What Newsflow is left for this Year?

• Commentary: Pre-christmas rush of news. New Portfolio addition Iondrive (ASX:ION). Suddenly a lot of drilling happening at once. More announcements before christmas?
• Quick Takes: L1M, JBY, BPM, TTM, MNB, KAU
• This week in our Portfolios: MNB, ION, SS1, IIQ

[NOTICE: If you are a ONE shareholder, the last day to participate in the 29c Share Purchase Plan is Monday 9th December - for more information click here]

Be careful what you wish for...

Especially for christmas.

In the business world, the christmas break is often treated as an “artificial deadline” to get deals done and finish projects.

Three weeks ago we said we are watching 16 companies that had guided the market to expect material news before christmas...

Usually only a handful of companies that guide news actually deliver it on time.

There are often hiccups, problems and delays with small cap stocks.

Not this year, it seems.

Since we set out our “countdown to christmas” announcements wish list three weeks ago...

And checked it twice (heyo).

Nine companies out of the 16 delivered the news we were waiting for

(more on these in a minute).

Four of them happened on the same morning - Tuesday.

The same day we launched our latest Investment Iondrive (ASX:ION) - battery recycling tech.

There was a lot to take in.

We have been doing this for a long time, and sometimes have seen two major announcements on the same morning, rarely ever even three.

(remember when the long awaited EXR and IVZ results both came out on the same morning last year? What were the odds of that?)

Major announcements don’t come around that often, which is why so many on the same morning is an odd statistical anomaly.

(not complaining - its was great, just saying its an unusually high amount to come out at the same time)

Not to be outdone by the rest of our Portfolio’s combined efforts to overwhelm us with good news this week, MNB decided to lob in THREE major announcements of its own over the 5 trading days.

This was after a couple of years of financing delays leading to construction delays hence share price stagnation.

But after this week, MNB is now suddenly looking like they are actually going to get this mine built... and the share price is responding.

This week a few other companies that had been quiet for a long time suddenly woke up and started putting out long awaited good news.

After 2 years of prep work and delays - LYN finally started drilling in the West Arunta, the same region WA1 Resources’ made its $1BN nibioum/REE discovery.

Following a quiet 6 months, IIQ suddenly made two major announcements in the space of 48 hours with exceptional test results on its ovarian cancer screening test and then its breast cancer monitoring test.

And after a near silent 6 weeks post our Investment, KAU released two material announcements this week... commencement of toll treatment of third party gold ore at its gold processing plant AND a restart study for its Maldon gold project.

We are still waiting for KAU’s major share price catalyst - the big one which is the commencement of their drill campaign in the “never before mined” deep sections of their historical A1 gold mine.

Just because a stock has been quiet for a while, doesn’t mean they aren't cooking up some big news in the background.

And it seems a lot of companies have been working to get their news out pre-christmas, and getting it done.

In summary, there was a lot of news this week and it bodes well for a fast start to 2025 for a lot of our companies.

And there is still one (perhaps two) weeks left before the small cap markets effectively wind down for the year.

During this pre-xmas rush, we also added a new company to our Portfolio

New Portfolio Addition, IonDrive (ASX:ION)

This week we added IonDrive (ASX:ION) to our Portfolio.

The battery recycling market is forecast to grow to $100B by 2040.

ION’s battery recycling technology is cleaner, greener, cheaper recycling using Deep Eutectic Solvents (we will explain what that is later).

...and extracts the critical metals out of the old batteries for re-use at high recovery rates - which can be sold back to battery makers.

The EU and US have both set minimums on recycled metals content in its batteries.

ION has already proven its battery recycling technology at lab scale. It is now planning to build a pilot plant to prove it can be scaled up.

At the Resources Tomorrow event this week in London, “Battery Recycling” was a key feature of the event.

We listened in to the Reimagining Recycling panel which included Julie-Ann Adams, the CEO of The European Battery Recycling Association spoke about the importance of the industry:

She said that in 18 months or so “black mass” (old batteries) will be classified as a hazardous material which means that it can not be shipped to countries like China.

