But the people who’ve been collecting dividends from the same handful of companies for a decade tend to be the calmest investors in any room, and 2026 has given everyone plenty of reasons to want to be calm.

We love the stories about the 10-bagger. The IPO that made early believers rich. The explorer that hit copper and ran 400% in a week. Nobody wants to hear from the bloke who bought BHP in 2009 and just kept reinvesting the dividends. He’s boring.

He’s also rich.

If you'd gone camping for all of 2025, come back and checked your portfolio, you'd assume you missed a quiet year. You didn't.

Tariffs, a federal election, Trump moving markets via Truth Social, a new war in the Middle East, and AI advancing fast enough to make half the country nervous about their careers.

Yet the ASX 200 finished 2025 up more than 6% and pushed toward new highs in 2026. And the dividend cheques kept arriving.

We spend most of our time at the smaller end of the market. Early-stage companies, drill results, the kind of stocks that can move 50% on a single announcement. This piece is about the other end entirely.

The end where companies make money, pay tax on it, and send you a cheque twice a year.

What follows is the top 10 ASX-listed dividend payers to start 2026, the best from 2025, and the top 10 from mining and energy of 2025. We've also pulled apart how dividends actually work and whether the good ones are likely to keep paying.

First though, the basics.

What is a Dividend?

A dividend is simply a company sharing part of its profits with shareholders. You own a slice of the business, and when it makes money, you get a cut.

Most companies that pay dividends do so twice a year: an interim dividend partway through the financial year (February/March) and a final dividend (August/September).

There’s no minimum shareholding required to qualify. Even a small holding entitles you to your proportional share of the payout.

In Australia, dividends also come with a tax angle worth understanding: they’re either franked or unfranked.

Franked and Unfranked Dividends Explained

Franked dividends

Franked means the company already paid tax on the money before it reached you. Australia's company tax rate is 30% for most listed companies, so a franked dividend comes with a credit for that 30%.

What happens next depends on your tax bracket. If you're on 30%, you're square. The company already covered it. If you're higher, say 37%, you pay the difference. If you're lower, you might get a refund. That last bit is why retirees love franking credits.

Unfranked dividends

Unfranked dividends don’t carry a tax credit. The full amount hits your taxable income and gets taxed at your marginal rate.

Franking credits are one of the biggest advantages of investing in Australian shares. You don't get the same deal from interest, rent, or most overseas income.

Understanding Dividend Dates (and When You Need to Own the Shares)

There are four dates that matter when a dividend gets paid. Only one of them determines whether you actually get the money.

Announcement date
This is when the company tells the market a dividend is coming. They'll disclose the amount, whether it's franked or unfranked, and lay out the ex-dividend, record, and payment dates. Owning shares on this date alone doesn't mean you're getting paid.

Ex-dividend date
The ex-dividend date is the cutoff: to receive the dividend, you need to own shares before this date. Buy on or after it, and the payout goes to whoever held the shares before you. This trips people up more than anything else in dividend investing.

Record date
The record date is when the company reviews its official list of shareholders to confirm who gets paid. If you bought before the ex-dividend date and you’re on the register at close on this date, you qualify.

Payment date
This is when the money actually lands - either in your bank account or reinvested through a dividend reinvestment plan if you’ve opted in.

If you take one thing from this section: buy before the ex-dividend date. Everything else is plumbing.

The Case for Dividends

When markets are running hot, nobody’s thinking about dividends. Growth stocks grab the headlines. But growth stocks also get smashed when expectations shift, and as we’ve seen recently, a war on the other side of the world can rattle the entire ASX.

Dividend payers tend to keep sending cheques through all of it. That’s the bit most people underestimate. Over time, that reliability compounds in ways that are hard to appreciate until you see it in your own portfolio.

Australia also has a feature most other markets don’t: dividend reinvestment plans, or DRPs.

These let you automatically reinvest your dividends into more shares, usually without paying brokerage and sometimes at a small discount to the market price. The dividends are still taxable income, but reinvesting instead of pocketing the cash means your position quietly compounds without you lifting a finger.

Who Dividend Investing Suits (and When It Matters Most)

How you think about dividends depends on where you’re at.

If you’re 23, dividends aren’t paying your rent. Most people at that stage reinvest them and let compounding do the work over decades. The money is almost irrelevant. What matters is that your shareholding is quietly getting bigger every six months.

Mid-career, it shifts. Some keep reinvesting. Others start redirecting dividends toward a mortgage, school fees, or that renovation that's been on the list since 2019. It becomes more about flexibility than a single strategy.

Closer to retirement, dividends start doing what most people assume they always do: providing income. Consistent payouts can cover living expenses without having to sell down your portfolio, which matters when you're no longer earning a wage.

A 25-year-old and a 65-year-old might own the same stock for completely different reasons. Neither is wrong.

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The Market Backdrop From 2025

For anyone unfamiliar with the index, the ASX 200 tracks the 200 largest listed companies by market cap. There are more than 2,000 companies on the exchange, but those top 200 account for roughly 80% of its total value. The market's now worth more than $2.6 trillion.

What keeps pushing it higher is fairly simple: bank profits, commodity prices, and the relentless flow of superannuation money into large caps. Every pay cycle, 12% of every wage in the country gets funnelled into super, and most of that ends up in the biggest, most liquid stocks on the board.

Those tend to be the same companies paying dividends.

The ASX has long had a reputation as one of the more income-friendly exchanges going around. It's well-regulated, liquid, and tends to attract capital when investors want somewhere reliable to park their money.

2026 has seen commodity prices bounce around and the property market keep the big banks happy, but the super money flows in on autopilot regardless.

High Yield Does Not Always Mean High Quality

Picture two stocks on a screen. One yields 4%. The other yields 10%. A reasonable person picks the 10. A reasonable person would also be walking into a trap that catches thousands of investors every earnings season.

Because yield is just the dividend divided by the share price, and when a share price drops 40% while the dividend stays the same, the yield looks incredible right up until the board meets and slashes the payout to match reality.

Profits can be massaged with accounting, but dividends are paid from cash, and when payouts consume most of a company’s free cash flow, there’s not much left in the tank if conditions turn.

This matters most in cyclical sectors like resources, where dividends can be generous when prices are high but thin out quickly when they’re not.

The companies that pay reliably for years tend to be the ones nobody gets excited about at barbecues. Steady earnings. Conservative management. The kind of businesses that would rather protect the balance sheet than make a yield table.

They rarely top the rankings in any given year. They rarely blow up either.

How to Assess a Dividend Stock

Start with the business, not the yield. A bank collecting mortgage repayments every month has a very different dividend profile to a gold miner whose cash flow swings with the spot price. Both might show the same yield on a screen. The story underneath is completely different.

Pay attention to how management treats the dividend. Some companies aim to smooth payouts over time, keeping them steady even when profits dip. Others let dividends ride with conditions, paying big when times are good and pulling back when they're not.

Neither approach is wrong, but you want to know which one you own before conditions change.

Then zoom out. Mining dividends track commodity prices. Bank dividends track credit growth and interest rates. Retailers follow consumer spending. If you can read what's driving earnings in a sector, you can usually see a dividend cut coming well before it arrives.

Common Dividend Mistakes New Investors Make

Two traps catch people that we haven’t covered yet.

The first is buying shares right before the ex-dividend date, expecting easy money. The dividend lands in your account, but the share price usually drops by a similar amount the morning it goes ex-dividend. If you factor in tax you might’ve gone backwards.

The second is concentration. Australian dividend portfolios have a habit of drifting heavily into banks and resources, because that’s where income has historically been highest. It works fine for years, but when those sectors turn at the same time, the whole portfolio feels it at once.

How Often Should You Review Dividend Stocks?

Less often than most people assume.

Most dividend-paying companies are fairly predictable beasts. They’re established businesses doing much the same thing year after year, and checking the share price every morning doesn’t change that.

Pay attention when new information lands. Financial results, dividend announcements, anything that could knock earnings around. Those are the moments that matter.

If your miner’s commodity price collapses, that’ll flow through to the dividend. If your bank’s mortgage defaults start ticking up, same deal.

Short-term noise rarely changes the story. Structural shifts can change it permanently. Learning to tell the difference takes time, and it’s one of the more valuable skills a dividend investor can develop.

The hardest part for most people is doing nothing when nothing needs to be done.

What to do Next

If you’re new to dividend investing, the best thing you can do is pick a handful of dividend-paying companies and follow them for a few months.

Watch when dividends get announced, how the share price moves around the ex-dividend date, and whether payouts stay steady or jump around.

You’ll learn more from observing a full dividend cycle than from chasing a headline yield.

After that, the rest comes down to your own situation. How much volatility you’re willing to stomach. Whether you need income now or you’d rather let it compound for a decade.

There’s no single right answer, and the bloke at the barbecue who never brags about his dividends worked that out a long time ago.

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Highest paying Dividend stocks to start 2026

Earnings season has just wrapped up on the ASX, and with it a fresh round of half-year results covering July to December.

This is where you find out whether companies met the market's expectations. Stronger profit usually means a bigger dividend. Disappointing results, and the payout's usually the first thing to get trimmed.

We've gone through the reports and pulled out the companies that are off to a good start. Below are the top 10 dividend payers to start 2026, ranked by yield.

The ex-dividend dates have passed on these, but with another payout due after full-year results, it gives you a read on who's tracking well.

(Note: Past dividend payments are not indicative of future payments. The rankings reflect payouts recorded for the interim 2026 dividend. The final dividend is unknown and to be calculated at a later date)

Top 20 Dividend-Paying Stocks of 2025

Here are the top 20 ASX dividend payers from 2025, ranked by total payout and yield.

This list reflects what happened in 2025, not a prediction for 2026. Profits change, and dividend policies follow. Think of it as a snapshot of who was paying well, and not a guarantee they'll keep doing so.

(Note: Past dividend payments are not indicative of future payments. The rankings reflect payouts recorded across the 2025 financial year and may differ in 2026. Yield has been calculated based off the closing price 31 December 2025)

How Commodity Prices Shaped Dividends in 2025

Dividends in 2025 tracked where the money was being made in commodities. Gold led the way, iron ore held up, and coal quietly kept rewarding shareholders without making much noise.

Gold was on a tear through 2025 and into early 2026, hitting record after record as central banks loaded up and inflation worries kept buyers coming.

The war in the Middle East has pulled it back roughly 15%, but at around US$4,750/oz it's still well above the levels that have producers swimming in cash.

That's flowed straight through to dividends. If gold holds anywhere near here, expect that to continue.

Iron ore held firm around US$100/t despite the China slowdown. The massive cheques from a few years ago have eased, but the majors are still paying well.

Lithium has had a shocking run. Oversupply and weak demand crushed prices for the best part of two years. There are signs that’s turning, with several analysts expecting a stronger 2026.

Prices settled from their peaks, but disciplined producers kept paying, and some of the highest yields on the ASX came from names most people weren't watching.

Top 10 Dividend-Paying Mining and Energy Stocks of 2025

Here are the top ten ASX-listed mining and energy companies from 2025 based on dividend payments.

(Note: Past dividend payments are not indicative of future payments. The rankings reflect payouts recorded across the 2025 financial year and may differ in 2026. Yield has been calculated based off the closing price 31 December 2025)

The Superannuation Tailwind

Australia’s population has passed 27.7 million and keeps growing faster than most developed economies.

Every new job, every pay rise, every employer contribution tips more money into the super pool. Right now, 12% of every wage in the country gets funnelled into the system automatically.

Most of that money ends up in large, liquid ASX-listed companies that have been paying dividends for decades.

Think BHP, Woolies, Commonwealth Bank. The names everyone knows.

Super funds buy them because they generate cash and return it to shareholders. They keep buying them regardless of what the broader market is doing.

Most funds also operate under mandates that cap how much they can put into smaller stocks until a company hits a certain size and liquidity threshold, often around ASX 200 inclusion.

Once a company enters the index, it becomes a natural destination for those inflows.

In practice, Australia's compulsory super system is a constant buyer of dividend-paying large caps.

That buying pressure is there whether markets are up, down, or sideways.

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Will 2026 Repeat The Returns Of 2025?

Probably not, and expecting it to would be a mistake.

The list of top dividend payers shifts every year. A gold miner paying record dividends at the top of the cycle can look very different twelve months later. Same company, different commodity price, different size cheque.

Dividends move with profits, and profits move with conditions nobody can predict 12 months out. The companies paying well today may look different by December.

The best you can do is understand what’s driving the earnings behind the payout. The tables in this piece are a snapshot of 2025 only.

If you take one thing from this piece, it's that last year's top payer isn't guaranteed to be next year's.

The Final Step When Investing

Payouts rise and fall with profits, and even the most reliable payers are influenced by forces outside their control. A war can eat into margins overnight. A rate move can shift the maths on a bank’s lending book. Commodity prices don’t ask permission before they turn.

None of that changes the basic proposition. Companies make money, they share it with the people who own them, and over time that adds up to something worth having.

The bloke who bought BHP in 2009 and kept reinvesting the dividends didn’t time anything perfectly. He just kept showing up.

Patience isn't exciting. But the patient investors tend to be the ones still standing when the dust settles.

Glossary of Regularly Used Financial Terms

ASX (Australian Securities Exchange) – Australia’s main stock exchange, where shares in publicly listed companies are bought and sold.

ASX 200 - An index tracking the 200 largest companies listed on the ASX by market capitalisation and liquidity. Commonly used as the benchmark for the Australian share market.

Announcement date - The date a company formally announces it will pay a dividend, including the amount, whether it is franked or unfranked, and the key dates that follow. Owning shares on this date alone does not guarantee you will receive the dividend.

Assessable income – Income the ATO counts when calculating your tax, which can include dividends.

Benchmark – A reference point used to measure market or portfolio performance, such as the ASX 200.

Biotech – Short for biotechnology. Companies developing medical or science-based products, often with higher risk and less predictable profits than mature dividend payers.

Blue-chip stocks – Large, established companies with long operating histories, strong balance sheets, and regular dividend payments.

Brokerage – A fee charged by a broker when you buy or sell shares.

Capital – Money invested or available to be invested.

Capital growth – An increase in a company’s share price over time, separate from dividend income.

Cash flow – The actual cash a business generates from its operations. Dividends are paid from cash, not accounting profits.

Central bank – A country’s main monetary authority (such as the RBA in Australia) that influences interest rates and financial conditions.

Compounding – Earning returns on your returns over time. With dividends, this often occurs when payouts are reinvested to buy more shares.

Consumer spending – Household spending across the economy, which can influence company profits, particularly for retailers and banks.

Credit growth – Growth in borrowing and lending across the economy, which can impact bank earnings and dividends.

Cyclical sectors – Industries whose earnings rise and fall with economic or commodity cycles, such as mining, energy, and resources.

Dividend – A payment made by a company to shareholders as a share of its profits.

Dividend history – A company’s track record of paying dividends over time. Useful for context, but not a guarantee of future payments.

Dividend income – The cash an investor receives from dividends over a period of time.

Dividend-paying stocks – Companies that regularly distribute part of their profits to shareholders as dividends.

Dividend policy – A company’s approach to paying dividends, including how stable or variable payouts are through different market conditions.

Dividend payout ratio – The portion of a company’s profits or cash flow that is paid out as dividends.

Dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) – A program that allows shareholders to automatically use dividends to buy more shares in the same company, usually without brokerage and sometimes at a discount. Dividends remain taxable income.

Dividend yield – The annual dividend paid by a company divided by its current share price, expressed as a percentage. It shows income relative to price, not total return.

Earnings – A company’s profit after expenses.

Economic conditions – The broader environment affecting businesses and markets, including growth, inflation, interest rates, and employment.

Employer contribution – The percentage of wages paid into an employee’s superannuation account under Australia’s compulsory system.

Equities – Another term for shares or stocks. The "equity market" is simply the market where shares are traded.

Essential services – Products or services people continue to pay for in most conditions, such as utilities or major financial services, often supporting steadier earnings.

Ex-dividend date – The most important dividend date. To receive a dividend, an investor must own the shares before this date. Buying shares on or after this date means the upcoming dividend will not be received.

Federal election – Australia’s national election that determines the federal government and can influence markets through policy expectations.

Final dividend – A dividend paid at the end of a company’s financial year, usually larger than the interim dividend.

Franked dividend – A dividend that includes a tax credit for company tax already paid, which can be used to offset an investor’s personal tax.

Franking credit – The tax credit attached to a franked dividend, reflecting the 30% company tax rate already paid in Australia.

Free cash flow – Cash remaining after a company covers its operating costs and capital spending. A key measure of dividend sustainability.

Headline yield – The stated dividend yield without considering sustainability, risk, or future earnings.

High yield – A relatively large dividend yield compared to other companies or the broader market.

Inflation – A general rise in prices over time, which can influence interest rates, company costs, and investor behaviour.

Index – A basket of shares used to track the performance of a market or group of companies, such as the ASX 200.

Index provider (S&P Global) – The organisation responsible for maintaining and setting the rules for indices such as the ASX 200.

Interest rates – The cost of borrowing money or the return earned on savings, influenced by central bank policy.

Interim dividend – A dividend paid partway through a company’s financial year.

Liquidity – How easily shares can be bought or sold without significantly affecting the price.

Low-cost mining assets – Mining operations that can remain profitable even when commodity prices fall, often supporting more resilient dividends.

Marginal tax rate – The tax rate you pay on your last dollar of income, which determines how dividends are ultimately taxed.

Market capitalisation (market cap) – The total value of a company, calculated by multiplying its share price by the number of shares on issue.

Mining majors – Large, established mining companies, often global operators and regular dividend payers.

Mining discovery – A new mineral find that can drive speculative share price moves, often unrelated to dividends.

Monetary policy – Actions taken by a central bank to influence interest rates and money supply, affecting markets and economic activity.

Oversupply – A situation where supply exceeds demand, often putting downward pressure on prices.

Part-owner – When you buy shares, you own a small piece of the company and may be entitled to dividends.

Payout – The amount of money a company pays out to shareholders as dividends.

Payment date – The date a dividend is actually paid to shareholders, either in cash or via a dividend reinvestment plan.

Personal tax bracket – The tax rate you pay based on your income level.

Portfolio – A collection of investments held by an individual or fund.

Property market – The market for buying and selling real estate, which has a significant influence on banks and the broader economy.

Record date – The date a company checks its shareholder register to determine who is entitled to receive the dividend.

Resources sector – Industries involved in extracting natural resources such as metals, minerals, coal, and energy.

Sector – A group of companies in the same industry, such as banks, resources, retailers, or healthcare.

Sector exposure – How much of your portfolio is concentrated in one part of the market, such as banks or miners.

Sentiment – How optimistic or pessimistic investors feel, which can influence prices in the short term.

Settlement (T+2) – The standard ASX settlement cycle, where a share trade is finalised two business days after the transaction occurs.

Share price – The current market price of a company’s shares.

Shareholder – A person or entity that owns shares in a company.

Small-cap stocks – Smaller companies listed on the ASX, often with higher growth potential but higher risk.

Speculative stocks – Higher-risk investments where outcomes depend on future events or developments.

Superannuation – Australia’s compulsory retirement savings system funded by employer contributions.

Tariffs – Taxes imposed on imported goods that can affect trade, costs, and company profits.

Tax credit – A credit that reduces the amount of tax you owe, such as franking credits attached to franked dividends.

Taxable income – Income used to calculate your tax. Unfranked dividends are generally added to taxable income.

Term deposits – Bank savings products offering a fixed interest rate for a set period, generally lower risk than shares.

Total return – The combined return from both share price movement (capital growth) and dividends.

Unfranked dividend – A dividend paid without a tax credit, meaning the full amount is taxed at the investor’s marginal rate.

Volatility – The degree of price movement in markets or individual shares over time.

Yield – A percentage measure of income relative to a share price, most often referring to dividend yield.

Yield chasing – Focusing solely on high dividend yields without considering sustainability or risk.

General Disclosure

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that, you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consult your own investment adviser to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs.

Whilst Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied. No responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way from any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy or completeness of this document or any advice contained within it. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Any reference in this document to historical returns, dividend payments, dividend yields, rankings, market performance, or outcomes achieved during prior periods is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as an indication of future results.

Dividend payments are not guaranteed. The payment, size and timing of dividends may change or cease at any time and are subject to a range of factors including, but not limited to, company profitability, cash flow, capital requirements, commodity prices, interest rates, regulatory settings, taxation changes and broader market conditions.

Any forward-looking statements, opinions, estimates or expectations expressed in this document are based on information available at the time of preparation and reflect judgments as at that date. Such statements are inherently uncertain and involve known and unknown risks, assumptions and other factors that may cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Market conditions, economic factors, government policy and company-specific circumstances can change without notice. No assurance is given that any strategy, outlook or scenario discussed will be achieved or prove accurate.

Readers should conduct their own independent research and analysis and consider seeking professional advice before making any investment or financial decision.

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Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) No. 519872.

Somewhere between lunar orbit and cartel airspace sits the reality of small-cap investing in 2026.

Clean-tech stocks ripped higher, the ASX bounced hard after Easter on ceasefire headlines, and gold held steady around US$4,750 while oil swung US$16 in a single session.

The Equities Club portfolio had met results, resource estimates and drill-ready targets dropping through the noise.

Let’s get to it.

• Ceasefire headlines moved oil markets but gold holds steady

• Artemis II circled the Moon, putting space tech back on the radar

• MRD metallurgy at Grass Patch stacks up well

• FUN outlines major rutile scale potential at Mkanda

• 10X defined drill targets ahead of Peak View drilling

• Three cleantech names that ripped 45-65% this week

• Shots fired in Mexico (a reminder investor risk comes in many forms)

• Leadership changes as DroneShield slips despite sector demand

Ceasefire? Markets Up, Gold Steady, Oil All Over the Place

A US-Iran ceasefire was signed this week and oil dropped US$16 in a session, and the ASX ripped 2.5% higher on the back of it.

