low market cap with room to re-rate higher

VKA will have a market cap of ~$11M and an enterprise value of ~$5.5M (at 0.5c post capital raise). We think the company’s valuation is currently at a level where it can re-rate to multiples of where it is now - if the US critical minerals playbook is executed well and the market continues to reward the sector.

UPDATE: VKA is currently trading at a market cap of circa $17M. Circa half a billion shares at 0.5c are expected to be issued in February 2026.

2. VKA has the same team and backers as Locksley Resources (ASX: LKY).

Board, management and major shareholders of VKA are very similar to VKA. LKY at its peak was up 626% from our Initial Entry Price. We are backing the same group to deliver more wins with VKA.

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

3. Tungsten prices trading at all time highs

Tungsten prices are currently at all time highs (source), driven by Chinese export restrictions (see reason #4 below).

We think it's a good time to have exposure to tungsten in our Portfolio.

4. China dominates the global supply and has placed export restrictions on tungsten

China controls ~80% of the world’s tungsten mining and processing supply chain. In February 2025, the Chinese government put export controls on tungsten imports out of China. (source)

The US has no domestic production and is 100% reliant on imports for tungsten, which we think makes projects like VKA’s (inside US borders valuable).

5. VKA’s tungsten assets are in Nevada, USA

We like Nevada as a mining jurisdiction within the USA because it's home to some of the biggest, lowest cost mines in the country, and we have had some good wins in Nevada before (SS1, BKB).

(past performance is not an indicator of future performance)

6. Very few companies with tungsten projects on the ASX - even less with projects inside the USA

There are very few tungsten-focused companies on the ASX - especially ones with projects inside the US.

IF US tungsten companies go on a run it could mean a lot of capital looks to flow into a handful of companies of which VKA will be one.

7. VKA’s projects have produced tungsten in the past

Across the six assets VKA is acquiring, there has been ~123,000 tonnes mined from open pits, and underground adits.

One project also has a 360 tonne per day mill in place. Channel sampling from VKA’s project returned grades of ~2.11%. The biggest tungsten deposit inside US borders (also in Nevada) has average grades of 0.25% tungsten.

8. Capital is flowing into US critical metals macro thematic

We think VKA’s US tungsten assets could attract increased capital flows both on the ASX and from North American investors/governments/institutions.

Funding from US government agencies could be from places like the Department of War, Department of Energy, Department of Interior.

Alternatively, VKA’s project could attract capital from tungsten end users or big financiers like JP Morgan who is just starting to become active in the critical minerals space.

9. VKA can follow the “US critical minerals playbook”

There is a playbook for ASX stocks to attract more attention and capital to projects that are based in the US. VKA isn’t yet listed in the US, and we think that if its project gets any traction it could go for a US listing that opens up the project to North American investors.

Our VKA Big Bet:

“VKA re-rates to $100M+ market cap with a fast to market tungsten production and downstream strategy, as well as continued interest and capital flows into the USA critical metals thematic”

NOTE: our “Big Bet” is what we HOPE the ultimate success scenario looks like for this particular Investment over the long term (3+ years). There is no guarantee that our Big Bet will ever come true. There is a lot of work to be done, many risks involved, including development risk, country risk and commodity price risk - just some of which we list in our VKA Investment Memo.

Success will require a significant amount of luck. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

What’s next for VKA?

🔄 Target generation work (mapping/sampling)

We want to see VKA complete rounds of sampling (including channel/rock chip sampling) to confirm historic tungsten mineralisation at the project.

We also want to see the project mapped with LiDAR to reveal the full extent of the underground workings on the project.

Milestones:

🔄 Mapping and sampling (soils and rock chips)

🔲 Geophysics/LiDAR

🔲 Drill targets confirmed

What are the risks?

Like any small cap exploration company, investing in VKA involves a range of risks, some known, some unknown (this is the nature of investing in early-stage companies).

Here we aim to identify some of the key risks.

VKA’s new tungsten projects rely heavily on historical data, production records, and sampling from the 1940s and 1950s. There is a risk that VKA is unable to verify this historical data with modern exploration work.

A key part of our Investment Thesis relies on VKA successfully executing the "US market listing playbook" (including US listings, appointing lobbyists, and securing downstream partnerships).

There is a risk that VKA fails to execute these corporate strategies effectively or that they do not generate the anticipated interest from US investors.

Although the US government is actively funding critical minerals projects, there is no guarantee VKA will receive any government grants or strategic funding.

VKA will need to secure permits for its planned drilling programs and any future development in Nevada. VKA may face regulatory delays that could slow down exploration.

Finally, the market for tungsten is relatively opaque and dominated by China. Any changes in Chinese export policies or global demand could impact the underlying commodity price and investor sentiment toward the sector.

Investors should consider these risks carefully and seek professional advice tailored to their personal circumstances before investing.

Our VKA Investment Memo

You can read our VKA Investment Memo in the link below.

We use this memo to track the progress of all our Investments over time.

Our VKA Investment Memo covers:

• What does VKA do?
• The macro theme for VKA
• Our VKA Big Bet
• What we want to see VKA achieve
• Why we are Invested in VKA
• The key risks to our Investment Thesis
• Our Investment Plan