(best to keep those precious critical metals inside the old batteries within EU borders..)

This opens up a big opportunity for a company like ION that has already proven its technology at lab scale, but is planning to build a pilot plant in Europe in the first half of next year.

We have seen creative, clean, green tech solutions in battery metals supply work very well with our best ever Investment Vulcan Energy Resources. VUL is still up by over ~30x from our Initial Entry Price.

The EU likes clean battery tech stories and it seems the Aussie market does too.

ION just raised $6M with backing from serious institutions, including the billionaire Flannery family investment vehicle.

Click here to read the 12 Reasons we Invested in ION.

Who started drilling this week?

By Tuesday we already had 3 of our portfolio companies announce the start of major drill programs.

And we expect to see the results coming in over the next couple of months.

Drill campaigns often take a lot of boring permitting and prep work.

(2 years worth in LYN’s case, ~18 months for BPM)...

But when drilling FINALLY starts, it's like having your chips placed at the roulette table and the guy finally spins the wheel...

Like on the roulette wheel, anything can happen in exploratory drilling - results can be incredible, good, OK, or most likely disappointing...

With a matching share price reaction.

Which is what makes it so exciting (and risky).

(quick summary first if you are busy - then we’ll go into a bit more detail)

So we have THREE new drill campaigns that started this week:

• JBY extensional drilling for gold in Nevada to grow its foreign 1.2Moz gold resource estimate.
• BPM exploratory drilling for gold in WA right next to Capricorn Metals Mt Gibson Gold mine.
• LYN exploratory drilling for niobium next to WA1 which made a big niobium and REE discovery in 2022.

...and with ongoing drilling from SS1 and MTH we are likely in for a more “action packed” than usual January once all these drill results start coming in.

TTM raised $20M this week and say they are about to “get cracking” on drilling too.

(c’mon KAU, get that drill bit spinning)

A lot of drilling suddenly going on... will we get a discovery or two for christmas?.

More on the new drill campaigns started this week:

James Bay Minerals (ASX:JBY) kicked off its drill program for its gold project in Nevada, USA.

The main thing that caught our attention was the decision to mix it up with both diamond and RC drilling.

We already know JBY’s project has a foreign 1.2M ounce gold equivalent resource estimate.

The decision to do some diamond drilling means JBY can test for extensions below the resource.

The RC rig can come in and out of where the resource sits and test the targets to the east.

Get to see JBY confirm what is already there BUT also importantly, go for genuine extensional holes with this program.

We think the market will like the extensional news the most because gold from these holes will mean JBY’s existing resource could actually get a lot bigger.

(we are very interested in the results of these extensional holes in the image on the right)

Read our initiation note on why we Invested in JBY here

BPM Minerals (ASX:BPM) also kicked off phase 3 drilling at its gold project in WA.

The reason we are watching BPM’s drill program closely is because of how close the project is to $2.6BN Capricorn Metals 3.2M ounce Mount Gibson project.

We think that this current round of drilling will be the one where we find out the true size/scale potential of BPM’s project.

We like that BPM is going for targets (north to south) because it is exactly how the deposits Capricorn have at Mount Gibson are occurring.

Mount Gibson isn't made up of one giant orebody, instead, it's made up of small deposits that run north to south across Capricorn’s ground.

Here is how it looks in image form:

Lycaon Resources (ASX:LYN).

Two years of waiting.

Two years of permitting and delays.

And it FINALLY started this week.

LYN is drilling in the West Arunta for niobium/REE.

LYN is going after the same type of discovery that made WA1 Resources the billion dollar success story of 2024.

WA1 Resources made a giant niobium/rare earths discovery in the West Arunta and went from a share price of ~13c to $23.20 in less than two years, a ~17,700% gain

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.

LYN is going into its drill program with a market cap of $10.6M and has $4.2M in the bank.

We see LYN as being in a good position to re-rate strongly IF it makes a discovery.

Of course, this is high risk exploration and there is a real chance LYN finds nothing which would have a negative impact on LYN’s share price.