Then Israel hit Lebanon and everyone remembered how shaky a Middle East ceasefire can be.

The ASX pushed to 8,960 by Friday, its best weekly gain since 2020 and within striking distance of all-time highs. But anyone trading oil this week earned their grey hairs.

The Strait of Hormuz is still only partially reopening, and nobody seems sure whether this ceasefire holds long past this weekend’s marathon talks in Islamabad.

Gold held around US$4,750 per ounce throughout it all, which tells you the bid underneath the metal is structural. Sovereign buying and inflation hedging are propping up the price more than any single headline at the moment.

China’s central bank has added to its gold reserves for 17 straight months now. At that pace it sets a floor under the price and it almost doesn’t matter what happens in Lebanon or Iran on any given Tuesday.

Silver continued to track higher alongside gold and remains near multi-decade highs, backed by safe-haven flows and ongoing demand from solar and electrification.

If gold and silver stay anywhere near these levels, money keeps finding its way into the small-cap explorers trying to pull them out of the ground. We're already seeing that across a few of our portfolio names.

From Artemis to the ASX?

Four astronauts splashed down in the Pacific yesterday after spending ten days circling the moon. The last time anyone did that, Gough Whitlam had just moved into The Lodge.

It's easy to write it off as a (very cool) NASA headline with no ASX angle, but the infrastructure keeping those astronauts alive runs through some interesting ground.

It often sits inside the same technology stack as defence electronics and satellite infrastructure.

Australia’s own deep-space tracking capability supported the mission through CSIRO facilities in Canberra, a reminder that global lunar programs rely on distributed ground networks as much as launch vehicles.

As NASA pushes toward a permanent lunar presence, that capability will only get more valuable.

A couple of ASX names sit in the orbit of all this (pun intended).

• Electro Optic Systems (ASX: EOS) develops the tracking systems that monitor satellites and debris in orbit using ground-based optical networks. More missions mean more stuff in orbit and tracking infrastructure becomes critical for managing congestion and collisions across busy space corridors.

• Gilmour Space Technologies (upcoming IPO) raised $217 million in Series E funding recently, valuing the company above $1 billion. They're building the Eris orbital rocket and a spaceport in Queensland. The rocket is still in testing, so there's plenty of execution risk, but the money flowing in tells you how serious people are getting about Australia having its own launch capability.

We're some ways away from space stocks being a mainstream ASX theme. But every time a crew goes around the Moon and comes back safely, the investment case for the ground infrastructure gets a little harder to ignore.

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Mets Looking Good for Mount Ridley Mines

Mount Ridley (ASX: MRD) closed the week up 7% to 3.2c after metallurgical results answered the biggest question hanging over the Grass Patch heavy rare earth project: can you actually get the good stuff out?

The testwork confirmed that dysprosium and terbium can be extracted using a simple acid leach pathway, with recoveries up to 86.5% in some samples.

Those two elements sit at the very top of the heavy rare earth value chain and are among the hardest to source outside China, which is exactly why projects like Grass Patch are attracting more attention globally.

The metallurgy already works before optimisation has even begun. That’s a good starting point.

The next round of testwork targets dysprosium and terbium extraction from within the defined resource, which is where projects typically start moving from interesting geology to something the market can begin to price more seriously.

Scandium and gallium still sit in the background as potential by-product credits, so there’s more than one pathway emerging here.

You can find our full article here.

Big Tonnage Announced for Fortuna Metals

Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN) closed the week up 8% to 9.3c after outlining a 180 to 240 million tonne rutile exploration target at Mkanda, from just three months of shallow drilling.

At that scale, Mkanda is already a serious rutile system. And most holes so far have only gone down about eight metres. There's a lot of ground left to test.

For context, Sovereign Metals’ (ASX: SVM) Kasiya project just to the north in Malawi is the world’s largest known rutile deposit and backed by Rio Tinto, and its scale only became clear once drilling pushed deeper into the weathered profile.

FUN’s Mkanda sits along strike on the same geological corridor, and the company will now be stepping into that same deeper drilling phase where we could see this already large target grow further.

SVM is valued at roughly $450 million. FUN is currently at $26 million. Back-of-the-envelope, that disconnect suggests potential upside of about 80% from its current valuation.

There are 245 holes of assays still pending, deeper drilling about to kick off, and a maiden inferred resource targeted for the second half of the year. Graphite assays in Q2 could add another commodity layer on top of the rutile.

You can find our full article here.

10X Has Four High-Priority Drill Targets

Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) finished the week at 18c with drilling about to kick off at Peak View. We still see this as one of the more appealing near-term setups across our portfolio.

The 50 g/t gold at Undoo Creek and 339 g/t silver at Big Badja grabbed headlines over the past month, but Peak View is the drill program 10X has been building towards since listing.

Historical drilling hit zinc, lead, copper and silver, but only tested a fraction of the system. New IP and gravity surveys have now mapped out what was missed.

The standout is a 700-metre anomaly sitting west of all previous drilling. The old holes hit sulphides next to a weaker geophysical response. The stronger one has never been touched.

A 1.1km gravity high lines up in the same spot, right on the southern continuation of the fault that hosts Captains Flat, one of NSW’s biggest historic base metal mines.

Every dataset is pointing at the same piece of ground.

Senior geologist Seb Hind walks through it in the video below.

At 18c with $4 million in cash, you're paying about $3 million enterprise value for a funded 15-hole program across multiple targets on a proven mineralised structure. Late April it kicks off.

You can find our full article here.

Small-Cap Clean Tech Stocks Clean Up

Three small-cap cleantech names put up big numbers outside the resources space this week.

Environmental Clean Technologies (ASX: ECT) ran 58% after extending its PFAS destruction technology into water filtration waste.

For those who aren't chemical engineers (like us), water treatment plants use activated carbon to filter forever chemicals out of drinking water before it reaches your tap.

The water comes out clean, but the carbon is now full of toxic chemicals and currently gets trucked to landfill.

ECT's tech destroys those chemicals on site so nothing toxic leaves the plant.

In a strong sign of confidence, the Chairman bought over 50k on market this week too.

Eden Innovations (ASX: EDE) rose 45%. They make concrete additives that cut cement use (and emissions) on big infrastructure projects.

Global construction groups are under pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete, and technologies that slot directly into existing batching plants are starting to get attention.

The company cleared its debt earlier this year and is now installed across multiple ready-mix networks in North and South America, so the story is shifting from trials to repeat orders.

Sparc Technologies (ASX: SPN) climbed 65% and the ASX wanted to know why. The company’s response, more or less, was “our MD went on a podcast.”.

If you needed proof that new media moves small-cap stocks now, there it is.

Sparc makes graphene-enhanced coatings that protect steel infrastructure from corrosion.

In the podcast, MD Nick O’Loughlin said they’re testing with five of the eight largest protective coatings companies globally and are close to getting their first additive into a commercial coating line.

Their lab work has shown up to 79% improvement in how coatings resist corrosion spread. Recoating a bridge or dry-docking a ship costs a fortune. So if the paint lasts longer, you do it less.

At $20 million with first revenue only arriving in December last year, Sparc is still very early in the story and chasing a slice of a $30 billion global coatings market.

New media like podcasts is moving markets now, and where investors get their information is shifting fast.

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Mayhem in Mexico

Most MDs spend their week in boardrooms. Mithril Silver & Gold's (ASX: MTH) managing director spent his dodging gunfire over Northern Mexico.

The company reported that its MD and two staff were forced into an unscheduled landing after their aircraft took fire from the ground while flying between the Copalquin silver-gold project in Durango and the city of Chihuahua.

News reports linked the gunfire to La Linea cartel activity in the area. Everyone walked away unharmed and drilling continued as planned.

Mexico is the world's largest silver producer and a lot of that output comes from the northern states where mining districts and cartel territory overlap. It comes with the address.

The incident happened away from the project site and it was described it as isolated.

When people talk about risk in small-cap investing, they usually mean dilution or a dud drill hole. Not many annual reports have a section for incoming gunfire.

DroneShield Drops as CEO and Chairman Exit

We like the drone tech space a lot. The demand story across Ukraine, the Middle East and the broader defence build-up is only getting stronger.

But DroneShield (ASX: DRO) had a rough week, falling 13% on about $334 million in traded value after a series of governance and pipeline updates unsettled investors.

Founder CEO Oleg Vornik and chairman Peter James both stepped down on Wednesday after having already sold their entire shareholdings months earlier. Holders noticed that sequence at the time, and we covered it here.

The sales pipeline also slipped $100 million, from $2.3 billion to $2.2 billion. Contract timing shifts constantly in defence procurement, but when your CEO and chairman have both walked out the door, investors often aren’t in the mood to give you the benefit of the doubt.

DroneShield still sits inside one of the fastest-growing defence technology segments globally, but weeks like this show how critical execution and communication are when valuations are already pricing in strong growth.

Hamish McLennan is coming in as chairman. He's currently chair of REA Group and well connected across corporate Australia, so the board is clearly trying to attract a different class of investor to the register.

The sector tailwind is still blowing hard. New management now needs to prove they can keep up with it.

The Week Ahead

The ceasefire talks are going to dominate everything. Pakistan-mediated talks between the US and Iran kicked off yesterday and what comes out of that room will set the tone for Monday (and potentially the foreseeable).

As markets push higher we expect gold to keep climbing as a hedge to debt, a theme that will likely take control of the news cycle again soon.

The ASX is still within striking distance of all-time highs and small-cap volumes tend to pick up when the big end of town is running.

Gold looks to have found a base around US$4,750/oz, and if we'd said that figure two years ago we'd have jumped at it. With sovereign debt piling up and inflation staying sticky, we expect that base to hold.

There's still a lot of upside in small-cap gold discoveries and developments.

A few of our portfolio names have drill programs kicking off or results pending over the coming weeks, so there’s plenty to watch.

Though as we’ve all learned by now, one post on Truth Social can rearrange the whole board.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (”Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 2,083,333 MRD performance rights, and 200,000 10x at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, 10X and MRD at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Exultant Mining’s (ASX:10X) Peak View prospect sits in the Lachlan Fold Belt in New South Wales, a mineral belt that's produced some of Australia's biggest base metal deposits.

50 g/t gold at Undoo Creek and 339 g/t silver at Big Badja grabbed the headlines over the past month for 10X, but Peak View's base metal target is the drill program they’ve been building towards since listing in December.

Historical drilling at Peak View hit zinc, lead, copper and silver, but only tested a small part of the system. 10X’s soil sampling has since defined a 900-metre mineralised corridor, and new IP and gravity surveys have now defined several large targets along the same trend that have never been tested.

10X is trading at around 19 cents a share with roughly $4 million in cash. Strip out the cash and you’re paying about $3 million for everything else. Drilling starts in late April.

At that price, the market is paying almost nothing for a funded drill program on a structure that hosts Captains Flat, one of NSW's biggest historic base metal mines, and more than 30 mineral occurrences along strike.

Why Peak View matters

The Lachlan Fold Belt has produced base metal deposits worth billions.

Captains Flat was one of NSW's largest, producing lead, zinc, copper, silver and gold from the 1880s through to 1962.

Woodlawn, owned by Develop Global (~$1.7B market cap), is now being brought back into production after Trafigura backed it with a US$65 million offtake deal.

Both sit along the same broader structural trend as Peak View.

The region has produced multiple base metal systems and those two deposits alone show what scale looks like when you find something real in this belt.

At $7 million, 10X is the cheapest way into this belt. The historical drilling proved the system carries grade.

The new geophysics says the best parts were never touched. Late April will tell us whether that gap between the geology and the valuation closes.

What the Surveys Found

The IP survey tested the soil anomaly we mentioned above and identified four priority target zones. Two of them stand out.

A soil anomaly is exactly what it sounds like. Elevated metal values show up at surface, usually because mineralisation sitting deeper underground has weathered and left traces in the dirt above it.

It tells you something is down there. It doesn’t tell you how much.

The first is a 700-metre chargeability anomaly sitting west of all the historical drilling.

Chargeability is a geophysics term that measures how strongly rocks hold an electrical charge after a current passes through them.

Sulphide minerals hold charge well, and sulphide minerals are what host metals like copper, lead and zinc.

So a strong chargeability response is the geophysicist’s way of saying “there’s probably sulphides down there.”

Historical drilling hit mineralisation beside a chargeability response of around eight milliseconds. The newly identified western anomaly exceeds 12 milliseconds, and nobody has ever put a drill hole into it.

The weaker signal had metal. The stronger signal is untested.

The second sits directly beneath the widest part of the surface anomaly and shows both high chargeability and high resistivity.

Resistivity measures how easily electricity moves through rock. When chargeability and resistivity both increase in the same spot, it often means sulphides are concentrated within a structured rock unit rather than scattered through surrounding material.

For the non-geos, that means the metals are likely sitting in one place rather than smeared across the landscape, and gives the drillers something to aim at.

Historic hole PVI010, drilled within 40 metres of this anomaly, returned 1.3m at 3.4% zinc, 1.4% lead, 21 g/t silver and 0.14% copper from 106 metres downhole.

That's real metal, right next door to a stronger anomaly that has never been tested.

A third target sits down-dip of massive sulphides hit by earlier drilling, where PVI006 returned 4.4m at 342.7 g/t silver, 4% lead, 1.1% copper, 0.74 g/t gold and 0.84% zinc from 48.7 metres. A resistivity anomaly beneath it suggests the system continues at depth and has never been followed up.

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Gravity Anomaly Lines Up With a Major Fault

The ground gravity survey defined a 1.1 kilometre long gravity high that lines up with the western chargeability anomaly.

Gravity surveys pick up changes in rock density underground.

Dense rocks pull harder on the gravity meter. Sulphide accumulations are dense compared to surrounding rocks, so a gravity high can point to sulphides at depth.

When the gravity high and the chargeability anomaly land on the same spot, it strengthens the case that there’s sulphide accumulation sitting below.

This anomaly sits beside the Peak View Thrust, interpreted as the southern continuation of the Narongo Fault.

That structure hosts the Captains Flat deposit and more than 30 mineral occurrences along strike.

When you’re exploring near a fault system with that kind of track record, the odds improve. It tells you the plumbing was there to move mineralised fluids through the rock.

Most of the historical drilling targeted a gravity low. The gravity high corridor, where the strongest chargeability and gravity responses overlap, was missed entirely.

Where the Structures Cross

Magnetic data has identified several cross-cutting structures intersecting the prospect.

In base metal systems like this, the interesting spots are where big regional faults meet smaller cross structures.

Think of the big fault as the highway and the cross structures as the off-ramps. Where those pathways hit favourable rock units, metals can concentrate into defined zones instead of spreading thin.

At Peak View, the widest part of the surface metal anomaly sits where one of these cross structures intersects the main trend.

The strongest geophysical anomaly sits in the same spot.

Every dataset is pointing at the same piece of ground. Soils, IP, gravity and now the structural interpretation all converge on one area.

That suggests one connected system running through the prospect.

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What Comes Next

10X has already lodged drilling applications covering 15 holes and is finishing final targeting work before mobilisation. Late April is the current timeline.

Peak View is only one component of the broader project area. Big Badja and Undoo Creek remain separate exploration opportunities within the same district-scale footprint.

At 19 cents with $4 million in cash, the enterprise value is sitting around $3 million. That's for a funded drill program across multiple targets on a proven mineralised structure, with two other prospects already putting out high-grade surface results.

Fifteen holes will tell us a lot. We think the ground will do the talking.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 200,000 10X shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by 10X at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Met work can often be a project killer, but the results from Grass Patch show MRD has cleared that hurdle.

Using a simple acid leach, up to 86.5% of the heavy rare earths were extracted from the clay, with dysprosium and terbium - the two most valuable elements in the deposit - responding strongest.

For a stock where the big question is "can you actually get the valuable metals out," this is a solid first answer.

MRD trades at 3 cents with a $41 million market cap. Victory Metals (ASX: VTM), the most advanced comparable WA clay-hosted heavy rare earth play, sits at around $207 million.

The metallurgy was the biggest unknown hanging over this stock. It's looking a lot less unknown today.

Why Are Dysprosium and Terbium a Big Deal?

There are 17 rare earth elements. Many of them are relatively common, and plenty of projects around the world are chasing them.

Dysprosium and terbium are a different story.

Terbium oxide trades at around US$970/kg inside China. Western buyers pay closer to US$1,200/kg after export duties and licensing costs. Dysprosium oxide runs about US$220/kg domestically, with Western prices carrying a similar markup.

Those prices reflect the fact that every EV motor, every offshore wind turbine, every guided missile system and every industrial robot needs dysprosium or terbium to stop its permanent magnets from overheating. Standard magnets lose their strength as temperatures climb, and a small addition of either element fixes that.

Beijing decides who gets supply and how much they pay for it. That premium has been widening since April 2025, when China imposed export controls on both elements.

There’s no substitute for either element, and China controls almost all global supply.

European prices nearly tripled within weeks after China’s export control. A temporary suspension followed, but it expires in November 2026, and nobody is confident about what comes next.

Western governments are desperate for alternative supply. The US, EU and Australia have all flagged heavy rare earths as critical and billions of dollars in government funding is flowing toward building supply chains outside Chinese control.

That’s the backdrop for Mount Ridley.

What Grass Patch Actually Carries

The Grass Patch Complex sits about 55km northeast of Esperance in WA. MRD's HREE mineral resource across Blocks 1 and 2 comes in at 122.5 million tonnes grading 889 ppm total rare earth oxide, with 364 ppm of that being heavy rare earth oxide.

Grass Patch runs a 41% heavy rare earth ratio. That's 364 ppm of heavy rare earth oxide out of a total 889 ppm, meaning nearly half the rare earth content at Grass Patch falls in the high-value basket.

In most clay-hosted deposits around the world, light rare earths dominate. At Grass Patch, nearly half the rare earth content is the expensive stuff - with dysprosium and terbium sitting at the top of the value chain.

Victory Metals at North Stanmore runs about 39%. That puts MRD at the top end for this style of deposit on the ASX.

MRD also holds the Mia resource (Block 3) at 168 million tonnes grading 1,201 ppm TREO, though that block skews toward light rare earths rather than heavies.

And MRD is sitting on a 367.9 million tonne scandium resource and an 838.7 million tonne gallium resource across the broader project. Both metals have their own supply problems, and both could add by-product value if the processing pathway works.

We’ll come back to those later.

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The Met Results: Old Data, New Relevance

The testwork released today was originally run between 2021 and 2023 across several Grass Patch prospects including Vincent, Winstons and Jody.

It was designed before MRD pivoted to heavy rare earths, so the programs were targeting total rare earth extraction rather than dysprosium and terbium specifically.

That's actually what makes the results so interesting. The conditions weren't set up for the heavies, and the heavies still came out best.

Here's what came back:

• At Winstons, which sits inside the current mineral resource, heavy rare earth leach recoveries hit 86.5%. Across the broader Grass Patch Complex, HREE recoveries averaged around 50%, with multiple samples coming in well above that.

• Magnet rare earths - that's the combination of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium that goes into permanent magnets - recovered at up to 85.2% at Vincent, averaging 76.9% under the best conditions.

In most clay-hosted rare earth deposits, the light rare earths leach more easily than the heavies. At Grass Patch it's the other way around.

The geology here is different from the typical clay-hosted systems you see elsewhere in Australia and globally, and that different geology appears to make the valuable elements easier to extract.

For a company trying to build a project around heavy rare earths, that's about as good a starting point as you could ask for.

The next round, designed specifically around dysprosium and terbium extraction, should tell us how much further those recoveries can go.

Making Sense of Beneficiation

Beneficiation is about removing waste material before you start the expensive chemical extraction process.

Think of it like panning for gold, you’re getting rid of the stuff you don’t want so you can concentrate what you do want into a smaller, richer package.

At Grass Patch, MRD tested a simple screening process using a 75-micron sieve, roughly the thickness of a human hair. The rare earths passed through the screen into the finer material, while the coarser barren waste sat on top.

The results showed that more than 80% of the rare earth content ended up in roughly half of the sample mass. The other half, mostly barren silica, can be tossed out before processing even begins.

Grade improvements averaged 164%, with one sample more than doubling its grade just by screening, turning 498 ppm rare earth oxide into 1,007 ppm.

Processing costs money. Every tonne of clay that goes through a chemical leach circuit costs money in reagents, energy, water and processing time.

If you can bin half the material upfront and still keep 80% of the rare earths, you've taken a big chunk out of your operating costs before you've even started on the chemistry.

Scandium and Gallium: The Extras in the Basket

We mentioned these two earlier. Here's a quick primer on why they matter.

Scandium is basically a steroid for aluminium. A small amount turns standard aluminium into something dramatically stronger and lighter, which is why aerospace and defence manufacturers have been trying to get their hands on as much of it as possible.

The problem is supply. The entire world produces about 25 tonnes of scandium a year.

MRD’s scandium resource sits at 367.9 million tonnes grading 57.3 ppm.

Gallium is the metal behind the next generation of semiconductors - the chips going into 5G networks, EV fast chargers and military radar.

China dominates production and has already imposed export controls. MRD's gallium resource runs to 838.7 million tonnes grading 29.3 ppm, which on paper represents roughly 34 years of current global production.

Neither metal has been part of the leach testwork yet. MRD flagged in today's announcement that it's planning met studies to see whether scandium and gallium can be extracted alongside the rare earths through the same processing pathway.