(at least they have $4.2M in the bank, so if they don’t find anything they won’t need to do a raise)

For now, the market is still interested in big niobium hits...

This week one of our Past Investments Aldoro Resources’ announced a 94m hit with niobium grades of 0.93% and has seen its share price double...

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.

For LYN, drilling started on the 4th of December and, according to LYN, should take “5-8 days to complete”.

Assay results should then have a “turn-around-time of 15 – 25 days”.

So we should have a result either before the end of this year OR very early into 2025.

We should have a good idea of whether or not LYN are on to something just before the end of this year OR early into next year.

All in all, it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks watching JBY, BPM and LYN...

$5BN gold merger to bring more capital into the juniors?

This week we saw Northern Star announce a $5BN mega merger for De Grey Mining.

(Source)

De Grey is a benchmark for success in the junior end of the market -

De Grey went from a <$10M market cap junior back in 2020 to now being taken over in a deal worth $5BN.

The De Grey deal for us is a good sign of the positive sentiment amongst gold producers - most of the producers are trading near all time highs...

With the gold price steady near all time highs we expect the companies that are producing or development ready (like De Grey) to perform the best.

We like the gold theme, and with gold prices still bouncing around near all time highs, we recently Invested in a small company with an operating gold processing plant and material exploration upside.

Kaiser Reef (ASX:KAU) owns 100% of the A1 gold mine in Victoria & the Maldon processing plant which is within trucking distance of A1 and other big gold projects near the Bendigo Goldfields.

A1 has in the past produced ~600,000 ounces of gold - thats ~$2.4BN worth at today’s gold price.

The average grade was 25g/t gold which is extremely high grade (considering most mines today operate at ~1-2g/t of gold).

For the past few years, owners of the project have been mining “remnant ore” which is parts of the historical mine that old timers depleted.

KAU is the first company in over a decade that is about to mine parts of the deepest parts of the project that have never been touched before.

Where there may be untouched high grade gold.

Whatever ore A1 mines gets processed from KAU’s 100% owned processing plant...

KAU has what most explorer’s/developers don't have - that optionality to get any new discovery into production ASAP.

This week KAU put out two strong announcements:

1. That its processing plant was now ready to toll-treat third party ore - KAU even received a first batch of trial ore from a third party... hopefully it’s the first of many deals that helps fill up the processing capacity at the plant.

And

2. A mine restart study for its Maldon project - this one could be a game changer for KAU because of how close the project is to its processing plant. IF KAU is able to make a high grade discovery on the project then it can truck it pretty quickly (and cheaply) to its plant for processing.

We noticed a key part of the restart study was for KAU to go back and look for new discoveries (Exploration).

As much as KAU’s production forms the basis for KAU’s current market cap - we think exploration is a big part of the story across both of its gold projects.

Next for KAU we want to see the company kick off drill program at its A1 Mine - this is the big objective we want to see KAU deliver in the short term.

The results from drilling will be a big tell on what to expect once KAU goes mining in that deep, untouched part of the A1 mine.

While we wait for KAU’s A1 drilling to commence, here is our note outlining the reasons we Invested in KAU

The De Grey and MTH connection...

Speaking of DEG...

One of our gold Investments has a small (but distant) connection to that De Grey deal is Mithril Resources (ASX:MTH).

Mithril’s biggest shareholder Jupiter Asset Management who recently came into MTH were also big shareholders of De Grey from way back in 2021.

Jupiter first popped up on the De Grey register with a 5.04% shareholding on the 2nd of Feb 2021.

This was still fairly early into the De Grey discovery story...

(Source)

Jupiter first came into MTH at the 20c cap raise back in June and then doubled their position by exercising $3M in options at 30c/share in October.

Clearly Jupiter knows a good drill hit when they see one, hopefully, MTH is able to build on that hit just like De Grey did...

On that front, MTH already has a 529k ounce gold equivalent JORC resource...

AND the company is currently drilling to extend that.

With drilling ongoing we expect more news from MTH over the coming weeks:

(would be great if the result is as good as the one we saw from MTH in September that put a rocket under the share price).

(Source)

Flow on effect of the gold mega deal? - $20M raise for TTM...

Clearly sentiment is pretty strong at the bigger end of the gold market after that $5BN De Grey deal.

On Thursday our Investment Titan Minerals (ASX:TTM) closed a $20M capital raise at 44c per share.

This is the biggest raise TTM has done since we first Invested in the company in 2020.

TTM owns 100% of a project in Ecuador with a JORC resource of 3.1M ounces of gold and 22M ounces of silver.

TTM recently commenced a 10,000m drilling campaign for resource growth, and is targeting 5M ounces of gold by 2025.

For the last four years, TTM has had to manage its cash balance pretty carefully like many other junior companies.

TTM has had to prioritise the highest priority targets and focus more on target generation work then going all out by drilling its projects.

Finally, after over 4 years of holding we think TTM could finally start to produce a whole bunch of strong drilling newsflow across its portfolio of assets.

TTM’s CEO Melanie Leighton also commented on all of the upcoming newsflow which was good to see.

AND we noticed TTM’s major shareholder Tribeca backed the company in this raise - institutional support is also always a good thing to see in this end of the market.

Ok thats a lot of gold drilling going on right now...

With BPM, MTH, TTM and JBY all currently drilling for gold and drill results likely to be announced soon, here is a very quick check in on the gold macro is doing.

One year gold chart still looking very good:

Yesterday Bloomberg released a mini documentary (~10 minutes long) on why they think the gold price is going up:

(Source)

Who is still left on our pre-christmas announcements list?

Approaching the end of the year we are getting to that period of time where most folks go offline for a few weeks.

Between mid-December and Australia day next year is usually the unofficial holiday period for the markets.

Before then, we expect to see a pent up newsflow hit the market

(as we saw happen this week)

This week was wild in terms of the number of announcements that came out.

It could be the same next week...

and maybe even the week after.

Intense newsflow weeks are hard to process (especially if multiple companies put out big news on the same day) BUT they are good because they usually trigger share price moves.

Here are the companies from our Nov 16th list that are yet to announce pre-christmas news:

🔄 Oneview Healthcare (ASX:ONE)

We hope for a big deal from ONE’s partnership with Baxter ($25BN market capped healthcare supplier, that is the biggest hospital bed supplier in the US).

[NOTICE: If you are a ONE shareholder, the last day to participate in the 29c Share Purchase Plan is Monday 9th December - for more information click here]

Read our latest ONE note

🔄 Condor Energy (ASX:CND)

Prospective resource estimates for the company’s large oil and gas project in Peru.

Read our latest CND note

🔄 AML3D (ASX:AL3)

We’re hoping for a big contract win for US Navy parts or one of the company's other partners like Boeing.

AL3 said in its AGM Presentation that it has a pipeline of US$7.42M of revenue in its existing order book for FY25. Read our latest AL3 note here.

Read our latest AL3 note

🔄 Kaiser Reef (ASX:KAU)

In the KAU quarterly, KAU flagged imminent exploration drilling at the A1 Mine’s “Nova Zone” which the company says has the best ore, which has never been mined before.

Read our latest KAU note

🔄 Global Uranium and Enrichment (ASX:GUE)

In early September GUE flagged that a scoping study is due in the “coming months” - hopefully that comes in before Christmas with some good numbers for GUE’s ~52Mlb uranium project, OR any positive update on GUE’s enrichment tech. Read our latest note here.

Read our latest GUE note

🔄 Genmin (ASX:GEN)

The latest GEN quarterly report flagged that we can expect a project financing update “by the end of the year”.

Read our latest GEN note

🔄 Pursuit Minerals (ASX:PUR)

In PUR’s latest quarterly report the company said it is “targeting a material resource upgrade in the 2nd half of the 2024 calendar year” after its latest drilling for lithium in Argentina.