If that works, it means extra revenue without a separate processing circuit. That's a meaningful addition to the project economics.

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What Comes Next

Today's results are a baseline. The testwork was run before MRD had defined its Blocks 1 and 2 mineral resource, and before the company had zeroed in on dysprosium and terbium as the main game.

That means the next round carries more weight - it'll be designed specifically around those two elements, using material from inside the defined resource rather than broader prospect samples.

Here's what's ahead:

• Fresh metallurgical testwork specifically targeting the HREE mineralisation within the defined resource, with conditions optimised for dysprosium and terbium extraction rather than total rare earth recovery.

• Combined recovery studies assessing whether scandium and gallium can be extracted alongside rare earths, potentially through a single processing pathway producing a mixed rare-earth carbonate product.

• Flowsheet development, building on the beneficiation and leach results to design an integrated processing route from raw clay through to a saleable product.

Behind the scenes, the company is bringing in outside expertise. Discussions are underway with Australian and international specialists in rare earth processing, and the Lawrence Livermore collaboration feeds directly into this next phase.

Lawrence Livermore is one of the US Department of Energy's premier labs. The collaboration is part of the forward met work program.

Most juniors at this stage can't get a meeting with a lab like that, let alone a formal partnership.

And once you're in that ecosystem, the funding pathways that come with it - US government grants, defence procurement channels, critical minerals financing - open up fast.

The heavy rare earths leach. The beneficiation works. The next question is how far optimised testwork can push the numbers - which MRD will be answering through 2026 - and whether Grass Patch can start the transition from resource to development.

At this valuation, the market is giving you a lot of room if it does.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (”Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club has 2,083,333 performance rights in MRD. Equities Club has been engaged by MRD at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

A maiden exploration target of 180 to 240 million tonnes grading 0.86% to 1.0% rutile, outlined in roughly three months of drilling since FUN acquired the Mkanda project.

We added FUN to our portfolio at 4c because the geology looked like a continuation of Sovereign Metals' (ASX: SVM) Kasiya, the world's largest rutile deposit, sitting 20km to the north.

SVM is valued at around $450 million. FUN trades at roughly $25 million, and today is the first time the story has real tonnage behind it.

But the number that matters most for FUN might be 4.1 metres, the average depth the assays actually cover. The holes went to around 8 metres and the mineralised system at Kasiya runs 20 to 30 metres deep, so FUN hasn't come close to testing the full extent of what's there.

Only a third of Fortuna’s 359 holes have been fully assayed. Aircore drilling starts in late May to push below the water table and test the deeper system, and if Mkanda behaves anything like Kasiya did when deeper drilling started, this target is a fraction of what’s there.

Three months of drilling. That’s all it took to outline a target already sitting in the same league as globally relevant rutile deposits.

FUN now has a published exploration target on ground directly along strike from the world’s largest rutile deposit, and the share price still doesn’t reflect it. We think that changes from here.

Why Rutile, Why Now

We wrote about the humanoid robot angle back in November and said it was moving quicker than most people expected.

We undercooked it.

This has moved past demo reels and conference-stage theatre. The factory rollout is already happening.

A week ago, Foshan opened China’s first automated humanoid production line. It is built for more than 10,000 units a year and is turning out one robot every 30 minutes.

They’re not the only ones scaling up.

Agibot just rolled out its 10,000th humanoid. Unitree (who’s about to go public at US$610 million) shipped around 5,500 last year and is targeting capacity of up to 75,000 a year.

Tesla has repurposed part of its Fremont factory for Optimus production. Figure AI is sitting at a $39 billion valuation. Boston Dynamics has its entire 2026 Atlas production already spoken for by Hyundai and Google DeepMind. We could go on.

The industry has evolved from a dancer in spandex on a Tesla stage five years ago to real factories shipping real robots at increasing scale.

Every one of these robots needs titanium. The frames, joints and structural components rely on titanium alloys because nothing else gives you the same strength at the weight.

Fortuna’s Malawi project sits along strike from the world’s largest rutile deposit and has only been tested to shallow depths so far.

Rutile is the cleanest, highest-grade natural feedstock for titanium production. It sits at the top of the feedstock pyramid, and processors pay a premium for it because lower-grade alternatives like ilmenite cost more to upgrade and create more waste.

Each humanoid robot is estimated to contain around 10.4 kilograms of rutile.

Factories are already producing 10,000 units a year. Others are planning for hundreds of thousands.

That’s a lot of rutile, and there aren’t many places to get it.

Natural rutile deposits are rare and legacy producers are in decline. And titanium demand is only going one way as robotics, aerospace and defence all scale up.

Fortuna Metals is one of a handful of ASX companies sitting on a large-scale rutile system with real drilling behind it. Mkanda sits 11km from a major railway connected to the deep-water port at Nacala, one of the best export corridors on Africa’s east coast.

The demand story and the deposit are lining up at the same time.

That doesn’t happen often.

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How These Deposits Get Bigger

Rutile at Mkanda sits inside a weathered layer of rock called saprolite. Tropical weathering has been breaking down the original rock for millions of years, and the rutile concentrates through the full depth of that weathered zone.

The deeper you drill into it, the more rutile you tend to find.

The hand auger rigs FUN has been using can’t push past the water table. Once the ground gets saturated, the samples turn to mush, and at Mkanda that’s been cutting holes off at around 8 metres.

Aircore drilling, which starts in late May, solves that problem.

It punches through the wet ground and keeps going until it hits saprock, the hard unweathered rock at the base of the system where the mineralised zone ends.

At Kasiya, that base sits 20 to 30 metres down. When Sovereign tested that deeper zone at Kasiya, the resource went from 644 million tonnes to 2.1 billion tonnes.

FUN is at the stage Sovereign was before that growth kicked in.

Another 245 holes worth of assays are still in the pipeline too, so even before the deeper drilling starts there’s more data coming through.

The Valuation Gap

An exploration target tells you potential scale based on initial drilling and geological interpretation, and further work is needed before a formal resource can be declared.

But it does let you start comparing apples with apples.

FUN’s target of 180 to 240 million tonnes is roughly one tenth of Kasiya’s 2.1 billion tonne resource. One tenth of SVM’s $450 million valuation would imply about $45 million.

FUN trades at roughly $25 million.

That’s already a gap, and it’s based on a target built from shallow drilling with two thirds of the assays still outstanding. There are clear pathways for it to grow:

• Deeper drilling toward the 20-30 metre saprock boundary starting in late May

• Another 245 holes worth of assays still in the pipeline

• Resource drilling on a 200m grid starting late April, aimed at supporting a maiden inferred resource in H2 2026

• Graphite results from 241 holes expected in Q2

Each of those could change how much of the Lilongwe Plain mineral system ultimately sits within Fortuna’s tenure.

We've done this comparison in past articles and the numbers keep moving in FUN's favour. Back in 2019, SVM was valued at around $35 million and was just starting to show rutile continuity across its ground. Twelve months later it was $160 million.

FUN is sitting below that starting line with three batches of drill results and a published exploration target already in hand.

And FUN has barely scratched the surface of its own ground. The Mkanda and Kampini licences cover 658 square kilometres of the same geological corridor that hosts Kasiya. FUN controls roughly 70km of strike along it.

So far the company has drilled 675 holes across about 180 square kilometres, all on wide 400 to 800m spacing designed to find the mineralised zones.

Kampini, the southern licence, has had almost no work done on it yet.

The exploration target released today covers a portion of one project. The corridor keeps going.

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Graphite is the Bonus Round

Today's exploration target is rutile only. But Mkanda is a multi-commodity system, and graphite assays from 241 drill holes are expected in Q2.

At Kasiya, graphite changed the economics of the entire project. The ore reserve went from 1.03% rutile to 2.00% rutile equivalent once graphite credits were included. It effectively doubled the payable mineral content from the same tonnes of rock.

That change helped demonstrate that the deposit could supply both titanium feedstock for aerospace and industrial markets and graphite that goes into energy storage and battery manufacturing.

POSCO, one of the world's largest battery materials manufacturers, confirmed that graphite from Kasiya could be processed into material suitable for lithium-ion batteries.

That’s not a formal offtake agreement, but it shows graphite in this corridor can support a second customer base separate from rutile buyers.

SVM also recently signed an offtake MOU with Traxys, a major global commodity trader, covering up to 80,000 tonnes per annum of Kasiya graphite.

Graphite grades at Kasiya increased with depth. FUN hasn’t tested that deeper zone yet, and aircore drilling will be the first real look at whether the same pattern holds at Mkanda.

If it does, FUN goes from a rutile story to a rutile-plus-graphite story, and that’s a very different conversation with offtake partners.

Our Take

We got into FUN at 4c. At 8.3c with a published exploration target and drilling about to step up across two programs, we’re comfortable holding.

The news flow runs through the rest of the year. Remaining assays, deeper drilling, graphite results, and a maiden inferred resource targeted for the second half of 2026. That’s a lot of catalysts for a $25 million company sitting on the same corridor as a $450 million peer.

This is still early-stage exploration. Drilling can throw curveballs and resource estimates don't always land where early results suggest.

But we think FUN is one of the most mis-priced small-caps on the ASX right now, and today’s announcement is the first real proof of scale behind that view.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

The overriding sentiment seemed to be we’ll worry about it after the long weekend. Which is a pretty Aussie way to deal with a crisis.

Trump followed up Thursday claiming the US had “completely won” in Iran, then said they’d need a few more weeks to wrap things up. Gold and silver gave back ground on the contradiction, and the ASX followed.

It was a shortened week, with plenty of noise up top, but the small end kept moving.

Firstly, a Happy Easter from all of us at Equities Club. Now here’s what caught our eye this week:

• 10X builds momentum at Big Badja with its best silver hit yet

• MRD's chairman puts his money where his mouth is

• Gold and silver soften as the US stays put in Iran

• Uranium juniors surge as sector sentiment returns

• NeuroScientific rockets on Crohn's disease progress

• We caught up with Cosmo Metals, a $5 million gold explorer with near-term drills

• A humanoid robotics IPO and what it means for the supply chain

10X Keeps Delivering at Big Badja

Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) dropped more sampling results this week from Big Badja, part of the broader Peak View Project in NSW. And the grades keep climbing.

We had 10X's exploration manager in studio this week to walk through the results. Video below.

The standout was a new rock chip sample returning 339 g/t silver, 1.8% lead and 0.4 g/t gold. That's the highest-grade modern assay the company has recorded from the historic workings.

Rock chips are hand-picked samples so they're not representative of bulk grade, but they tell you the system carries serious metal. And the consistency across multiple samples backs that up - 256 g/t silver, 108 g/t silver, and 93.4 g/t silver with 3.32% lead from earlier rounds.

A trial IP line run across the historic mine confirmed a chargeability anomaly sitting directly beneath the old workings, open at depth. Nobody has ever drilled this target with modern techniques and it’s a first pass at something that could extend the system well beyond what's visible at surface.

Big Badja sits on a 15 km granite-sediment contact with a 3 km Pb-Zn soil anomaly nearby. There’s a lot of ground still to test across the wider Peak View tenure.

We backed 10X in early February and the team hasn't slowed down since. At 19c with a $7 million valuation and roughly $4 million in cash, the company is spending money on the ground while the silver price sits in a holding pattern because of Iran. When that resolves, 10X will be well placed to have the targets ready to go.

Mount Ridley Mines on The Front Foot

Mount Ridley Mines (ASX: MRD) hosted an investor webinar this week, and the most telling moment had nothing to do with slides.

Chairman David Wall recently bought roughly $180k worth of shares on market. For a junior explorer with a $40 million market cap, that's a decent cheque. On the webinar, he said he wouldn't be buying if a near-term capital raise was coming.

That takes one of the main risks off the table heading into a busy stretch.

If you didn’t get the chance to listen in, we have the link here.

We added MRD to the portfolio on March 24 and you can read the full breakdown here. The short version: three critical minerals from one deposit in WA, a maiden JORC resource, a partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and a market cap that looks light next to its nearest peer.

The webinar filled in more colour on the Grass Patch project. The heavy rare earth resource is 41% heavy rare earth elements, with significant dysprosium and terbium endowment - two elements China has slapped export controls on and the same ones the Pentagon is stockpiling.

The peer comparison that keeps coming up is Victory Metals (ASX:VTM), which hosts a similar rare earth system in WA and trades at roughly $207 million.

MRD sits at around $40 million with additional scandium and gallium resources that VTM doesn’t have.

The gap between $40 million and $207 million is where the opportunity sits, and the path from here runs through metallurgy and resource growth.

On the scandium side, MRD already holds the second-largest JORC scandium resource in the western world behind Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX: SRL), which carries a $1.3 billion valuation.

The company has around 20,000 historical drill pulps sitting in storage to be assayed. If those come back with decent grades, the resource grows without a single new hole in the ground.

The 2026 catalyst list is busy:

• Assaying historical pulps for scandium growth potential

• Metallurgical work underway with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• Seven walk up drill targets ready across Grass Patch

• Early flow sheet development

• Downstream partnership and government funding discussions

With $2.5 million in cash and no near-term raise on the horizon, MRD is funded to tick most of that list off through 2026. We'll be watching closely as they work through it

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Gold and Silver Give Back Ground

Gold had been charging toward US$4,800/oz and silver was up over 10% for the week, nearly touching US$80/oz. The market had priced in the US leaving the Middle East, and precious metals were running on it.

Trump’s Thursday speech killed that momentum. The US looks to be staying put for the next few weeks (at least), and both metals pulled back as traders recalculated.

Right now, gold and silver are trading almost entirely on what happens in Iran. Until there’s a clearer picture on the conflict, we’d expect both to stay choppy.

For small-cap explorers, the soft patch is actually useful. Drill programs take months to plan, permit and execute, and results don't come back overnight.

Companies doing the work now could have news landing right around the time the conflict picture clears up and sentiment improves. The ones sitting on their hands waiting for a better market will be scrambling to catch up.

We continue to hold our full positions across the precious metals side of the portfolio:

• Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL) - Drilling for gold in Victoria

• Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) - On the ground in NSW building towards a near-term gold drilling campaign

• Asian Battery Metals (ASX: AZ9) - Working towards a copper-gold drilling campaign in Mongolia

Uranium Juniors Catch a Bid

A few small-cap uranium names had a strong week on the ASX, and we didn’t see it coming.

American Uranium (ASX: AMU) was the standout, up nearly 40% after releasing an updated resource for its Lo Herma Project in Wyoming.

The interim resource now sits at 945 Mlbs eU₃O₈. For a company trading under $20 million, that's a resource approaching the billion-pound mark.

To put that in context, several producing or near-production ISR operations in Wyoming and Texas are running on resource bases in the tens to low hundreds of millions of pounds.

The deposit also looks suitable for in-situ recovery mining, which is the cheaper end of uranium extraction.

Instead of building an open pit or going underground, ISR circulates solution through the ore body to recover uranium in place. If the project advances, that keeps development costs and complexity well below what a conventional mine would need.

The jump in share price reflects renewed investor appetite for uranium exposure as energy security continues to dominate the macro backdrop.

Cauldron Energy (ASX: CXU) surged almost 80% during the week without any price-sensitive news, which earned it a formal ASX price query. CXU put the move down to broader uranium sector strength and growing attention on nuclear power globally.

Both moves are a reminder of how fast sentiment can swing back into uranium when the macro lines up. These stocks can sit dormant for months and then move 40-80% in a week.

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NSB Jumps 40% on Crohn’s Progress

NeuroScientific Biopharmaceuticals (ASX: NSB) was up roughly 40% this week after hitting a manufacturing milestone for its StemSmart™ platform ahead of Phase 2 clinical trials.

StemSmart™ is being developed to treat fistulising Crohn’s disease, one of the most severe forms of Crohn’s where ongoing inflammation creates small tunnels between the bowel and surrounding tissue.

These are extremely difficult to treat and often do not respond to existing therapies, leaving patients with limited options. StemSmart™ is designed to reduce the inflammation driving the disease and support the body’s ability to repair damaged tissue itself.

The company confirmed the first manufacturing transfer run has begun with Q-Gen Cell Therapeutics in Brisbane, which is the step that gets them to actual clinical trial material ahead of a planned Phase 2 study in the second half of 2026.

The global Crohn's treatment market is expected to exceed US$13 billion, so the commercial prize is huge if the science holds up.

That's often a big ‘if’ with any biotech, and the share price from here will live and die on trial timing and results, but it’s one for the watch list.

A $5 Million Gold Explorer Worth a Look

We caught up with Cosmo Metals (ASX: CMO) this week. It's a micro-cap gold and antimony explorer sitting under $5 million with about $1.5 million in cash.

Safe to say it’s firmly in "one good drill hole changes everything" territory.

Managing Director Ian Prentice walked us through what’s coming, and the drill calendar for the next few months is fuller than you’d expect for a company this size.

In WA, CMO is about to drill the Kanowna Gold Project, right next door to Northern Star’s Kanowna Belle operations near Kalgoorlie. An EIS grant is helping fund the program.

The project sits along the same structural corridor that hosts several multi-million ounce deposits, and historical drilling has already returned 18m at 5.3g/t and 10m at 4.7g/t gold. And they're about to find out if there's more where that came from.

Over in NSW, CMO controls a big ground position across the historic Bingara goldfields, where recent drilling returned 6m at 9.99g/t gold from just 11m depth.

So it’s shallow, high-grade, and barely scratched.

Two active projects in proven gold regions gives them more than one shot at it, which is as much as you can ask for from a $5 million explorer. It’s worth keeping a close eye on.

Humanoid Robots Are Getting Real. The Supply Chain Should Too.

One of the more interesting IPO stories this week came out of China. Unitree Robotics is preparing to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, looking to raise around US$610 million.

Unitree is already profitable. In 2025 the business did roughly US$250 million in revenue and delivered around US$90 million in net profit. Humanoid platforms now make up more than half of core revenue.

That’s worth pausing on. This is a humanoid robotics company that’s actually making money, not burning through cash pitching a prototype.

They're targeting production capacity of 75,000 humanoid robots annually in the near term. Tesla is aiming to start commercial sales of Optimus by 2027 with ambitions above a million units in the short term.

If even a fraction of those production targets land, the metals demand that follows is enormous. And it could be worth having one or more humanoid associated narrative plays in your shortlist.

We’ve backed Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN) on this theme. FUN is exploring for rutile in Malawi, right next door to the world’s largest rutile deposit held by Sovereign Metals with Rio Tinto backing.

Every humanoid frame needs titanium, and the cleanest path to titanium is rutile.

At 8.3c with a market cap of roughly $25 million, FUN has a big upside. If the humanoid supply chain story plays out the way the production numbers suggest it could, rutile demand is only heading one direction.

The Week Ahead

Markets will keep swinging on whatever comes out of Iran, or Trump’s press conferences, each day.

Until there’s a clearer picture on the conflict, that’s just how it is. And the fuel supply conversation in Canberra could move from “catch the bus” to something more serious pretty quickly.

Our portfolio is heading into a busy stretch. We'd rather be holding companies doing work during the quiet periods than chasing them after sentiment turns.

Enjoy the long weekend. Eat some chocolate. Try not to look at the price of petrol on the drive home.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (”Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 187,500 BHL shares, 2,083,333 MRD performance rights, 1,150,000 AZ9 Shares, and 200,000 10x at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, BHL, 10X, AZ9 and MRD at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) just dropped 339 g/t silver from rock chip sampling around the old workings at the historic Big Badja Silver Mine - the highest-grade result yet from the target.

A trial IP survey lit up directly beneath the mine, and the anomaly stays open at depth.

Every result like this is stacking the deck in favour of 10X before the rig shows up to test a system that hasn’t been touched in 136 years.

Silver’s more than doubled since the start of last year. It spiked to an all-time high above US$121/oz in January and sits around US$70 today, even after a sharp pullback.

If you've been following our coverage, Exultant Mining’s broader tenement package will ring a bell. Big Badja sits within Peak View, the same project that delivered 50.9 g/t gold rock chips at Undoo Creek last week.

What started as a gold story now has exposure to the two hottest commodities of the past 18 months.

At a $7 million market cap with more than $4 million in cash, 10X has two active high-grade systems on one tenement. One gold, one silver, and both heading toward the drill.

High-Grade Silver From a Mine Nobody Drilled

We covered the basics above. Here’s where the historical detail gets interesting.

The Warden’s Report from the era documents silver grades of up to 334 oz/t from just six metres depth. In modern terms, that’s 9,469 g/t Ag.

The main shaft reached 30 metres before it collapsed, and the reasons for shutting down were never properly recorded.

Alongside the 339 g/t headline result, four other rock chips from 10X came back with grade from around the old workings:

• 339 g/t Ag, 1.8% Pb and 0.4 g/t Au

• 256 g/t Ag, 4.82% Pb and 0.36 g/t Au

• 108 g/t Ag

• 93.4 g/t Ag and 3.32% Pb

• 63.4 g/t Ag

Silver and lead are showing up together across multiple samples. In vein systems like Big Badja, that pairing usually means the mineralisation has depth to it.

The veins sit along a contact between granite and sediment, a geological boundary that acts like plumbing for metal-bearing fluids. That same structure is what made the IP survey work.

The geophysics can see it, and it lit up.

Rock chips are hand-picked surface samples, so they’ll skew toward the best stuff on the ground. They tell you the system carries metal, not what grade it’ll run at when you drill it.

But five separate results between 63 and 339 g/t silver, clustered around workings where the Warden’s Report recorded grades in the thousands, says there’s a real system here carrying real metal.

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The IP Gives Them a Map

Some early-stage explorers at this market cap would be punching holes based on surface samples and a best guess.

10X has a geophysical response sitting directly under the old workings that tells them where the sulphides are and how deep they go.

10X ran a trial induced polarisation (IP) survey line over the mine, and the result was clean and stays open at depth.

That means the sulphide mineralisation that carries the silver continues well below where the old-timers stopped digging, and the first drill hole at Big Badja can target something specific.

The next round of work is more IP lines to push the depth penetration further and test along strike of the granite-sediment contact.

There’s also a 3km lead-zinc soil anomaly sitting about three kilometres north of Big Badja along the same structural corridor.

If that anomaly turns out to be another Big Badja-style target, you’re looking at district-scale potential across a 15km contact zone that’s barely been touched.

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The Commodity Tailwind

Gold and silver have both pulled back hard from their highs earlier this year. Gold’s off more than 20% from above US$5,500 in January. Silver’s dropped from US$121 to around US$70.

But zoom out and the picture is still strong. Gold’s up more than 40% over the past year. Silver’s more than doubled. Both corrections look ugly on a short-term chart, but the longer-term run hasn’t broken.

For a pre-drill explorer, commodity prices are the tide that lifts or sinks everything. You can have the best geology in the world, but if the metal you’re chasing is in a bear market, the phone doesn’t ring.

Even after the pullback, the cycle is still working in 10X's favour. Gold and silver explorers heading into their first drill program don't often get a commodity backdrop like this.

Our Take

The drill will decide this one. Rock chips and geophysics can tell you a system is there. Only the bit going into the ground confirms what’s underneath.

But the surface work at Big Badja keeps delivering. Five rock chips between 63 and 339 g/t silver from a mine that’s sat idle since 1890, an IP anomaly open at depth, and silver sitting at US$70 after more than doubling in a year.

A couple of weeks ago it was 50.9 g/t gold at Undoo Creek. Now it’s 339 g/t silver at Big Badja. Two high-grade systems on one tenement, both heading toward the drill, with more than $4 million in the bank to get there.

And that’s before you factor in the copper exposure across the broader project portfolio. 10X is a gold, silver and copper company trading at a $7 million valuation.

With 37 million shares on issue and no need to raise capital in the near term, the register is tight. If drill results land at either target, there aren't a lot of shares to absorb the demand.

Only one of these targets needs to come off for a $7 million company to look very different.

We reckon it’s a good place to be sitting when the rig turns up.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 200,000 10X shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by 10X at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

And yet, here we are.

Closer to home, we added Mount Ridley Mines to the portfolio after its maiden heavy rare earth resource in WA, and it ran as much as 42% before settling up nearly 20%. BHL kept climbing with more high-grade gold at Mt Egerton, 10X dropped rock chips up to 50.9 g/t, and Valiant Gold listed with an early 20% pop.

What caught our eye this week:

• Our newest portfolio addition MRD rockets

• 10X delivers high-grade rock chips as it marches towards drilling

• Black Horse Mining reports high-grade gold as deeper drilling awaits

• Humanoids take over the White House

• We sat down with small-cap explorer Albion Resources

• Valiant Gold lists as the price of gold settles

• Firmus and the $6 billion AI IPO heading to the ASX

Mount Ridley Mines Rockets on Maiden Resource

Mount Ridley Mines (ASX: MRD) is our newest portfolio addition, and it wasted no time. The stock ran as much as 42% intraweek before settling up nearly 20%.

The catalyst was a maiden heavy rare earths resource in Western Australia, and the numbers are big. 122.56 million tonnes at 889 ppm TREO, with roughly 109,000 tonnes of rare earth oxides in total.

About 45,000 tonnes of that sits in the more valuable heavy rare earths - dysprosium and terbium - which are the elements you find inside permanent magnets powering everything from defence systems and robotics to wind turbines and electric motors.

The deposit is the same ionic clay style that makes Chinese operations the cheapest rare earth producers on the planet, and early met work shows the most valuable heavy rare earths leach out first.

That's something we'll be watching closely as more technical work comes through.

It also helps that this sits in Western Australia, with real infrastructure nearby and clear export pathways into Asian processing markets. When governments around the world are scrambling to lock in critical mineral supply, being in WA counts for a lot.

You can dive deeper into why we’re bullish on MRD here, which did big numbers earlier in the week:

More drilling is coming to test extensions and expand the system, and at 122 million tonnes, the deposit is already large enough to attract serious attention.

This looks like the first step rather than the peak of the Mount Ridley story.

10X Lights Up Undoo Creek

Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) dropped rock chips this week running at 50.9 g/t, 12.6 g/t, 8.4 g/t and 6.4 g/t gold along a quartz vein system now mapped across 360 metres of strike.

One high-grade rock chip can always grab attention, and plenty of juniors have milked a single result for months. But multiple strong results spread across a mapped corridor is a different story.

The old workings scattered through the area are now being stitched together by modern mapping, and the picture coming into focus looks like a proper mineralised system.

The main vein is cut by several cross-veins coming in at an angle, and the strongest rock chips sit right at those intersections.

In gold systems like this, those junction points act as traps where gold-bearing fluids pool up and drop their load. It gives 10X somewhere to aim a drill and makes sure they’re not just punching holes and hoping.

The historic workings are all shallow, and nobody has ever drilled beneath them. High-grade shoots in these systems tend to plunge, and if that’s the case here, the real prize is sitting at depths that have never been tested.

10X listed in December at 20c with no exploration results. Since then they've confirmed high-grade gold across 360 metres. At a $7 million market cap with over $4 million in cash, drills are getting closer and the homework they’re doing now will make for better holes when they arrive.

BHL Keeps Hitting at Mt Egerton

Our portfolio company Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL) finished the week up 27% after further high-grade results from its Mt Egerton gold project in Victoria.

Hole 26MEDD004 cut a 4.4 metre mineralised zone from 49.65 metres downhole, including 0.5 metres at 20.5 g/t gold and 0.25 metres at 46.2 g/t gold. That extends the known high-grade zone by roughly 10 metres vertically above the earlier intercepts.

These results are still in the shallow portion of the system where the old miners were working. But every hole is tightening the structural picture, and that’s what you need before you start pointing a rig at the deeper stuff.

The next round of drilling goes below the historic mine. In Victoria, that’s usually where things tend to get interesting.

Fosterville and Sunday Creek both strengthened with depth once drilling moved beyond the early workings.

If Mt Egerton follows the same pattern, these shallow hits are just the appetiser. We've been in BHL since listing and the thesis has only firmed up with each hole.

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Humanoids Take Over the White House

We opened with the robot walking alongside the First Lady, and we weren’t being cute. The robotics industry is scaling faster than most people realise.

Not that long ago most people thought EVs were a niche play for rich early adopters. Now they’re on every second driveway. Humanoid robots feel like they’re at that same tipping point.

Elon Musk says Tesla could be producing up to a million humanoid robots per year by the end of next year. Even if he’s half right, the demand for raw materials is about to shift.

Titanium is the metal that makes humanoids work. It's light, it's strong, and it holds up under constant mechanical stress. You can't build a robot that walks, lifts and operates all day out of steel. It's too heavy. Titanium solves that problem, and rutile is the cleanest path to producing it.

This is one of the reasons we backed Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN) and its rutile discovery in Malawi. FUN has moved quickly to strengthen the technical team and fast-track the project toward a maiden resource later this year.

More robots means more titanium. More titanium means more rutile. We like where FUN sits in that chain.

Albion Resources on Our Radar

We sat down with the team at Albion Resources (ASX: ALB) this week after they picked up the Gidgee Gold Project in Western Australia.

Gidgee sits in the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt, which has produced more than 1.1 million ounces historically with an estimated 2 million-plus ounces across the broader district.

The historical drilling is what got our attention. Intercepts like 21 metres at 5.4 g/t gold and 16 metres at 5.52 g/t gold from relatively shallow depths. Those are solid hits for a project that most of the market hasn’t heard of yet.

The average drill depth across the project is only about 54 metres. That’s barely scratching the surface, and it means the system has never been properly tested where it counts.

Albion trades at around $7 million with just under $3 million in cash. Albion now has a clear pathway toward follow-up drilling over the coming months, and we’ll be watching.

Valiant Gold Lists With a Pop

We flagged Valiant Gold (ASX: VAL) as one to watch ahead of its IPO, and it delivered early.

The company listed at 25 cents after spinning out gold assets from Westgold, and closed the week at 30 cents, roughly a 20% gain in the first few days of trading.

Early moves off an IPO can be noise, but they often tell you something about how the market rates the assets being brought to market.

The appeal with spin-outs like this is you’re getting projects that have already had years of technical work done on them by a larger producer. Westgold has spent real money on these assets and Valiant gets to pick up where they left off without starting from scratch.

Valiant now begins the next phase as an independent company with a clear gold focus and a pathway to demonstrate value through exploration results.

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Firmus and the $6 Billion AI IPO

Firmus Technologies is preparing for an ASX listing later this year that could value the company at around A$6 billion. If it gets there, it'll be one of the largest local tech IPOs in recent memory.

The company builds large-scale AI data infrastructure powered by renewable energy. They’re calling them “AI factories”, and they want to roll them out across Australia at a time when access to compute and power is arguably the biggest bottleneck for AI growth globally.

The race for data centre capacity has changed. The big global tech companies already compete for chips and now they’re competing just as hard for electricity. Australia is starting to attract serious attention as a destination for that investment, and Firmus is already running investor roadshows ahead of a raise that could run into the billions.

An IPO at this scale is worth paying attention to for what it says about the broader theme. When a company can raise billions for AI infrastructure in Australia, it pulls capital and attention toward the smaller listed players exposed to data centres and energy supply.

We’ve seen this before. Major LNG builds reshaped how investors looked at Australia’s energy sector a decade ago. AI infrastructure is starting to feel similar.

The Week Ahead

Gold has settled into a range between roughly US$4,300/oz and US$4,500/oz, while oil is holding near US$110 a barrel with markets still pricing in the uncertainty around Iran.

While that situation stays unresolved, this range probably holds. There’s a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how it plays out. Depending on who you listen to, a ceasefire is either close or nowhere near, which makes positioning around both commodities tough in the short term.

If a deal lands, the moves could go in opposite directions. Oil eases as supply risk unwinds, but gold could actually catch a bid again as investors rotate back toward the bigger picture - debt levels, currency settings and longer-term inflation expectations haven’t changed. It’s worth watching closely.

Another for the watchlist is 49 Metals. It’s preparing to list on the ASX with a valuation below $20 million and exposure to gold and silver in Nevada. Recent precious metals IPOs have gone well on debut.

It’s a shorter trading week heading into Easter, so expect the news flow to thin out. But with the Strait still closed and Trump’s ever-changing deadlines for action on Iran, the macro won’t be taking a holiday even if the ASX does.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (”Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 187,500 BHL shares, 2,083,333 MRD performance rights, and 200,000 10x at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, BHL, 10X and MRD at the time of writing.

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Between the war, rising oil prices and the usual post-spike profit-taking, gold’s been pushed through a correction that looks ugly on a two-week chart.

Zoom out though and gold is still up 45% over the past year. And if you’ve been around small-cap mining long enough, you know that pullbacks in the gold price tend to be where the better entry points show up.

Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) just dropped rock chip results from Undoo Creek in NSW, and we think this is one of them.

Rock chips have returned assays of 50.9 g/t, 12.6 g/t, 8.4 g/t and 6.4 g/t gold, all sitting along a quartz vein system that’s now been mapped over 360 metres of strike.

For a company trading at 18.5 cents with a market cap of roughly $7 million and more than $4 million in cash, we think they’re worth a lot more attention.

10X listed in December at 20c per share with no exploration results to its name. Fast forward to today and the company has confirmed high-grade gold mineralisation, the gold price is 4.5% higher than it was on listing, and the share price has drifted back 7.5%.

Smells like opportunity to us.

We wrote about why we're still bullish gold on the weekend. Gold's nearly tripled in two years and the forces behind that run - the debt, the geopolitical mess, central bank buying and the relentless money printing, haven't gone anywhere.

The oil shock and a stronger dollar have knocked it around in the short term, but the bigger picture is intact.

If gold gets moving again, funded explorers putting out 50 g/t rock chips at sub-$10 million valuations don’t stay there for long.

High-grade Gold Across 360m of Mapped Strike

Rock chip sampling is selective by nature, but when you see multiple results above 5 g/t gold spread across 360 metres of mapped quartz veining, with historic shafts and pits dotted along the same corridor, the picture starts to build.

At the Undoo Creek prospect within their Peak View project, Exultant’s latest round of sampling has returned four standout results:

• 50.9 g/t Au

• 12.6 g/t Au

• 8.4 g/t Au

• 6.4 g/t Au

To be clear, rock chips are the best-looking bits of rock on the surface. They don't tell you what grade the system will run at when you drill it. What they do tell you is that the system carries serious gold, and at these grades, it warrants a much closer look with a drill rig.

These sit alongside earlier results of 5.42 g/t and 2.61 g/t Au from the same prospect, reported in January. In our write-up on 10X a few weeks ago, that 5.42 g/t result was one of the things that caught our eye. The grades have now jumped up considerably as the team has mapped more of the system.

Early results said there was gold here. These results say there might be a lot of it.

The vein sits within granite (the Devonian Glenbog Granodiorite, for the geo nerds) that’s common in this part of NSW and a known host for gold mineralisation.

Some sections of the vein crop out at surface, some sit just below, and some are completely buried under soil and vegetation.

Where the vein disappears underground, old shafts and pits mark the trend, telling you where the historical miners were chasing gold.

Those old-timers were clearly picking off the richest pockets they could find along the vein.

Exultant’s modern mapping has stitched those isolated workings together into a single structural picture.

What looked like a handful of separate small mines turns out to be different access points into the same mineralised system running over 360 metres. And that number is still growing - the vein hasn’t been mapped to its limits in either direction.

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Where the Veins Cross

There's a detail buried in this announcement that most people will skim past, but it caught our eye.

The system runs as a main NNW quartz vein cut by several NW-SE veins coming in at an angle. (Stay with us here, this is the bit that tells you where the gold is.)

Where those veins cross each other, you get zones of disruption in the rock, and in gold systems like this, those junction points act as traps.

Hot, gold-bearing fluids moving through the rock pool up at those intersections and drop their gold. That’s where high-grade shoots form.

Several of the strongest rock chip results sit right at or near these intersections. It gives the company a geological reason to aim a drill at specific spots along the vein rather than just punching holes and hoping.

The historic workings at Undoo Creek are all relatively shallow, and the depth extent of the mineralisation is completely untested by modern drilling.

High-grade shoots in systems like this tend to plunge, angling downward into the earth along predictable orientations. If that’s the case here, and the surface data is building a case that it could be, the real prize sits below the old workings at depths that have never seen a drill bit.

At $7 million market cap, you're looking at a gold system that's untested at depth and now has a roadmap for where to point the rig. Every shaft those old miners dug was chasing gold near the surface. Nobody has ever looked underneath them.

What Happens Next

10X is working Undoo Creek toward drill targets.

More mapping, more rock chip sampling to test whether there are parallel veins sitting nearby, and geophysical surveys to figure out how deep the system goes.

None of it is glamorous, but it's the work that makes the difference between a good drill hole and a wasted one.

Plenty of juniors at this market cap would have had a rig on site already, punching holes into underdone targets.

10X is doing the homework first. That tends to produce better holes, and better holes are what move a $7 million company.

Undoo Creek sits within the broader Peak View project corridor. We covered several of Peak View’s prospects in a recent write-up on 10X, and Undoo Creek was one of them. Back then it was early days. These results have put it firmly in the spotlight.

With more than $4 million in cash, 10X has the runway to advance these targets without needing to raise capital in the near term.

In a market where dilution is the silent killer for micro-caps, a funded explorer with no pressure to issue shares is already ahead of most of its peers.

Our Take on 10X

Gold’s pullback has pushed small-cap explorers off most people’s radar. We think that creates a window.

At $7 million market cap with over $4 million in cash, 10X is sitting on an enterprise value of around $2.7 million while putting out rock chip results that would get attention on a company five times this size.

Rock chips are early-stage data, and the grades will need to be confirmed by near-term drilling. But high-grade results keep showing up across a 360-metre system that's untested at depth, and the geology is now giving them clear targets to drill.

For a $2.7 million enterprise value, that's a lot of upside sitting in the ground waiting to be tested.

The market is looking the other way right now, and for a funded explorer putting out 50 g/t rock chips at a $7 million valuation, we’ll take that all day.

Drills are getting closer, and we think the ground will do the talking.

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General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 200,000 10X shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by 10X at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

There are seventeen rare earth elements, but two matter more than the rest right now: dysprosium and terbium. The magnets inside every EV motor, every wind turbine, every military actuator, every industrial robot - they all need these two elements to function at operating temperature.

There is no substitute for either element.

In April 2025, Beijing imposed export controls on both. European dysprosium prices have since quadrupled relative to Chinese domestic prices. Terbium oxide is up over 100% year-to-date.

The Pentagon is stockpiling both elements. The US Department of Energy has been handing out hundreds of millions to anyone with a non-Chinese source, and the Australian and US governments signed a formal framework in October 2025 to fast-track mining and processing in allied jurisdictions.

Meet Mount Ridley Mines (ASX: MRD), our latest portfolio addition.

MRD has just delivered a maiden JORC rare earth resource, and all of that mineralisation sits in the same ground as the company’s existing scandium and gallium resources.

Three critical minerals, one deposit, all from surface.

Each one has its own supply crunch. China controls the rare earths and the gallium. Scandium barely has a supply chain at all - global production is 25 tonnes a year against forecast demand of 117 tonnes.

MRD's numbers are worth sitting with for a $31.9 million market cap. 122.56 million tonnes of mineralised material, containing just under 109,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide, including 4,272 tonnes of dysprosium and 719 tonnes of terbium - the two elements driving the supply panic.

The project sits in Western Australia, 25 kilometres from the deep-water port at Esperance. It’s a tier-one jurisdiction with real infrastructure.

The nearest comparable is Victory Metals (ASX: VTM), a single-commodity clay-hosted rare earth play in WA trading at roughly $180 million. MRD sits at less than a fifth of that, with two additional strategic commodities and over 80% of its 63km mineralised corridor still untested.

That’s the mismatch that caught our eye.

With a stacked catalyst pipeline through 2026 and a bilateral partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - one of the US government’s three nuclear security laboratories - we reckon MRD has the setup to close that gap quickly.

The Maiden Resource - What Landed Today

Today’s Mineral Resource for MRD of 122.56Mt @ 889 ppm contains about 109,000 tonnes of rare earths overall, including roughly 45,000 tonnes of the more valuable heavy rare earths.

Rare earths split into two groups: lights and heavies. The heavies are where the money is.

MRD’s resource has a 41% heavy rare earth ratio. Victory Metals at North Stanmore runs about 39%. That puts MRD at the top end for this style of deposit on the ASX.

Dysprosium and terbium are what stop permanent magnets from demagnetising at high temperatures. Without them, the motor in your EV overheats and the generator in your offshore wind turbine shuts down.

Beijing knows that, which is why they’ve kept a chokehold on processing and slapped export controls on both. If the West wants to build anything with a permanent magnet in it, the supply has to come from somewhere else.

The resource is split across two blocks within the Grass Patch Complex.

Block 2, the larger of the two, hosts 87.18 million tonnes at 947 ppm TREO. Block 1 carries 35.36 million tonnes at 746 ppm.

Both are shallow, flat-lying and continuous from surface to about 52 metres depth.

Shallow is good - it means you can excavate with standard earthmoving gear. No drill and blast. No underground development. This is the same deposit style that has made Chinese ionic clay operations the cheapest rare earth producers on the planet.

The resource also carries roughly 23,500 tonnes of combined neodymium and praseodymium - the light rare earths that form the base of every permanent magnet. The heavies get the headlines, but the lights add real tonnage underneath.

Scandium is basically a steroid for aluminium. Add a tiny amount to an aluminium alloy and it gets dramatically stronger, lighter and more resistant to fatigue.

The aerospace industry has used it for years. More recently, humanoid robot manufacturers have started building frames with scandium-aluminium alloys.

MRD holds 18,855 tonnes of contained scandium. That’s one of the largest JORC-compliant endowments in the world, in a market where global production sits at 25 tonnes a year and 95% comes from China, Russia and Kazakhstan.

Gallium is the metal behind compound semiconductors - the chips powering 5G networks, EV fast chargers and military radar systems.

It’s another commodity where one country controls almost all of the refined supply. MRD’s 24,584 tonnes of contained gallium across 838.7 million tonnes represents roughly 34 years of current world production.

Three critical minerals, same deposit, same ground. Every dollar MRD spends on development has the potential to unlock value across all of them.

Why This Resource is Likely the Starting Point

The Grass Patch Complex runs for 63 kilometres along strike. Today's resource covers about 15 kilometres of that. The other 80% is untested.

The ground either side of the resource blocks shows the same geological signatures - the same gravity anomalies, the same structural controls - as the ground that just produced a 122 million tonne resource. Which is either a coincidence or a much bigger deposit (we know which way we're leaning).

MRD’s geophysics review has identified seven primary gravity targets totalling 33km of untested strike, with the highest-priority area being a 12.8km trend sitting immediately east of the existing blocks.

Between Block 1 and Block 2 sits a 3km zone that has never seen a drill bit - the exact geological setting where thicker, higher-grade heavy rare earth clay zones tend to develop.

MRD's entire rare earth discovery came from going back through old nickel-copper exploration data and recognising what earlier explorers had missed.