Read our latest PUR note

What we wrote about this week 🧬 🦉 🏹

Minbos Resources (ASX:MNB)

US$6.4M in Sovereign Wealth Fund cash has just landed in Minbos Resources (ASX:MNB)’s bank account.

MNB can now sign the civil construction contract.

Contractors are expected on site this month.

Read: ⛏️ Construction commencing as first US$6.4M in cash hits MNB bank account from Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Iondrive (ASX:ION)

Today we are adding Iondrive (ASX:ION) to our Portfolio.

The battery recycling market is forecast to grow to $100B by 2040.

ION’s battery recycling technology is cleaner, greener, cheaper recycling using Deep Eutectic Solvents.

...and extracts the critical metals out of old batteries for re-use at high recovery rates - which can be sold back to battery makers.

Read: ⛏️ Our new Investment is Iondrive (ASX: ION)

Sun Silver (ASX:SS1)

Sun Silver (ASX:SS1) announced an exceptional drill result that contained a massive 1,249 g/t section of silver...

And 3.24m of 10,000 ppm of antimony.

Based on recent antimony grades in many of SS1’s new drill holes, SS1 is trying to figure out if its giant silver resource is also full of antimony too.

Read: ⛏️ SS1 announces high grades of critical military metal antimony at its US project- 10 hours later China bans antimony exports to the US

Inoviq (ASX:IIQ)

Ovarian cancer is deadly.

It is often only diagnosed at a late-stage AFTER symptoms have started.

With just a 5-year survival rate of ~49%.

If ovarian cancer is caught early in “stage 1”... that survival rate jumps to ~90%

This week our biotech Investment Inoviq (ASX:IIQ) demonstrated SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER accuracy than any other ovarian cancer screening test in the market.

Read: ⛏️ IIQ announces extremely accurate cancer screening test - 94%

Minbos Resources (ASX:MNB)

Suddenly, it’s all happening at once for Minbos Resources (ASX:MNB)...

This week the MNB announcement floodgates have opened:

• Monday - The first Sovereign Wealth Fund cash hits MNB bank account (US $6.4M out of US $10M)
• Thursday - Civil construction contract signed - contractor begins mobilising to site. Completion date for works set as “12 May 2025”
• Friday - US$12M credit facility final term sheet signed with Bancio BAI (Angola’s biggest bank).

Read: ⛏️ It’s getting real: MNB signs term sheet for a further US$12M to build its mine - construction commencement announced yesterday.

Quick Takes 🗣️

L1M ranks more lithium targets in Brazil

JBY drilling for gold in Nevada, USA

BPM starts phase 3 gold drilling next to $2.6BN Capricorn Metals

TTM raises $20M for gold and copper drilling

MNB signs civil construction contracts - completion date “12 May 2025”

KAU ready for toll treating agreement at gold processing plant

Macro News - What we are reading & listening to 📰

Gold:

Trump Demands ‘Commitment’ From BRICS on Using US Dollar (Bloomberg)

• Trump warns BRICS nations against creating a new currency, threatening 100% tariffs if they move away from the US dollar.
• He pledges to ensure the dollar remains the global reserve currency, using tariffs and trade penalties to enforce compliance.

Who Is Behind Gold’s Wild Ride This Year? (Bloomberg)

• Chinese consumers and central banks drive 2024’s gold surge.
• Geopolitical tensions and US rate cuts fuel record prices.

Northern Star (NST) to Buy De Grey (DEG) in Deal Valued at A$5 Billion (Bloomberg)

• Northern Star Resources acquires De Grey Mining for A$5B, securing full ownership of the Hemi gold project in WA’s Pilbara region.
• The deal strengthens Northern Star’s supply amid soaring gold prices; Hemi projected to produce 530K ounces annually by 2026.

Gold Bulls’ Ranks Swell as Macquarie Hoists 2025 Forecasts (Bloomberg)

• Macquarie sees gold hitting $2,800 in Q2 2025, with potential to surpass $3,000 on strong demand or fiscal risks.
• Gold's 28% rally in 2024 driven by rate cuts, central bank buying, and ETF inflows.

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Have a great weekend,

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