About 22,000 archived drill pulps are still sitting in storage, never assayed for rare earths, scandium or gallium.

If even a portion come back with decent grades, the resource grows without a single new hole in the ground.

The cost of sending those to a lab is a fraction of a new drilling campaign, and the company has already proven that approach works.

Drill planning and permitting is underway, with the 2026 targets set to be tested throughout the year. Most juniors at this stage have a maiden resource OR walk-up exploration upside. MRD has both.

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Why These Commodities Matter Right Now

Each of these minerals has its own supply crisis, and MRD sits across all three. The detail on China’s controls and the price moves is covered above.

Here’s what sharpens the picture even further:

Heavy Rare Earths

From January 2027, US defence procurement rules tighten so that permanent magnets used in defence systems cannot contain material mined, refined or processed anywhere in a restricted supply chain, effectively forcing contractors to verify the origin of elements like dysprosium and terbium.

The scramble for non-Chinese supply has a tight deadline.

There aren't many ASX-listed names with a JORC heavy rare earth resource in a tier-one jurisdiction. When that deadline lands, the pool of projects that Western governments can actually back is a lot smaller than most people think

Scandium

Aerospace modelling suggests scandium-aluminium alloys could deliver around US$9 million in lifetime fuel savings for a narrow-body aircraft, based on higher-loading alloy scenarios.

At CES 2026, humanoid robot manufacturers debuted platforms built on scandium-aluminium frames. The use cases are expanding while global supply sits at 25 tonnes a year.

And yet almost nobody produces the stuff. The entire world makes 25 tonnes a year. MRD is sitting on 18,855 tonnes.

Gallium

At US$300 per kilogram with the GaN semiconductor market growing at 27% a year, gallium carries real by-product value on top of MRD’s rare earth and scandium economics.

MRD’s contained gallium of 24,584 tonnes represents about 34 years of current world production.

MRD's contained gallium of 24,584 tonnes represents about 34 years of current world production. Canberra has already put A$200 million behind a gallium processing plant at Alcoa's Wagerup refinery in WA, backed by Washington and Tokyo.

Gallium is near the top of every allied government's shopping list right now.

Five Reasons We’re Backing Mount Ridley Mines (ASX: MRD)

1. Three Strategic Commodities at $31.9 Million

We can’t find another ASX-listed company with JORC resources in heavy rare earths, scandium and gallium from the same deposit. If one exists, we haven’t seen it.

At $31.9 million, the market is barely paying for one of these commodities, let alone all three.

The heavy rare earth resource alone - 44,610 tonnes of contained HREO including 4,272 tonnes of dysprosium and 719 tonnes of terbium at a time when European prices have quadrupled - would justify exploration interest as a standalone project.

Then you add a scandium resource at ~US$3,500 per kilogram oxide and 24,584 tonnes of gallium. The combined in-ground value dwarfs the current market cap, even if you apply heavy discounts for stage and recovery.

We’re always looking for companies where the market is pricing one commodity and missing the rest. MRD has three commodities and the market seems to be pricing none of them properly.

2. VTM at $180 Million vs MRD at $31.9 Million - Where Is the Upside?

This is the comparison that got us over the line.

Victory Metals (ASX: VTM) operates the North Stanmore project at Cue in Western Australia. They describe it as Australia’s largest clay-hosted heavy rare earth project and carry a market capitalisation of roughly $180 million.

Here’s how they stack up against MRD’s maiden resource and what MRD has in the ground:

VTM currently has a larger tonnage in its rare earth resource at 321 million tonnes. But MRD’s maiden resource covers roughly 15 kilometres of a 63-kilometre corridor with 80% of the tenure untested.

Seven primary gravity targets are already defined, covering 33 kilometres of untested strike. The resource has clear room to grow and the company is funded to begin testing it.

On the HREE ratio, MRD’s 41% compares well with VTM’s 39% average. And MRD carries gallium and scandium on top - two strategic commodities VTM has not reported - plus a bilateral partnership with a US nuclear laboratory.

At $31.9 million versus $180 million, MRD trades at about 18 cents in the dollar relative to its nearest comparable, before adjusting for gallium, scandium or the Livermore partnership.

Even applying a 50% discount for MRD’s earlier stage and smaller current REE resource, the implied market cap sits around $90 million.

The upside from here comes down to two things: growing the resource and proving you can get the minerals out of the ground. MRD will be working on both throughout 2026, and if the results land, $31.9 million is going to look cheap in hindsight.

3. Lawrence Livermore - A Partnership With No ASX Peer

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is one of three US nuclear security laboratories. It was founded in 1952 and runs on a US$3.7 billion annual budget with 9,340 staff.

In December 2022, it achieved the first demonstration of nuclear fusion ignition in a laboratory. It is one of the highest-credentialed scientific institutions on the planet.

MRD signed a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) with them in late 2025. Under the MTA, MRD shipped Block 1 core rejects to the laboratory.

A follow-up batch of approximately 200 kilograms has been prepared. The full Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) is being drafted now. The scope covers working out exactly how to extract MRD’s rare earths, scandium and gallium efficiently, tailored to the specific chemistry of this deposit.

That kind of tailored process engineering would normally cost anywhere from $5-20 million through commercial consultants. And under the CRADA, MRD owns all the IP that comes out of the program.

That matters because China doesn’t just control the rare earth deposits - they control the processing. Even projects sitting on US soil still ship their ore to China to get it refined. Developing your own extraction flowsheet, outside that supply chain, is the whole game.

MRD is the only ASX-listed critical mineral company progressing toward a CRADA with Livermore. In FY2024, LLNL had 59 active CRADAs across the entire laboratory, out of 9,340 scientists and engineers. Livermore picked MRD’s ore because it contains the exact heavy rare earths the Pentagon is stockpiling.

LLNL has committed to advocate to the US Department of Energy for funding on MRD’s behalf. The precedent is Lynas Rare Earths (ASX: LYC), which received approximately US$250 million in US government support for its Houston heavy rare earth processing facility.

Lynas got that money because its supply chain fed directly into US defence contractors. MRD’s HREE resource, rich in dysprosium and terbium, sits in the same lane, at a time when the Australia-US Critical Minerals Framework is funnelling money into exactly these kinds of projects.

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4. The 2026 Calendar Is Stacked

MRD has more near-term catalysts than most juniors at this stage get in years. Here's what we're watching:

The maiden resource itself is the first catalyst. Today’s JORC-compliant heavy rare earth resource of 122.56 million tonnes with a 41% HREO ratio, landing at a time when dysprosium and terbium are under Chinese export controls and European prices are at multiples of domestic, gives the market a concrete number to value against peers.

Re-assay of some 22,000 archived drill pulps - the cheapest way to grow a resource without drilling a metre. MRD's entire rare earth discovery came from re-examining old data, and the same approach across the broader tenure could define new targets at minimal cost.

Resource expansion drilling across seven gravity targets covering 33 kilometres of untested strike. The 3-kilometre gap between Block 1 and Block 2 - a structural dilation zone where thicker, higher-grade heavy rare earth clay zones tend to develop - is a particularly interesting target.

The CRADA with Lawrence Livermore is being drafted. Once executed, expect an ASX announcement. The 200kg follow-up sample batch is already prepared.

Metallurgical testwork on combined recovery of rare earths, scandium and gallium from the same process. Early testwork has shown that heavy rare earths leach more strongly than light rare earths in MRD’s regolith, which is just what you want to see - the highest-value elements come out first. Strong met results here would be a major value catalyst. The goal by year-end is a proof of concept - a mixed rare earth carbonate or individual metal oxides that demonstrate the process actually works.

Permitting is underway with a year-end 2026 target. The near-surface, free-dig nature of the deposit means a simpler approvals path than a hard-rock project.

All of this is landing in a market where heavy rare earth prices are surging under Chinese export controls and Western governments are throwing money at securing new supply.

5. The Policy Tailwinds are Real and Getting Stronger

MRD’s timing lines up with a wave of government money flowing into just the kind of project it’s building.

The US and Australia have committed up to US$8.5 billion between them to back Australian critical minerals projects. The Australian government has already backed a A$200 million gallium plant at Alcoa’s Wagerup refinery, with US and Japanese money alongside it.

The US Defence Production Act Title III - the same funding mechanism used to fast-track supply chains during wartime - is open to critical mineral projects, and MRD's CEO Allister Caird has flagged it as a viable route for the company.

A WA-based project that’s 25km from the deep sea port at Esperance with a resource spanning the exact heavy rare earths, scandium and gallium that both governments have identified as strategic priorities fits the framework like a glove.

And the pressure from China's side keeps building. The gallium export ban suspension expires in November 2026. Heavy rare earth export controls were added in April 2025. The trend is one-way, and every escalation from Beijing makes projects like MRD more important to Washington and Canberra.

The board has also recently strengthened with the appointment of experienced chairman David Wall, who brings the corporate experience to help take MRD from explorer to the next stage.

Our View

We spend a lot of time looking at small-cap resource companies. Many of them have one commodity and a market cap that already reflects the best-case scenario. MRD is the opposite.

Three critical minerals from the same deposit, a maiden resource that covers barely a quarter of the corridor, a partnership with one of the most serious laboratories on the planet, and a $31.9 million price tag. At a time when Western governments are falling over themselves to fund non-Chinese supply of exactly these materials.

We’re in because this looks mis-priced to us. The nearest comparable trades at $180 million with one commodity. MRD has three.

The risk with any junior is that the story sounds better than the ground delivers. We know that. Early-stage exploration can disappoint, met work can throw up problems, and timelines always slip. That’s the game.

But we like what we’re looking at. The catalysts are lined up, the commodity tailwinds are blowing hard, the Livermore partnership has no ASX peer, and $31.9 million looks light for what's in the ground.

We're backing MRD and we'll be all over this one throughout 2026.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (”Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club has 2,083,333 performance rights in MRD. Equities Club has been engaged by MRD at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Gold just posted its biggest dollar drop in a single week, ever. In percentage terms it fell 10.5%, the worst since 2011. The ASX 200 fell 2.6% and US markets notched their third straight losing week, all while Brent crude pushed back towards US$100.

Plus the Strait of Hormuz is still shut (to anyone not named China or Russia), though Trump now says he's considering winding down the war (while also sending 2,500 more marines to the Middle East). Quite a mixed signal.

We’re adding a new name to the portfolio on Tuesday morning and we’ve launched a free competition to win an ounce of gold. Ugly weeks tend to produce the best entry points, and we think we’ve found one.

Here’s what we’re covering off from the week that was:

• We’re giving away an ounce of gold for free

• We’re adding a new company to our portfolio on Tuesday

• Where to now for gold?

• Valiant Gold prepares to list with 1.2Moz in the ground

• Defence stocks surge as drone warfare contracts pile up

• Fortuna Metals adds Kasiya and Iluka experience to the Mkanda team

• MNE kicks off 3D seismic in the Perth Basin

• We met with 88 Energy as they outline their Alaska drilling plan at US$120 oil

• NSW blocks new coal mines while energy prices keep climbing

We're Giving Away an Ounce of Gold

We’re giving away a genuine, physical ounce of gold. One guess, free entry, closest to the pin at 12pm AWST on 1 December 2026 takes home the gold.

We put the comp out on socials earlier in the week and the comments have been flying. Half of you reckon the bubble's popped and gold's done. The other half reckon you'll look back at these prices and wish you'd bought more.

One bloke confidently predicted $0.01, which we appreciate.

Central banks are still buying and government debt keeps piling up, but gold just had its worst week in dollar terms on record. Whether that's the end of the run or the start of the next entry window depends entirely on who you ask.

You’ve clearly got opinions, and we’ve got an ounce of gold that says you should back them.

You can enter the comp here.

A NEW NAME JOINS THE PORTFOLIO ON TUESDAY

We’ve got a new portfolio addition that we’ll be introducing Tuesday morning, and it’s got the sort of setup we like to see:

• A clear run of catalysts already mapped out over the next 12 months

• A commodity the market is paying attention to right now

• Tier-one mining jurisdiction with a lot of the early exploration risk already off the table

• A valuation we think is way too cheap for what they're sitting on

We'll have the full breakdown live before market open on Tuesday. If you're subscribed, keep an eye on your inbox. If you're not, hit the button below.

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Why is Gold Falling in the Middle of a War?

In January 2026, gold hit just over US$5,600/oz. By the start of this week it had already pulled back to US$5,025/oz, and then it fell off a cliff. Gold closed Friday at US$4,494/oz, its largest weekly dollar drop on record. In percentage terms the 10.5% fall was the worst since 2011.

Plenty of investors are asking the same question: isn’t gold meant to go up during wars?

The 1980s are worth revisiting here, because we think something similar is playing out now.

During the Iranian Revolution and second oil shock in 1979, gold rose from roughly US$217/oz at the start of the year to about US$512 by year end, before peaking near US$850 in early 1980.

Then interest rates went through the roof and gold went sideways for years, even though the Middle East was still a mess. The geopolitics stopped mattering, and rates were all that counted.

The same mechanic is at work today. Oil has surged, conflict risk is real, yet gold has pulled back. Higher energy prices tend to delay interest rate cuts. When markets expect rates to stay higher for longer, investors can earn decent returns holding cash and government bonds, which pulls money away from gold in the short term.

Zoom out though, and the bigger picture for gold hasn’t changed. Governments keep borrowing money they don’t have and central banks keep stacking gold like they know something the rest of us don’t.

Gold’s run over the past few years has been driven by exactly that, and none of it went away because of one bad week.

We think energy costs slow global growth later this year, rate cut expectations come back, and gold gets moving again. And we'd expect that to happen faster than most people think.

On the ASX, gold producers, developers and juniors all copped the brunt of it this week. Every corner of the sector got hit.

For gold investors, this looks like a time to sit tight and watch rates. If you think this pullback is temporary (we do), the beaten-up names are worth a close look.

Debt keeps piling up and so does the money printing, but inflation is climbing with it. If rates pull inflation down as expected and rate cuts come back into play, gold re-rates quickly.

We’ve backed Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL), which is punching deeper holes into Mt Egerton as we speak, and Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) and Asian Battery Metals (ASX: AZ9), who are both very active in gold.

We’re still bullish gold long term, and believe all the companies we’ve backed have got serious room to run even at today’s prices.

Valiant Gold Hits the ASX This Week

With all the chaos around gold at the moment, you’d want some decent ground underneath you if you were listing a new gold company on the ASX. This one looks like it does.

Valiant Gold (ASX: VAL) lists on Friday after being spun out of Westgold Resources, the ASX200 producer currently valued at roughly $5 billion.

Westgold could have sold off the assets completely. Instead they'll hold a 44-48% ownership stake in VAL at listing, which tells us they still want to own a big chunk of this story from here.

The ground is in WA's Murchison region, a proven gold belt with established infrastructure and processing nearby.

VAL comes to market carrying around 1.2Moz of JORC Mineral Resources across the Reedy and Comet projects, so this is a real starting inventory rather than a greenfields exploration pitch.

VAL has also locked in an Ore Purchase Agreement with Westgold, which gives them access to processing capacity at the Meekatharra hub without having to fund their own plant upfront. That shortens the route to cashflow by years.

We didn't take part in the VAL IPO, but 1.2Moz in the ground, a potential near-term path to production, and a $5 billion parent still holding close to half the company - it’s a listing worth keeping a close eye on.

Defence Stocks Ride the Drone Warfare Wave

The war in Iran (and the other one in Ukraine) has made it obvious that drones are central to modern conflict, and the ability to detect and stop them is going to be worth a lot of money over the next decade.

Two ASX names have been riding that shift hard - DroneShield (ASX: DRO) and Electro Optic Systems Holdings (ASX: EOS), with shares up 35% and 29% respectively over the past month.

Both companies have backed that share price action with contract flow.

DroneShield recently locked in $21.7 million across six counter-drone system contracts for a western military customer, covering hardware, spare kits and software subscriptions due for delivery through 2026.

Electro Optic Systems followed with US$45 million (~A$64 million) of new counter-drone orders, including a US$42 million Slinger remote weapon system contract aimed at Middle East defence.

Governments globally are spending more on defence, and the specialist tech companies building detection and counter-drone capability are increasingly the ones getting the contracts.

If drone warfare keeps shaping how wars are fought, these smaller ASX names could quietly become some of the bigger beneficiaries of the next defence spending cycle. Budget season across NATO and the Five Eyes is only going to reinforce that.

Fortuna Metals Adds Technical Depth

Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN) has brought in two heavyweights to guide the next phase at Mkanda - and both come with a pedigree you'd want for a rutile project heading toward a maiden resource.

Richard Stockwell joins as technical consultant with more than two decades of mineral sands discovery and resource development experience, including work as competent person (CP) on Sovereign's Kasiya project just 20km to the north.

Metallurgist Dave Bougourd comes via Iluka, where he ran the Eneabba operations as GM. He'll be leading process flowsheet design and heavy mineral concentration strategy as Mkanda moves toward pre-development planning.

Fortuna has already completed 675 drill holes across a 180km² footprint, with high-grade rutile intersections mapped across a 17.8km² central zone inside a broader 37km² anomaly.

The focus now shifts toward infill drilling and metallurgy ahead of a potential maiden inferred resource in H2 2026.

Getting the Kasiya CP and an Iluka GM on board at this stage tells you where management thinks Mkanda is heading. The resource estimate is the next major milestone, and the team to deliver it is now locked in.

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MNE Fires Up 3D Seismic in the Perth Basin

Macallum New Energy (ASX: MNE) has kicked off a ~100 km² 3D seismic survey across EP-494 in the onshore Perth Basin, where Mitsui and Hancock have already thrown over $1.6 billion chasing gas between them.

The target is two Jurassic gas leads, Yarra and Gadee, sitting at around 2,500m depth. Earlier 2D seismic already picked up what look like direct hydrocarbon indicators - flat spots that suggest gas could be sitting there. If those hold up in 3D, these go from ideas on paper to drill-ready prospects.

The survey runs about six weeks and is designed to sharpen the structure, lock down reservoir detail and pin down well locations ahead of a future test.

With the Strait of Hormuz still shut and oil pushing toward US$100, markets are getting a weekly reminder of how fragile global energy supply actually is. A new onshore WA gas discovery today lands into a completely different pricing backdrop than even a year ago.

MNE is still pure exploration and a long way from proving anything up. But the basin has form, the team running it found gas here before with Waitsia, and if this seismic confirms what the 2D suggests, a WA drilling campaign comes into focus fast.

We Sat Down with 88 Energy

We caught up with 88 Energy (ASX: 88E) management this week to hear where things stand ahead of their next drilling campaign on Alaska's North Slope.

The plan is to drill later this year, with the well expected to take around 40 days. They’re targeting conventional reservoirs in a region already surrounded by producing infrastructure and major operators including ConocoPhillips and Santos.

The project sits about 6 miles from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which seriously improves the development pathway if they confirm their hopes. For an explorer, that proximity to existing infrastructure changes the economics entirely.

Management outlined a clear sequence of milestones between now and drilling, with permitting, logistics and seasonal planning already mapped out ahead of mobilisation into the next Alaska winter drilling window.

The North Slope hosts some of the largest oil developments in North America and continues to attract major capital, with recent nearby discoveries keeping infrastructure expanding.

CBA economists noted this week there's a strong likelihood oil could move into the US$120-150 range if geopolitical tensions persist. At those prices, a conventional Alaskan oil discovery sitting next to a pipeline becomes a company-maker.

88E is heading into this campaign with a clear plan and a catalyst window that should build steadily as the drilling season approaches.

NSW Shuts the Door on New Coal Mines

New South Wales has become the first state to formally block new greenfield coal mines, ending exploration licence approvals and killing off nine applications that were sitting in the pipeline.

The state still hosts 35 operating mines employing around 24,000 people, spread across the Hunter Valley, Central West and Illawarra. The government's view is that extensions to existing mines will be enough to meet domestic and export demand as the energy transition continues.

That’s a big call when oil is pushing toward US$100 and energy reliability is a daily headline. NSW supplies a large share of the world’s high-quality thermal and metallurgical coal, and Asian trading partners are still buying every tonne they can get.

This old boy from a viral video doing the rounds again this week summed up how a lot of people in coal country might be feeling. Language warning - he doesn’t hold back.

The policy picture across Australia is now split:

• NSW: new greenfield mines blocked

• Queensland: new projects still being approved

• WA: coal development remains allowed

• Victoria: effectively discouraged

• SA, NT, ACT and Tasmania: no active coal industry

Even WA is shifting though. The state government just signed contracts to bring a gigawatt of wind energy onto the grid, replacing the coal-fired plants at Muja and Collie that are set to close by 2030.

Coal mining in WA carries on, but the direction of travel on domestic energy is clear.

The Week Ahead

Tuesday morning we're introducing a new portfolio company that we think has a lot of value to unlock over the next twelve months. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it.

Markets are being driven by the war right now and that could go either way from here. If Iran and the US find a way to the table, oil comes off, rate cut expectations come back, and equity markets bounce hard. If things escalate further, it gets uglier before it gets better.

We think the worst of the gold sell-off is probably behind us. The pullback makes sense when you understand the rate dynamic, but the long-term drivers haven’t changed. Debt is still piling up, central banks are still buying, and gold at US$4,500 looks a lot more interesting than gold at US$5,600 if you’ve been waiting for an entry.

Speaking of gold, don’t forget to enter our prediction competition. One ounce. Free entry. Have a crack.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (”Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 187,500 BHL shares, 1,150,000 AZ9 shares, and 200,000 10x at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, BHL, 10X and AZ9 at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

If you’ve been in the market long enough, you’ve watched it happen to someone. Maybe it’s happened to you. It’s the kind of morning that makes you stare at the screen and rethink every position in your portfolio. It’s a brutal reminder of why risk management matters.

It wasn’t the only chaos on the ASX this week. The ASX 200 was down 2%, it then rallied 4%, only to finish roughly where it started. Much of the panic selling washed out last week, but with the war in Iran escalating and the Strait of Hormuz still shut (depending on who you ask), volumes have thinned out. Traders are sitting on their hands while oil stays above US$100 and the next headline could move it $10 in either direction.

Plenty still happened underneath the surface. Fresh drill results from two portfolio companies, a Mongolian copper project quietly changing hands, Australia’s biggest gold producer copping another downgrade, and lithium creeping back into favour.

Here’s what caught our eye:

• FUN’s corridor gets another tick as Mitsui locks up SVM rutile offtake

• BHL’s maiden drill results confirm gold at Mt Egerton

• Oil above US$103 as Strait of Hormuz updates change by the hour

• AZ9 locks in 100% of the copper-gold project Maikhan Uul

• Immutep drops 89% after scrapping its lead cancer drug

• Northern Star cops its third downgrade in six months

• Wood Mac are bullish on lithium over the next decade

FUN: The Corridor Gets Another Tick

Over 70% of the world’s biggest rutile deposit just got spoken for, and the mine hasn’t even been built yet.

Sovereign Metals (ASX: SVM) signed an offtake MOU with Mitsui on Thursday for 70,000 tonnes per annum of rutile from its Kasiya project in Malawi, covering roughly 31.5% of planned output. Major share holder in SVM, Rio Tinto, already holds rights to another 40%.

Add in Traxys locking up Kasiya’s graphite last month, and you’ve got three of the heaviest names in global commodities all circling the same patch of Malawi.

Our portfolio company Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN) sits 20 kilometres south of SVM’s Kasiya on the same geological formation, with the same near-surface rutile mineralisation. SVM is worth around A$540 million. Fortuna trades at roughly A$22 million.

FUN dropped another batch of drill results from Mkanda earlier this week. 40 new holes, high-grade rutile from surface, and most holes still in mineralisation when the drill stopped. Best intercepts included 8m at 1.15% rutile and 10m at 0.89% rutile.

We published a full deep dive on Wednesday if you want the detail.

The drill results are one half of the FUN story. The other half is who’s going to need all this rutile.

Twelve months ago, humanoid robots on factory floors sounded like science fiction. They’re now assembling cars in Beijing, Leipzig and Fremont.

Elon Musk has been building a humanoid robot called Optimus at Tesla for the past few years. On Thursday he said Optimus 3 is nearly finished and that “nothing’s even close” to what they’ve built.

Production starts within months, with high-volume manufacturing expected by mid-2027. Tesla has already shut down two car lines at its Fremont factory to make room.

He also reckons the market for humanoid robots will exceed 10 billion units, more than the number of humans on earth.

If only one percent of Musk’s predictíon come true, that’s still 100 million robots.

You can’t build a humanoid robot without titanium. The joints and load-bearing components need titanium alloys because nothing else survives the stress at that weight. And the cleanest, fastest way to make titanium is from natural rutile.

Each robot requires an estimated 10.4 kilograms of rutile. The US imports 100% of its titanium and legacy producers are in decline.

FUN has months of newsflow ahead. An exploration target lands by end of month, aircore drilling kicks off in May, and the company is targeting a maiden inferred resource by September. There are still 485 full hole assays and 300 shallow samples sitting in labs waiting to come back.

At A$22 million, with SVM worth A$540 million 20 kilometres up the road, we reckon that gap closes a lot faster than the market expects.

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BHL: Maiden Drill Results Confirm the Gold

We called Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL) our 2025 Small-Cap of the Year in December. The first drill results from Mt Egerton are in, and the gold system is real.

The standout hole hit a mineralised zone over 5.2 metres from 55 metres downhole, with assays returning up to 17.4g/t gold. Core recovery was patchy through the zone, which means the true grade is probably higher than what the lab reported because the gaps were treated as containing zero gold.

Another hole targeted a historic high-grade intercept of 7m at 18g/t and hit a void at the target depth, confirming the old underground workings are exactly where the records say they are. If the old data is reliable, the team can target the next round of holes with real confidence.

We believe the spur veins mentioned deserve a lot more attention. A camera lowered into one of the voids filmed visible quartz veins branching off the main reef structure.

In the Bendigo-Ballarat goldfields, spur veins carry gold, and a nearby historic hole returned 10m at 6.38g/t from the same type of structure. It means the gold-bearing system at Mt Egerton could be much wider than a single reef line. That’s a bigger target than anyone mapped going in.

The share price has pulled back since the results landed. Maiden results from a hyped IPO will almost always get sold unless they’re spectacular, and 17.4g/t is a strong hit but patchy core recovery muddied the headline. The market wants clean numbers it can model.

The results are good for a first pass at a project that hasn’t been drilled in over a century. But “good for a first pass” and “enough to excite a market that priced in a discovery” are two different things.

BHL has drilled about 500 metres so far. Mt Egerton produced 1.29 million ounces at 12 grams per tonne before water shut it down in 1906, and more than 90% of all historic drilling stopped above 150 metres.

A larger rig capable of drilling to 1,000 metres is being mobilised now, with deeper drilling starting by end of March. The bigger core size should also fix the recovery issues from this first program.

At 29.5 cents and a market cap around $25 million we think the sell-off has priced in the disappointment without pricing in what the program actually found. Gold confirmed, old data validated, spur veins opening up a wider target.

The real test at Mt Egerton starts when the deeper holes go in. We’re holding every share.

Oil Above US$103 and Still No Clear End

Two weeks into the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. That single fact matters more than anything else happening on the battlefield.

About 20% of the world’s oil normally passes through that narrow channel between Iran and Oman. Right now, almost none of it is.

Brent crude settled above US$100 a barrel on Thursday. The International Energy Agency called it the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. That’s a sentence worth reading twice.

The war continues to weigh on global markets. The ASX 200 finished the week at 8,617, dragged lower by the same uncertainty that’s kept a lid on equities since the bombs started falling two weeks ago.

People keep asking when the Strait reopens. Iran said this morning it’s open to everyone except the US and Israel, but words are cheap at the moment. Until tankers are actually moving through safely, the blockade is still the blockade.

The longer answer involves understanding what’s actually keeping it shut. It’s insurance. Iran doesn’t need warships blocking the channel. Its drone and mine campaign pushed maritime insurance premiums so high that no commercial shipping company will send a tanker through, even on days when nothing gets hit. One or two attacks a week is enough to keep premiums at levels that make the maths impossible.

If you still don’t understand why one waterway has brought the global economy to a standstill, Javier Blas at Bloomberg put together a visual explainer this week that lays it out better than anything we’ve seen. Worth a few minutes of your time.

The US keeps saying it’ll reopen the Strait soon. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Thursday the Navy could start escorting tankers through by end of month. Two days earlier he posted on X that a tanker had already been escorted through. Oil dropped 17% in minutes. Then the post was deleted. The White House confirmed it never happened.

So the real timeline is: not yet, and nobody in charge agrees on when.

All three sides - the US, Iran and Israel - have publicly committed to goals that require the other sides to collapse. Trump wants unconditional surrender. Iran wants reparations and security guarantees. Netanyahu wants to keep striking until the regime breaks. None of those positions leave room for a ceasefire, which means there’s no timeline for when oil flows again. Markets hate that.

You’d think with the sStrait closed the big energy producers on the ASX would be soaring. It was quite the opposite this week with Woodside (ASX: WDS) and Santos (ASX: STO) down roughly 3% each.

Higher fuel costs are already feeding into inflation expectations. ANZ hiked fixed rates ahead of Tuesday’s RBA meeting, with most now above 6%.

Every day the Strait stays shut, the pressure compounds.

AZ9: Maikhan Uul Locked In

Asian Battery Metals (ASX: AZ9) has been quietly putting together a copper district in south-west Mongolia for the past eighteen months. On Friday, they locked in another piece.

AZ9 exercised its option to acquire 100% of the Maikhan Uul copper-gold project, paying US$890,000 for a granted mining licence that runs to 2045.

The company had spent the past six months drilling to verify old government data before committing. The data checked out.

Due diligence drilling returned 14.5m at 2.23% copper and 0.73g/t gold from thick massive sulphide, and a twin hole late last year pulled 20 metres of visible massive sulphide that sits outside the existing 5 million tonne resource boundary.

If assays confirm what the visuals suggest, AZ9 may have extended the copper system beyond what anyone had modelled.

Maikhan Uul sits eight kilometres from AZ9’s flagship Oval copper-nickel discovery, where drilling has confirmed mostly continuous mineralisation over 880 metres of strike with grades up to 6% copper and 3% nickel.

The two projects sit in the same volcanic belt, close enough to share infrastructure, and both keep hitting sulphides every time the drill turns.

An executive director at GBA Capital named AZ9 as their pick of the year in our Broker Black Book, calling it “poised for a re-rate” and pointing to the maiden JORC resource expected in 2026 as the catalyst.

With copper above US$11,000 a tonne and genuine new discoveries getting scarcer by the year, a company sitting on two copper systems in the same district is in a good spot.

At 2.5 cents and a market cap around $15 million, AZ9 now owns two copper systems within eight kilometres of each other, with assays from both still flowing through.

Immutep's $500 Million Wipeout

Half a billion dollars gone before lunch.

Immutep (ASX: IMM) came out of a trading halt on Friday and dropped 89%. A company worth $582 million the last time it traded closed the session at $56 million. Over 356 million shares changed hands.

The cause was a Phase 3 trial failure. Immutep’s lead drug Efti, a lung cancer therapy designed to work alongside Merck’s Keytruda, got scrapped on the recommendation of an independent review committee. Years of development, trials across 27 countries, and the whole thing came down to one sentence.

The stock had run 40% in December after Immutep signed a deal with Indian pharma giant Dr. Reddy’s to commercialise Efti. That gain and then some evaporated in the first few minutes of trade on Friday.

Immutep still has around $70 million in cash and other programs in the pipeline including treatments for breast cancer and autoimmune conditions. But Efti was the reason most people owned the stock, and Efti is done.

CEO Marc Voigt said the company was “very disappointed and surprised.” At 4.5 cents a share, the market has priced it at close to cash backing and not much else.

NST: Gold Boom, Mill Bust

Gold’s above US$5,000 but Australia’s biggest gold miner can’t get enough ounces out of the ground.

Northern Star (ASX: NST) dropped 19% on Friday after its third guidance downgrade in six months. The company now says production will land “above 1.5 million ounces” for the year. Back in July it was targeting up to 1.85 million. That’s a big miss in the best gold market most of us have ever seen.

The problem is the Super Pit’s ageing mill at KCGM in Kalgoorlie, which keeps breaking down and can’t hold throughput. A $1.5 billion replacement is on track to start commissioning in July, but until it’s running, Northern Star is stuck nursing a 37-year-old plant through its final months.

Jan and Feb gold sales came in at 220,000 ounces combined, well short of the run rate needed. Jundee, Northern Star’s other major WA gold operation, is also underperforming, with a cost review now underway to work out which ounces are still worth chasing.

CEO Stuart Tonkin told analysts the priority for the next four months is getting the new mill delivered on time, even if that means this year’s production numbers come in soft. The stock is down 31% in two weeks.

Northern Star sits on more than 70 million ounces of gold and the new mill will more than double processing capacity once it's running. The long-term story hasn't changed. But three downgrades in six months means the market won't give them the benefit of the doubt until the new plant is pouring gold.

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Lithium Demand Heading for a Supply Crunch

Longer-term sentiment around lithium continues to improve after a new report from Wood Mackenzie said global lithium demand could exceed 13 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent by 2050.

That’s the most bullish scenario and would require lithium supply to increase by over 700% from today’s roughly 1.6 million tonnes per annum.

The base-case scenario sits closer to 6 million tonnes per annum, still implying an increase of more than 300% from current production.

Under that base case, Wood Mackenzie estimates the industry will need up to US$114 billion in new investment to build the mines and processing plants required to meet that demand.

Bringing new supply online through exploration, permitting and construction, is likely to mean the biggest constraint is time. If investment doesn’t accelerate soon, the market could flip back into deficit by the end of the decade.

After two years of oversupply and falling prices, lithium’s bounce back may finally be underway. The next few years could see demand increase significantly, helping small-cap lithium come back into favour on the ASX.

What Comes Next

The market is stuck between two forces right now, and neither one is backing down.

Any escalation out of the Middle East sends oil higher and drags everything else lower. On the flip side, the US is set to meet with China this week, and if those discussions produce anything resembling de-escalation, markets will move up fast.

Outside of oil, most commodities are treading water. Gold, copper, silver, iron ore. All waiting for a catalyst or a clear direction. But markets keep moving through wars, and good drill results still get rewarded in any environment. This week proved the other side of that too. Bad results get punished, and they get punished quickly.

We're trading with caution from here. Volatility creates opportunity, but right now it cuts both ways.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 187,500 BHL shares, and 750,000 AZ9 shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, BHL and AZ9 at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

The maiden program returned up to 17.4g/t gold from 55 metres below surface. The team also located the historic underground workings exactly where the old records said they’d be, and picked up spur vein mineralisation that suggests the gold system is wider than a single reef.

Those spur veins are a genuine find. They mean BHL has a bigger target to drill into once the next program kicks off.

BHL has drilled around 500 metres at Mt Egerton to date. Barely a scratch on a system that produced 1.29 million ounces at 12 grams per tonne before water shut it down in 1906.

The company is now mobilising a bigger rig that can cover that kind of metreage in a week. Deeper drilling starts by the end of March, testing the ground the old miners never reached.

At 39.5 cents and a market cap around $25 million, the maiden program has confirmed the geology and set up the next phase.

Mt Egerton: Quick Catch-Up for New Readers

Only eight Victorian mines have ever cracked a million ounces from hard rock underground. Mt Egerton is one of them.

The mine closed in 1906 because the pumps of the day couldn't handle the water. The gold didn't run out. The deeper parts of the system were left behind, and over 90% of all historic drilling stopped above 150 metres.

Even at those shallow depths, earlier campaigns returned 7 metres at 18 grams per tonne and 4 metres at 26 grams per tonne.

BHL listed in December 2025 with $8 million in the bank and drills turning from day one. The current market cap sits at around $25 million. The project sits in the same structural corridor as some of Victoria’s biggest gold success stories.

• Fosterville, owned by Agnico Eagle (a $110 billion company), became one of the most profitable gold mines on the planet after its ultra-high-grade Swan zone was discovered at depth.

• The Sunday Creek Project owned by Southern Cross Gold, barely 100km away, has turned a small explorer into a $3 billion company on drill results alone.

• Costerfield, now part of the $2 billion Alkane Resources, has been producing high-grade gold and antimony for over 15 years.

BHL sits at $25 million, with gold confirmed and a larger drill rig on the way. The real test at Mt Egerton is about to start.

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What the First Drill Results Show

The standout from BHL's maiden program is hole 26MEDD005, which hit a mineralised zone over 5.2 metres from 55.5 metres downhole, with assays returning up to 17.4g/t gold near surface.

Core recovery through the zone was patchy, meaning some sections couldn't be sampled. The true grade of that interval is probably higher than reported, because the gaps between samples were conservatively treated as containing no gold.

That’s a solid first pass for a maiden program.

Hole 26MEDD001 targeted a historic high-grade intercept of 7m at 18.03g/t gold and hit a 4.85-metre void at the target depth, confirming the precise location of historic mining activity.

That proves the old data is reliable, which gives the team real confidence when planning the next round of holes.

Hole 26MEDD004 cut a 1.75-metre void at just 20 metres downhole. A camera was lowered into the workings and filmed visible quartz spur veins in the walls.

In the Bendigo-Ballarat goldfields, spur veins are associated with gold mineralisation across the region, and a nearby historic hole (ERC042: 10m at 6.38g/t, including 3m at 17.7g/t) shows these same spur veins carry gold.

For the non-geologists: Think of the original gold reef as a main road running through the rock. Spur veins are the side streets branching off it. The old miners only had the gear to follow the main road.

BHL's drilling has found gold on the side streets too, which means the system is potentially much wider than a single line.

BHL’s drilling has found gold on the side streets too, which means the gold-bearing system could be much wider than anyone had mapped. That’s a bigger target to drill into.

BHL lowered a camera into the old workings and filmed the spur veins in the walls. You can see the quartz veining the old miners were following.

Assays from the remaining holes are pending.

Gold Above US$5,000 Changes the Maths

Gold is trading above US$5,100 an ounce as we type, more than double where it sat two years ago. At these prices, every gram in the ground is worth a lot more, and the economics for small-cap gold explorers with confirmed mineralisation have shifted.

For a company like BHL with a market cap of around $25 million, the leverage to further discoveries is real.

Look at Southern Cross Gold (ASX: SX2) in the same Victorian goldfields. SX2 went from a 20c IPO in 2021 to $10 a share on the back of its Sunday Creek discovery.

We can’t say BHL is the next SX2, but the geological address is similar and the gold price environment is far stronger today than when SX2 started out.

What Comes Next

The next program starts by the end of March.

BHL is bringing in a larger rig capable of drilling HQ-diameter core to 1,000 metres. The maiden program struggled with core recovery through the mineralised zones, so bigger core should mean better samples and more reliable grades coming back from the lab.

The team will target the shaft locations they’ve now pinpointed, follow up on these first results, and extend into other areas of known historic gold.

The first deeper holes are also on the list, testing the priority targets beneath the old workings that haven’t been touched since 1906.

Fosterville’s ultra-high-grade Swan zone was discovered past 800 metres. Mt Egerton has never been drilled anywhere near that depth.

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Where We Stand

The maiden program did its job. Gold is confirmed, the old data checks out, and the spur veins have opened up a wider target than anyone expected going in.

At $25 million, we think BHL looks cheap for a company that just confirmed gold in one of Victoria’s most productive corridors, with a bigger rig about to test the depths.

We like the gap between where BHL sits today and where its Victorian gold peers have gone.

Assays from the remaining holes are still to come, and deeper drilling starts by the end of March. We backed BHL as our Small-Cap of the Year in December. These first results haven’t changed that view.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 187,500 BHL shares and at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by BHL at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

One that shouldn’t be is Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN)

FUN put out another batch of drill results this morning from its Mkanda rutile project in Malawi, and they're good. High-grade rutile across 40 holes, mineralisation starting at surface, and most holes still going when the drill stopped.

For anyone new to the story: FUN's ground sits immediately south of Sovereign Metals' (ASX: SVM) Kasiya deposit, the largest rutile deposit in the world and the second largest flake graphite deposit globally.

SVM is worth around A$585 million. FUN trades at roughly A$22 million with the same geological belt, and same style of mineralisation. And FUN's early grades are comparing well.

FUN has already proved the same geological system extends onto its ground, now it's about understanding how big it is. With such a valuation differential in play, we think FUN is one of the most overlooked stories on the ASX right now.

Since we last wrote about FUN in February, the Malawi export ban scare has been officially cleared by the government, and there's now a third round of high-grade results on the table. The share price hasn't caught up with either.

Rutile Demand and the Rise of Humanoid Robots

We wrote about the humanoid robot thesis back in November and said it was moving quicker than most people expected. Four months on, we now see we undercooked it.

Last weekend, Xiaomi put two humanoid robots on its EV assembly line in Beijing. They ran autonomously for three hours, completing 90% of tasks on a 76-second production cycle. That's the same pace as the human workers around them.

Two days later, BMW announced it's deploying a second wave of humanoid robots at its Leipzig plant in Germany, after a pilot at its Spartanburg factory where the machines handled more than 90,000 components across 1,250 operating hours.

And Tesla has gone further than both. In January it announced it was shutting down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert the factory for Optimus robot manufacturing, with a target of up to 100,000 units by the end of 2026.

You can't build a humanoid robot without titanium. The frames, joints and structural components all rely on titanium alloys because nothing else gives you the same strength at the weight. And you can't make titanium without rutile. It's the starting point for the entire supply chain, the cleanest, highest-grade feedstock there is.

Each humanoid robot is estimated to contain around 10.4 kilograms of rutile. You can probably see what we’re getting at here now.

Natural rutile is currently selling for roughly US$1,900-2,000 per tonne, and the titanium market is forecast to grow from US$30 billion in 2025 to US$54 billion by 2034.

Legacy rutile producers are in decline and new deposits of any real scale are rare, which means the supply picture is tightening from both ends.

When there’s projection of scaling from 16,000 robots to potentially millions by the end of the decade, the feedstock question stops being theoretical pretty quickly. And right now, there aren't many companies on the ASX sitting on large-scale rutile deposits that could help answer it.

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The Drill Results that Matter

Today FUN reported results from 40 drill holes along with 180 shallow 0–2 metre composite samples, confirming rutile mineralisation across multiple zones at the Mkanda project.

Among the best intercepts reported were:

• 8m @ 1.15% rutile

• 10m @ 0.89% rutile

• 10m @ 0.83% rutile

• 10m @ 0.72% rutile

All of those holes (and plenty of others) ended in mineralisation, meaning the rutile continues beyond the end of drilling. The drill stopped before the rutile did.

The shallow 0-2 metre samples tell a similar story. Peak grades of 1.74%, 1.53%, and 1.40% rutile, with around 85% of samples above the cut-off grade.

The shallow sampling is FUN’s way of quickly mapping where mineralisation is thickest before committing to deeper drilling.

The high-grade core has now expanded to 17.8km², sitting within broader rutile anomalies covering roughly 37km² in total.

FUN has completed 675 holes across 180km² of the Mkanda tenement. There are still 485 full hole assays and more than 300 shallow samples to come through, so this story has months of news flow left in it before the company even starts the next drilling phase.

The Neighbour That Frames the Upside

Rio Tinto just committed US$473 million to restart a titanium sands mine in South Africa because the deposit feeding its current operation is dying. That’s half a billion dollars just to keep existing rutile production alive.

Twenty kilometres north of FUN sits Kasiya, the world’s largest rutile deposit, owned by Sovereign Metals (ASX: SVM). Rio is also SVM’s largest shareholder with a 19.9% stake.

Between the two, Rio has made it pretty clear where it thinks rutile supply is headed.

SVM is currently valued at around A$585 million and is progressing through its definitive feasibility study.

FUN’s Mkanda project sits in the same Lilongwe Plain geological formation as Kasiya, the same weathered gneiss where tropical weathering has pushed rutile close to surface over millions of years.

The grade profile and geometry FUN is seeing in its early holes maps closely to what Kasiya looked like at the same stage of exploration.

Back in 2019, SVM was valued at around A$35 million and was just starting to show rutile continuity across its ground. Twelve months later it was A$160 million.

FUN, at A$22 million, is sitting below that starting line with three batches of drill results already in hand.

FUN is valued at roughly 5% of SVM. That gap reflects the difference in project maturity, and it tends to close fast when exploration starts converting into resources.

SVM’s ore reserve upgrades from 1.03% rutile to a 2.00% rutile equivalent once graphite credits are factored in, near-doubling of the headline grade. FUN’s graphite assays from Mkanda are due in Q2-Q3.

If the graphite numbers reflect the same geological setting, the project economics could look very different to what the rutile-only story suggests today.

SVM recently signed an offtake MOU with Traxys North America, a major global commodity trader, covering up to 80,000 tonnes per annum of Kasiya graphite.

FUN’s graphite assays could open up a similar conversation if the results come in strong.

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What Comes Next

FUN has only sampled the top eight metres at Mkanda. At Kasiya, the mineralised zone runs to 20-30 metres depth. Everything reported so far could be less than half the picture.

The hand auger rigs FUN has been using can’t push past the water table. Once the ground gets saturated, the samples turn to mush. At Mkanda, that’s been cutting holes off at around 8 metres.

Aircore drilling starts from May, and it can push through that saturated layer and keep going until it hits saprock, the hard, unweathered rock beneath the mineralised zone where rutile concentrates.

Ahead of that, resource drilling on a 200m x 200m grid is planned for Q2, aimed at supporting a maiden inferred resource estimate in the second half of 2026.

Metallurgical test work is underway targeting a rutile concentrate above 95% TiO₂, which is the quality level that attracts serious offtake interest from industrial buyers.

If FUN can get an offtake partner across the line, the story shifts from pure exploration to something with real commercial legs, and the market tends to reprice that transition quickly.

Our Take

We think FUN is one of the most mispriced small-caps on the ASX right now.

The company has 675 holes in the ground confirming a large, coherent rutile system in the same geological belt as the world’s biggest deposit. Hundreds more assays are still to come, and there’s a clear program through 2026 to convert what’s been found into a resource estimate.

The industrial demand case for rutile is playing out in real factories right now. At around A$20 million, you’re getting a lot of exploration progress for not much money.

The news flow runs through the rest of the year, the graphite results haven’t landed yet, and FUN is still trading at a fraction of the monster sitting 20 kilometres up the road.

The risk is that this is still early-stage exploration. Drilling can throw curveballs and resource estimates don’t always land where the early results suggest.

But the valuation gap to SVM, the assay pipeline, and the graphite results still to come give this stock more catalysts over the next twelve months than most small-caps we follow.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Brent crude surged roughly 28% this week to around US$92 a barrel. Some servos in Sydney jumped nearly 60 cents a litre in the space of a few days, and economists reckon the full impact of the oil price move hasn't hit the pump yet - saying another 36 cents a litre could be days away.

The war in Iran has done what wars in the Middle East always do to commodity markets - made everything move at once. Everything except the Strait of Hormuz.

The ASX lost $100 billion in five days, gold spiked and gave it back, and oil posted its biggest weekly gain in the history of futures trading.

Away from the chaos, FMR is drilling again in Chile, a new Perth Basin gas play we like has listed quietly on the ASX, and lithium has taken another hit.

What caught our eye this week:

• The ASX takes its worst beating in over a year, $100 billion wiped off

• Gold steadies after rocketing then pulling back

• Oil and gas markets come back to life, what it means for Australians

• A small-cap gas play with big potential in the Perth Basin

• FMR turns the drill bit in Chile as the hunt for copper continues

• Weak EV sales send another jolt through lithium

The ASX’s Worst Week in Over a Year

The S&P/ASX 200 fell roughly 3% for the week, finishing around 8,850 points. It was the market’s biggest weekly loss in recent memory as investors looked to cut risk, and nobody was spared - BHP was down over 7%, RIO down 5%, and ANZ down 5%.

It wasn’t just the ASX. London’s FTSE copped the worst of it globally, down over 5% for the week, while in the US, the S&P 500 fell around 2%.

The one that raised eyebrows was Woodside, which barely moved despite oil surging 28%. In a normal week, crude at US$92 would have energy producers flying. Right now, investors are selling first and asking questions later, regardless of what’s sitting on the balance sheet.

The ASX was hitting record highs week on week before bombs started falling on Tehran. A quick return to those levels looks unlikely while the Strait of Hormuz is shut and Trump is demanding unconditional surrender from Iran. Reports are shifting by the hour, and until there’s more clarity, expect the volatility to stick around.

Gold Spikes, Then Gives it Back

Gold briefly punched above US$5,400/oz early in the week as safe-haven buying kicked in.

It didn’t last. Profit-taking pulled the price back to around US$5,037/oz within a couple of days, with stronger US inflation expectations and the prospect of higher-for-longer rates keeping a lid on the bounce.

The ASX producers copped it both ways - up on Monday, hammered by Friday:

• Northern Star (ASX: NST) hit an all-time high of $31.95 before closing the week down 13%

• Evolution Mining (ASX: EVN) touched $17.75, also a record, before finishing down 13.5%

• Perseus Mining (ASX: PRU) held up slightly better, down 9%

After a run that’s taken gold from US$2,600 to above US$5,000 in about 18 months, plenty of investors used the spike as a chance to lock in gains. We don’t blame them.

Gold finished the week lower for the first time in five weeks, but still sits near US$5,200/oz. At that level, it's still one of the strongest gold markets in history.

J.P. Morgan's US$6,300 target from a few weeks back looked ambitious at the time. With a war in the Gulf, it might start to look conservative soon.

When the big producers sell off like this while the underlying commodity stays strong, capital tends to eventually find its way into the juniors as investors look for cheaper leverage to the gold price.

We’ve backed Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL), which is waiting on results from its maiden drill campaign at a historic Victorian gold mine, and Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X), who is drilling in the coming weeks.

Both are drilling into a gold market that keeps rewarding anyone with ounces in the ground.

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Oil and Gas Back in the Spotlight

We wrote last week that oil closed Friday at US$73 and wouldn't open there on Monday. It didn't. Brent posted its biggest weekly gain since the pandemic, finishing up 28% at around US$92/b. WTI went further, up 36% for its biggest week since futures trading began in 1983.

The Ayatollah is dead, his son is the frontrunner to replace him, and Iran's ability to fire back is fading fast. But the IRGC is still intact, and nobody in Washington seems sure whether the endgame is destroying Iran's missiles or changing the regime (or both).

For commodity markets, the military detail matters less than one simple fact: the Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of the world's oil and LNG, and right now almost nothing is moving through it. The US is saying the strait is open. Iran is saying it isn't. Ship movements have reportedly all but stopped. Somewhere in the middle is the actual situation, and markets are pricing in the worst case.

Qatar shut down its main LNG export hub after Iranian drone strikes hit the facility, declaring force majeure (essentially pausing contractual deliveries because of the war).

That single plant accounts for about 20% of global LNG supply. European gas futures have roughly doubled in a week.

Iraq has started shutting in production at Rumaila, its biggest oil field, because there’s nowhere to send the crude that was supposed to leave through Hormuz. Those cuts have already passed 1.5 million barrels a day, with more fields expected to follow.

Overnight, Kuwait has declared force majeure on oil sales after running out of storage space - the second Gulf producer this week to tell buyers it can't deliver.

Polymarket is pricing a 54% chance of oil passing US$110/b this month, which would be the first time since 2022.

We said last week we weren't going to pretend we know how this plays out, and that still holds. Iran's missile stocks are reportedly running low, but there's no sign the US or Israel are slowing down. Israel struck fuel depots around Tehran overnight, and Netanyahu says there are "many more targets" to go.

But the shooting stopping and oil flowing again are two very different things, and the second one is what matters for prices.

Every day the Strait stays shut, the pressure on oil, gas and shipping compounds.

For Australian LNG producers, higher prices mean bigger margins on the roughly 70% of our gas that gets exported. For everyone else, it means higher bills - our domestic gas market has been tied to international pricing since the export boom of the 2010s, so when global prices spike, we cop it too.

A New Small-Cap Energy Play in the Right Place

You’d be hard-pressed to pick a better couple of weeks to bring a gas company to market.

Macallum New Energy (ASX: MNE) hit the ASX last Wednesday IPO-ing at 20 cents a share with a $28 million market cap, with over $7 million cash. Just over a week later and the share price is sitting at 21.5 cents.

MNE holds two exploration permits, EP-494 and EP-511, in the Perth Basin, the same patch of ground that serious money has already been thrown at:

• Mitsui paid $600 million for the Waitsia gas project in 2018

• Hancock Prospecting dropped $1.13 billion on two permits in 2024

That’s just over $1.6 billion of corporate money chasing gas in a basin that already has pipelines and processing infrastructure sitting there waiting.

The Perth Basin has delivered some of the country’s most important onshore gas discoveries in recent years, and bigger players keep circling as Western Australia’s domestic supply tightens.

MNE CEO Andy Furniss was part of the AWE exploration team behind the Waitsia gas discovery in the Perth Basin, one of Australia’s largest onshore gas finds in recent decades. He spent over two decades between Chevron, AWE and Mitsui before taking the CEO role on at MNE, and chair Phil Thick came through Shell. It’s a deep bench for a $28 million micro-cap.

MNE is pure exploration at this stage, and a long way from proving anything up. But the basin has form, the people running it have found gas here before, and the impending energy crunch will continue to highlight LNG demand for years to come.

FMR Back Drilling in Chile

FMR Resources (ASX: FMR) has kicked off its fourth drill hole at the Southern Porphyry target in Chile, going after Target L within the Llahuin corridor.

This one is aimed at what FMR believes is the core of the copper-molybdenum porphyry system.

Earlier drilling confirmed the company is already within the broader mineralised footprint, hitting multiple porphyry phases with quartz-sulphide veining and disseminated chalcopyrite and molybdenite.

Each hole has helped narrow down where the heart of this system sits, with structural and geochemical data now pointing south and east.

Target L is planned to around 1,200 metres and is the next step toward testing the main porphyry source within a six-kilometre mineralised corridor.

FMR has a management team that is better qualified than almost any comparable small-cap on the ASX.

At the end of the day though, the drill bit will do the talking.

If the results come back the way the geology suggests they should, the share price at sub-30 cents will be a distant memory.

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Lithium Takes Another Hit

Lithium copped it again this week. China’s lithium carbonate futures dropped nearly 13% in a single session after weak EV sales numbers out of major manufacturers landed below expectations, and geopolitical tension clouded the demand outlook.

BYD, the world’s largest EV maker, posted combined January and February sales down roughly 36% year-on-year, which is a big miss for what has been the sector’s strongest growth story.

Then there's Stellantis. The parent company of Jeep, Ram, Peugeot, and Chrysler, reported a US$37 billion loss for 2025 after writing down its EV investments and rethinking its electrification strategy.

Stellantis had offtake agreements in place with a number of ASX-listed lithium companies, so the ripple effects from their pivot are real.

On the ASX, Pilbara Minerals (ASX: PLS), Liontown (ASX: LTR), IGO (ASX: IGO) and Mineral Resources (ASX: MIN) all finished the week down more than 5%.

We see this as a rough patch rather than the wheels falling off. The longer-term demand case for lithium is increasingly tied to battery energy storage systems, where analysts are forecasting strong growth over the next decade.

And if you drove home from the servo this morning $180 lighter and found yourself looking enviously at electric cars for the first time, you're probably not alone. If the war in Iran drags out and petrol stays anywhere near these levels, EV adoption gets a shove that no government subsidy could match. Funny how that works.

Where to From Here

It's been a rough week for the ASX, but the damage has been concentrated at the top.

The big end of town has copped the worst of it, and that probably continues while the Strait stays shut and headlines keep shifting. But small-cap trading volumes have held up reasonably well through the week, which tells us this is a sell-off driven by macro fear at the top rather than panic across the board.

Our portfolio companies are all mid-program or approaching catalysts. FMR is drilling in Chile, BHL and 10X are both approaching results, and FUN is building toward a maiden resource. None of that changes because of what’s happening in Tehran.

We’ll be watching the oil price closely when markets open Monday (and Trump’s Truth Social feed). If crude pushes past US$100 as forecasted, this stops being a short-term disruption. Sustainably high oil prices reshape energy markets and inflation expectations for months.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 187,500 BHL shares, and 200,000 10X shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, BHL and 10X at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

At these gold prices, that’s just what a Thursday morning looks like.

Gold is above US$5,200/oz. J.P. Morgan just put US$6,300 on it by year end. Central banks are hoarding bullion at record pace. And everyday punters are queuing at the Mint on a rainy weekday to get their hands on it.

You can read all the forecasts you like, but a line out the door at 9am tells you something a price chart can’t.

All of that was before bombs started falling on Tehran on Saturday afternoon, likely killing the Supreme Leader, grinding the Strait of Hormuz to a halt and dragging half the Gulf into the firing line.

We covered what escalation could mean for oil and gold in last week’s wrap. Expect both to move sharply when markets open Monday.

The ASX 200 pushed to fresh all-time highs during the week in the middle of earnings season, and the smaller end of town was just as busy.

What caught our eye this week:

• Bombs fall on Iran, Gulf shipping thrown into chaos

• 10X gets geophysics underway at Peak View ahead of late Q1 drilling

• FUN sends off a bulk met program, marking a shift toward development

• The Broker Black Book dropped with thirteen high-conviction broker picks

• Zimbabwe’s lithium export ban sparked a sharp price rebound on the ASX

• J.P. Morgan lifts its 2026 gold price target to US$6,300/oz

• Only one Australian company sits in the global top 10 gold producers

• BHP reclaimed the top spot on the ASX as CBA comes under scrutiny

• Could glaciers stop US$40 billion of copper investment in Argentina?

• FMR surged after pulling mineralised core, with assays pending

From Geneva Talks to Bombs in 48 Hours

Things are moving fast in Iran. Talks in Geneva fell apart on Thursday, Trump said on Friday he was ‘not happy’ and that ‘sometimes you have to’ use force. By Saturday, bombs were falling across Iran.

Last June’s strikes on Iran were limited to nuclear sites, and markets shrugged them off within days. This is nothing like last June.

This time, Trump says they killed the Ayatollah, and told the Iranian people to overthrow their government once the bombing stops. We expect a very different reaction when markets open on Monday.

Iran has responded with missiles fired at Israel and US bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE. The Gulf states that house those bases sit on top of the world's oil shipping lanes. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has all but stopped. Oil closed Friday near US$73. It won't open there on Monday.

Iran produces around 3 million barrels of oil a day, most of it moved through a shadow fleet of tankers doing ship-to-ship transfers to dodge sanctions. Iranian crude was already selling at a discount just to keep buyers. If that supply is now offline, buyers (mostly China) will have to scramble for replacement barrels at full price.

In the early fog of war, we’re not going to pretend we know how this plays out. What we do know is that conflict in the Middle East has historically been very good for gold and oil, and very bad for certainty.

If you hold commodity exposure heading into Monday, prepare for a bumpy ride.

10X: Geophysics Underway at Peak View

Our portfolio company Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) hasn’t slowed down since we added them to the portfolio a few weeks ago. For anyone who missed it, the full write-up is here (and one of our most read).

10X is a gold, silver and copper explorer with projects across NSW and Western Australia, sitting on high-grade historical hits that nobody has gone back to test with modern gear. At a $7 million market cap, we think that's too cheap.

Their lead project Peak View, in the East Lachlan Fold Belt in NSW, now has IP and gravity surveys underway targeting the 900-metre copper-lead-zinc-silver-gold soil anomaly with drilling in the coming weeks.

Four 1.6km IP lines and 136 gravity stations are covering the full anomaly footprint, looking for targets that could point to VMS-style massive sulphide mineralisation.

Most of this volcanic horizon has never had modern geophysics run across it. The data coming back will be a genuine first look at what’s sitting underneath.

10X put out a video interview with their senior geologist Sebastian Hind recently that's worth a watch.

The bit that caught our ear was the comparison to Captain's Flat, a historically high-grade VMS deposit in the same district.The ore bodies there had a combined strike length of around 500 metres, with mineralisation running 800 to 1,000 metres at depth.

The soil anomaly at Peak View already stretches 900 metres at surface, with a second silver-gold anomaly over a kilometre to the south that may be connected.

It's early days and soil anomalies don't always translate to what's underneath, but if Peak View shows anything close to that geometry at depth, this re-rates in a hurry at a $7 million market cap.

Whether what they’re seeing at surface reflects something that thickens at depth is exactly what the geophysics and drilling are designed to answer.

No results yet, but soil results came out on 11 February, geophysical crews are on the ground, and rock chip assays are expected in the next week or two. Newsflow is stacking up heading into the late Q1 drill program.

At a $7 million market cap with gold above US$5,200/oz (and likely going higher come Monday), the setup remains cheap for what they’re chasing.

FUN Kicks Off Bulk Met Testing at Mkanda

Another of our portfolio companies, Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN), kicked off a 5-tonne bulk metallurgical program targeting a >95% rutile concentrate at their rutile project in Malawi.

FUN is exploring what could be a large-scale rutile system along the same geological corridor as Sovereign Metals' Kasiya deposit, the biggest rutile find globally.

Mineral Technologies in Johannesburg is running the test work, with results expected by June 2026. This is the first real sign FUN is thinking beyond exploration and toward what a mine might actually look like.

The concentrates will be sent to companies in the titanium sponge market, the high-value end of the rutile chain that feeds into aerospace and advanced manufacturing. That’s where the serious money sits, and potential funding.

On the ground, 675 shallow drill holes are done, with 534 assays still pending. Those results will help map the scale of the ~25km² high-grade anomalies and guide priority resource drilling.

Bulk sample results, Q1-Q2 assays and Aircore drilling from May all feed into a potential maiden inferred resource in H2 2026. The team is building toward a Kasiya-style development pathway, and so far the work is backing it up.

Sovereign Metals (ASX: SVM), which sits on the same geological corridor in Malawi, rose over 14% this week. SVM trades at 86.5c with a market cap above $600 million. FUN trades at 8.4c and is worth $24 million. Same corridor, same mineralisation style, very different price tags.

We believe FUN gives you exposure to proven ground at a fraction of the cost, and the market seems to be slowly catching on.

The Broker Black Book of 2026

We released The Broker Black Book earlier this week. Instead of writing about our own picks, we picked up the phone and asked the people who structure deals, allocate capital and see placements before they go public one question: what’s your highest-conviction pick for the year ahead?

What came back was an interesting mix of where professional money is leaning.

Copper names with scale in good jurisdictions. Gold stories with real production pathways forming. Explorers going after large systems. And a handful of left-field ideas that you won’t find in the usual small-cap echo chamber.

Thirteen picks in total, spanning resources, biotech and emerging tech, each laid out with valuation context, key assets and the broker’s reasoning in their own words.

If you want to know where experienced operators are putting money as we move through 2026, it’s a good place to start.

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Zimbabwe Bans Lithium Exports, ASX Names Rip

Lithium was back in the headlines this week, and for once it was good news.

Zimbabwe, which accounted for roughly 10% of global lithium output last year, suspended exports of lithium concentrate to force more domestic processing. The reaction on the ASX was immediate and aggressive.

Spot spodumene prices jumped more than 2% in a single session and finished the week up over 15%. PLS (ASX: PLS) led the charge, surging 26% as shorts got squeezed and investors recalibrated near-term supply risk.

China’s refiners are reportedly stocked only through mid-April, and with shipments taking months to arrive, any delay in Zimbabwean tonnes tightens the window further.

We’d been waiting for something to jolt this market. Higher prices could accelerate restarts across Australia and put a floor under beaten-down developers.

This comes with caution though as these things have a habit of being walked back, and the next few months hinge entirely on whether the ban holds and supply can respond fast enough to cap the rally.

J.P. Morgan Tips Gold to US$6,300/oz

J.P. Morgan forecast this week that gold could rise 22% from current levels to reach US$6,300 by the end of 2026. We think they're probably right on direction, and given what's happening in Iran, the timeline might be shorter than they expect.

They’re pointing to strong investor demand and central bank buying that’s been running well above recent averages through 2025. J.P. Morgan reckons that momentum carries into next year, and with mine supply as slow to respond as ever, it doesn’t take much extra demand to move the gold price when there’s nothing on the supply side to absorb it.

For ASX gold miners, developers and juniors, US$6,300/oz changes project economics by a fair whack. Projects that looked marginal twelve months ago suddenly have real wiggle room, and those already producing just got a bigger margin on every ounce they pour.

Exploration gets funded as projects look more attractive, and when capital starts looking for leverage to the gold price, small caps are where it ends up. We’ve seen that playbook run before.

We’re backing our small-cap gold plays in Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL) who are expecting gold drill results shortly, along with 10X, who will be drilling in the coming weeks.

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Druckenmiller Goes Long Copper and Gold

Stanley Druckenmiller sat down with Morgan Stanley this week for an interview that’s well worth a watch. For anyone who doesn’t know the name, Druckenmiller is regarded as one of the best macro investors alive, with roughly 30% annualised returns over nearly 30 years and never a losing year.

His portfolio has been heavy in AI for the past three years, but that’s not the case anymore. He’s now long copper, long gold, short bonds, and bearish on the US dollar.

On copper, he says there’s no meaningful new supply coming online for roughly eight years, and demand from AI and data centres is only adding to the squeeze. He called it a consensus trade, but that doesn’t bother him. As he put it, “I don’t care if a trade is crowded, if I think the thesis is right and the trend is with me.”

On gold, he described it as ‘mainly a geopolitical trade.’ Given what’s unfolding in Iran, that reads pretty well.

Copper and gold are two commodities we’ve been banging on about for quite some time, and one of the best track records in history is sitting on the same side of the trade.

Australia’s Got One Name in the Global Gold Top 10

From the gold price to the big gold miners. With gold near record levels, you'd expect Australia to be all over the global production tables. We're one of the biggest gold-producing countries on earth, after all.

The thing is when you line up the world’s top 10 gold producers by ounces, there’s only one Australian name on the list, Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST).

Newmont sits at the top with 5.49 million ounces produced in 2025, Agnico Eagle and Barrick are both above 3 million. The rest of the top tier is spread across Canada, Africa, Central Asia and Russia.

Australia’s largest gold producer NST comes in at number 10, producing around 1.63 million ounces. NST is targeting around 3 million ounces down the track after last year’s purchase of De Grey Mining.

At a corporate level, the international majors still control the bulk of large-scale output.

If gold stays strong (which we think it will), consolidation will matter more and more. There’s room for an Australian company to move up that list, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see someone have a crack at it.

BHP Takes Back the Top Spot

BHP edged past Commonwealth Bank on Friday to reclaim the title of Australia’s biggest listed company. In afternoon trade, BHP was sitting at roughly $292 billion, just ahead of CBA at about $290.4 billion after the bank’s shares slid 2.2%.

This top spot has been changing hands for months. CBA grabbed it back in early February, BHP had it briefly in January. Over the past twelve months, BHP shares are up more than 40% while CBA’s up closer to 11%.

What moved things on Friday was reporting that CBA has referred itself to police and regulators over up to $1 billion in suspected fraudulent home loans. The issue centres on loans allegedly obtained using fabricated documents, including income statements and AI-generated paperwork, with parts of the activity linked to broker and referral channels.

The loans are reportedly secured with no arrears yet, but the scale raises obvious questions about how those loans got through in the first place. Banks trade on trust, and if the governance questions keep piling up, the premium CBA trades at can shrink quickly.

BHP, on the other hand, is still riding strong copper and iron ore prices. If CBA’s regulatory headaches deepen, BHP could hold this spot for a while.

Argentina’s Copper Ambitions Just Hit a Glacier

According to Bloomberg, Argentine President Javier Milei is pushing to amend the country’s 2010 Glacier Law to unlock what could be US$40 billion of copper investment in the Andes.

Real money, real projects. BHP and Lundin jointly own and are advancing the massive Vicuña district, home to the Josemaría and Filo del Sol deposits, which rank among the largest undeveloped copper systems on the planet.

The catch is that Argentina protects glaciers and the frozen ground around them as water reserves. If they’re formally listed, they’re off limits. Some of those ice formations sit directly above or next to major copper deposits, which is where the tension comes from.

Miners want flexibility. Environmental groups see it as gutting safeguards. Both sides have a case, and the political outcome is anyone’s guess. Our read is that Milei probably gets something through, even if it’s watered down. He’s staked a lot of political capital on making Argentina a mining destination.

If the reforms pass, Argentina re-rates as a serious copper jurisdiction overnight and development timelines accelerate across the Andes. If they stall, billions in planned spend stays parked and global copper supply gets even tighter down the track.

FMR Gains Traction on Mineralised Drill Core

We’ve been following FMR Resources (ASX: FMR) closely since Mark Creasy cornerstoned their raise ahead of drilling last year. It’s a Chilean copper explorer, chasing a big porphyry system at Llahuin in Chile. The full history of our coverage is here.

This week the stock ran more than 20% after FMR confirmed visible copper and molybdenum sulphides within porphyry intrusions at their Southern Porphyry target.

We first called FMR Resources at 17.5c in our 2025 10 Stocks to Watch article early last year, backing the team behind it. The company is led by seasoned geologist Oliver Kiddie, who believes this latest hole is closer to the core of the system than anything they’ve drilled before.

The market read it as a sign FMR could be closing in on a genuine source intrusion, which is a very different proposition to hitting peripheral alteration on the fringes.

What we like about this story is that FMR is doing big porphyry exploration at virtual sea level, within a six-kilometre mineralised corridor at Llahuin in Chile.

Compare that to the Andean plays sitting at 4,000 metres altitude where logistics alone can blow out timelines and costs.

Next steps include downhole geophysics across Targets A, C and K, which will help refine the 3D model, then design a hole to test the interpreted source south-east of Target K.

Plenty of work ahead, but each hole has built on the last. Assays pending.

The Wrap

The world looks a lot different this morning than it did on Friday. We covered what we know in the Iran section above, but the honest answer is that nobody knows what comes next, including us.

We’ll be glued to the screens tomorrow.

Till next week.

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That process meant digging through announcements, balance sheets, drill plans, clinical timelines and management track records until we were confident enough to put our name next to ten companies.

This time, we’ve flipped it.

Instead of asking ourselves which stocks we’d back for 2026, we picked up the phone and asked the people who move capital for a living. Brokers. Advisers. Investor relations firms. The ones who see the placements before they’re public. The ones who sit in the room when deals are structured. The ones who know which boards are sharp and which stories don’t stack up.

We worked the phones. We had the coffees. We chased the follow-ups. Some didn’t reply. Some were happy to go on the record. Others said they’d give us their best idea for 2026, but only if we kept their name out of it. Fair enough.

What we asked for was simple: one stock you believe in for 2026. Not what’s popular. Not what’s liquid. Not what’s easy to sell to retail. Your highest conviction pick.

Size didn’t matter. Sector didn’t matter. We just wanted to know what the so-called smart money is backing as we head deeper into 2026.

None of these are guarantees. Some of them will go sideways. A few might go backwards. That’s investing.

We’ve done the legwork, and now we’re handing it over to you.

Here’s what the pros are backing for 2026, in their own words.

Matt Parker - Euroz Hartleys

My pick of the year: Raptor Metals (ASX:RAP)
Share price: 5.6c
Company valuation: $23 million

Key assets: New Brunswick, Canada. Advanced exploration: The Chester and Turgeon projects have a combined total resource of ~10Mt at ~1.2% Cu. The initial diamond drilling program at the Chester Project (6.68Mt at 1.1% Cu) is currently testing 1.5km of strike for multiple stacked copper feeder zones, open along strike and at depth.

Why I Like it:

• Stable Jurisdiction: Located in New Brunswick, Canada within the Bathurst Mining Camp which has a history of large scale high grade VMS deposits with existing infrastructure present.

• Peer Comps: Include Firefly Metals (FFM) and Cygnus Metals (CY5). FFM has been the benchmark of copper plays in the area, New Brunswick is the next province south from Newfoundland (FFM location) with similar geology. FFM has a current market cap of $1.5b with a total resource of ~80mt at 2.2% CuEq. CY5 has a current market cap of $200m with a total resource of 15mt at 3.5% CuEq.

• Existing Resource Drill Ready: 2000m diamond drilling program at the Chester Project ongoing, targeting a massive sulphide area from surface, resource infill drilling and deeper met holes with excellent regional potential and geophysical targets generated. Once completed the rig will move to the Turgeon Project.

Matt Parker, Private Wealth Adviser, Euroz Hartleys:

”Copper remains a key pick for 2026 from fund managers, brokers and industry leaders with persisting macro tailwinds largely driven by a supply deficit and surging demand from the AI and green energy sectors.

The spot price continues to trade at all-time highs ( ~US$13K p/t) during a raging commodities bull market. RAP provides portfolios with advanced junior exploration exposure to copper (and silver credits) within a historic proven VMS production area, trading at a fraction of the valuation of peer comps within the region. The company is well capitalised to complete initial diamond drill programs at Chester and Turgeon with the aim of increasing their total current resource.”

Nick Kelso - Rats Rant - Sanlam

My pick of the year: Cavalier Resources (ASX:CVR)
Share price: 40c
Company valuation: $28 million

Key assets: Crawford Gold Project located in Leonora, WA. Crawford hosts a high-grade, near-surface gold resource with a total JORC (2012) mineral resource estimate of 117.8Koz @ 1.7 g/t Au. CVR has already completed key technical studies, environmental surveys and has the all-important native title approvals done, providing the upcoming heritage survey gets the green light – then it’s mining time.

Why I Like it:

• Provides investors exposure to a near-term producing gold company with a valuation of $28m and just 71m shares on issue (top 20 own 60% of paper on issue). The plan is to mine stage one at Crawford, while at the same time drilling to extend the current resource – the idea being that once stage one is mined in an estimated 18 months’ time – stage 2 of the project which will preferably be at the Miranda prospect, where another 30,000+/- ounces lay in waiting.

• Crawford’s economics stack up very well: Stage 1 capital costs are extremely low at $9.8m and sits in the lowest quartile C1 (Net Direct Cash Costs) AISC (all-in sustaining costs) of A$1,574/oz; C3 (Fully Allocated Costs) AISC of A$1,793/oz. With gold at over $6,500 an ounce it provides an attractive margin. Gross revenue at Crawford alone is A$103.6M.

• The boss Dan Tuffin is a mining engineer by trade, he’s been in the region all his life so knows the ground well and although the initial deposit isn’t massive, it will spit out plenty of cash for CVR shareholders with a very competitive AISC. Expect plenty of news flow throughout 2026 with construction and production at Crawford along with extensional drilling results which will hopefully help increase overall resource and life of project.

Nick Kelso, Wealth Management Advisor at Sanlam:

“Tight share structure, near term producer, under the radar type stock that if all goes to plan may well be paying out dividends in the not-too-distant future.”

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Anonymous Broker

My pick of the year: Elk Range Mining (Not yet listed, expected April 2026)
Share price on listing: 20c
Company valuation on listing: $20 million

Key Assets: Elk Range Mining controls the Idaho Gold Project in Idaho, USA, centred on the Friday underground gold mine, the Orogrande processing plant and the Buffalo Gulch and Deadwood deposits along the Orogrande Shear Zone. The project hosts a combined historical foreign resource of 343,000 ounces of gold, including 144,000 ounces at 5.91g/t Au at Friday. Friday is a fully permitted underground mine with a 135tpd processing plant now on care and maintenance, placing it at an advanced exploration to restart-ready stage, while Buffalo Gulch and Deadwood are earlier-stage exploration assets with defined historical resources.

Why I Like it:

• Substantial sunk infrastructure capital – more than US$40 million invested historically across the project, including an estimated ~US$20 million replacement value for the processing plant alone.

• High-grade core with broader system scale – Friday hosts 144,000oz at 5.91g/t Au historically, within a larger 343,000oz district position that remains open and under-explored.

• Fully permitted mine in a Tier 1 US jurisdiction – existing approvals, underground development and plant infrastructure materially reduce the pathway to restarting production.

Anonymous broker quote:

“ELK is an advanced-stage gold project in a Tier 1 US jurisdiction with 144,000 high-grade ounces already defined at 5.91g/t Au at Friday. The project has a fully permitted underground mine and processing plant in place, and more than US$40 million historically invested. That gives it both scale upside and a far shorter pathway back to production than a typical early-stage explorer.”

Robert Williams - FCR Relations

My pick of the year: Flagship Minerals Limited (ASX:FLG)
Share price: 26.5c
Company valuation: $83 million

Key Assets: The Pantanillo Gold Project – oxide gold system with 1.05 Moz Au (historic NI 43-101); moving toward JORC MRE in Q1 2026. It is a gold project with copper upside in the Maricunga Gold Belt, Chile. Pantanillo is currently an advanced exploration project with baseline EIA studies underway and major metallurgical testing program in progress

Why I Like it:

• Strategic backing from China-based EPC and processing group Xinhai, now a cornerstone shareholder and board participant.

• Positioned in a Tier-1 gold district surrounded by 60–100Moz of regional gold resources (including Rio2, Hochschild, Newmont/Barrick).

• Clear and accelerated development pathway: JORC MRE pending, strong technical team, ESG momentum, and near-term drill targets.

Robert Williams, Head of IR at FCR:

“We see Flagship as one of the best-positioned gold development stories in Chile - high-grade oxide gold in a proven jurisdiction, now backed by strategic capital and capability from Asia. The team has a clear plan, and investors are starting to take notice.”

Executive Director - GBA Capital

My pick of the year: Asian Battery Metals (ASX:AZ9)
Share price: 2.8c
Company valuation: $22 million

Key assets: AZ9 is advancing the high-grade Oval copper–nickel discovery in southwest Mongolia, where drilling has confirmed mostly continuous mineralisation over ~880m of strike from surface to ~290m depth. Massive sulphide hits include grades up to 6.08% Cu and 3.19% Ni, with copper recoveries of ~95%.

Beyond Oval, AZ9 is progressing the Maikhan Uul (Red Hill) Cu–Au VMS project, which has returned 14.5m @ 2.23% Cu and 0.73g/t Au, along with shallow gold mineralisation at North Hill across a 600m by 100m anomalous trend.

Why I Like it:

• Genuine high-grade Cu-Ni discovery: Provides exposure to a genuine high-grade Cu–Ni discovery at a time when copper supply deficits are front of mind globally. AZ9 is the only ASX-listed junior with a new high-grade copper-nickel discovery in Mongolia, sitting on China’s doorstep, the world’s largest consumer of copper and battery metals.

• Maikhan Uul adds both copper-gold VMS and shallow high grade gold, with confirmed massive sulphide for the copper, including 14.5m @ 2.23% Cu and 0.73g/t Au, as well as highly encouraging initial gold hits of >6g/t Au from near surface.

• Early validation is already there, alongside emerging cluster-style regional potential. Metallurgy at Oval has delivered copper recoveries of 89–95% with a relatively simple flow sheet, and the system is showing camp-scale potential with multiple magnetic targets beyond the initial discovery. Oval is also the first magmatic sulphide discovery of its type in this region, a style of deposit often found in clusters, with scout drilling providing early encouragement of additional nearby potential planned for testing in 2026. A maiden JORC resource in 2026 would be a clear valuation catalyst.

Executive Director at GBA Capital:

“Everyone loves a comeback story and AZ9 is poised for a re-rate in 2026 with drilling in
March focused on shallow, high grade gold in addition to copper in massive sulphide at RedHill, which is on a granted mining lease. Combined with the already discovered Cu-Ni resource at Oval, only 8kms away, it won’t take much to achieve a maiden resource that crosses the commercial threshold for a copper development.”

Anonymous Broker

My pick of the year: Breakthrough Minerals Ltd (ASX:BTM)
Share price: 25c
Company valuation: $33 million

Key Assets: Copper/Gold, Mt Isa copper region, Queensland, brownfields exploration

Why I Like it:

• Undervalued – Substantial Global JORC (2012) Minerals Resource, 18.8Mt @1.07% CuEq² for 200Kt of CuEq

• Significant resource and exploration upside - numerous untested copper and gold targets across four projects

• Strategically located close to third party processing infrastructure

  • Mt Isa (Glencore)

  • Eva (Harmony Gold)

  • Eloise (AIC Mines)

Stuart Veron - Rats Rant - Sanlam

My other pick of the year: Pivotal Metals (ASX:PVT)
Share price: 1.9c
Company valuation: $26 million

Key assets: Flagship “Horden Lake” project which has a current resource of 37mt @ 1.1% Cu eq, almost all open pittable and open in multiple directions with excluded drilling and geophysics supporting substantial resource growth potential. The company will also shortly be drilling its high-grade “Belleterre” exploration projects in Quebec, where prior exploration identified bonanza grades of copper, PGMs and gold yet there has been limited regional exploration to delineate scale potential of the district.

Why I Like it:

• Value underwritten by a large, derisked copper resource with expansion upside. Horden Lake contains >400kt CuEq, including ~230kt Cu, ~200koz Au and ~200koz PGMs. Metallurgy is well understood, the deposit is predominantly open-pittable, road-accessible, and located in a Tier-1 jurisdiction with ultra-low-cost power (99% hydro). These factors materially reduce development risk and capex intensity.

• High-torque exploration at Belleterre. Drilling is imminent across multiple Belleterre targets, which has the potential to generate extremely exciting drill hits based on what was previously drilled - historic results include 21.1m @ 2.5% Cu, 1.7% Ni and 2.8 g/t 3PGE (Midrim) and 21m @ 2.1% Cu, 2.0% Ni and 2.1 g/t 3PGE (Alotta). Focus has been narrow around existing outcrop, so the district remains largely unexplored - any success in demonstrating scale could be a major re-rating catalyst.

• Managing director Ivan Fairhall is an engineer with a private equity background focused on identifying copper projects capable of becoming mines. He previously backed Marimaca Copper at a ~$5m valuation, now a ~$1.4bn company nearing construction. I see parallels between Horden Lake and other advanced copper assets (eg NWC’s Antler) that have strategic value the market has historically under-appreciated - particularly in Tier-1 jurisdictions like Canada.

Stuart Veron, Wealth Management Advisor at Sanlam:

“I could be wrong but there wouldn’t be many other listed ASX companies with a resource the size of the above and a market cap the size of the above. The asset(s) are in Canada not Africa or North Korea as the market cap would suggest, with exploration upside at both projects and over 4,000m of drilling planned for 2026 (all funded). Given asset quality and low market cap, the upside opportunity on a wide range of catalysts is very asymmetric.”

Joel Ridley - Ora Capital

My pick of the year: Trivarx (ASX:TRI)
Share price: 2.1c
Company valuation: $25 million

Key assets: TRI offers exposure to a meaningful CNS oncology platform, but at a valuation more typical of an early diagnostic play. Its lead asset, Stabl-Im, is a non-invasive molecular imaging technology that uses stable isotopes visible on standard MRI machines, initially targeting brain metastases. The program is Phase I–ready and has shown early signs of direct anti-tumour activity, meaning it may sit somewhere between a diagnostic tool and a therapeutic asset rather than being limited to imaging alone.

Why I Like it

• This dual diagnostic + therapeutic optionality materially expands both valuation upside and strategic relevance

• A CNS oncology platform masquerading as a diagnostic to get into humans faster - that is a very investable narrative.

• From a valuation perspective: High unmet need, Existing MRI workflow → zero hardware friction, Repeat-scan use case (monitoring)

Joel Ridley, Managing Director, Ora Capital:

“The size of the prize is enormous with a Telix (TLX - $4B MC) type trajectory into commercialisation. Even base case you could argue a Phase 1 Brain Cancer Diagnostic / Oncology platform would have a comparable implied EV of $250 - $500m. The real benefit in the speed and little capital required to progress through P1 trials given the isotope safety profile (Heavy Water).”

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Anonymous Broker

My pick of the year: Environmental Clean Technologies Limited (ASX:ECT)
Share price: 11.5c
Company valuation: $48 million

Key asset: ECT recently acquired Terrajoule Pty Ltd, which holds a licence from Rice University in Houston to develop and commercialise Rice’s proprietary flash joule heating (FJH) technology for the purposes of remediating soil which has been contaminated by PFAS. PFAS are commonly known as “forever chemicals”, and are long-lasting, hazardous chemicals which have historically been used in a wide range of products but have now been found to pose a significant health and environmental risk. PFAS remediation is a large and growing market and is attracting increased interest largely due to numerous successful lawsuits which have been launched by the impacted against large corporations who have been releasing PFAS into the environment for years.

Why I Like it:

• Rice and Professor Tour Connection: The FJH technology was invented by Professor James Tour and his team at Rice University in Houston. A number of Professor Tour’s technologies have been successfully spun into companies for commercial development, including market darlings Weebit Nano Limited (ASX:WBT – capped at $968M and focused on developing a semiconductor technology) and Metallium Limited (ASX:MTM – capped at ~$629M and also developing the FJH technology but for the purposes of extracting rare earth elements from waste material). ECT’s FJH technology is the same base technology being developed by MTM (except ECT has licenced it for the purposes of PFAS remediation).

• World Renowned Advisory Board: In connection with its acquisition of the licence from Rice, ECT has established a world renowned advisory board comprised of:

  • Mr Robert Bilott - Partner at US law firm Taft Stettinius and Hollister LLP. He specialises in environmental law and is widely regarded as a subject matter expert in PFAS.

  • Professor James Tour – inventor of the FJH technology and a globally recognised expert in chemistry, nanotechnology and advanced materials.

  • Mr Lewis Utting – over 20 years’ experience in the chemical industry, water treatment and mineral processing sectors and was a former BASF minerals processing and speciality chemicals executive.

  • Mr Hirokazu Minami – Highly respected leader in Japan’s energy and industrial sectors. Mr Minami has a proven track record of introducing advanced technologies, scaling complex businesses, and leading market entry and business development for both domestic and international companies.

• Renewed Corporate and M&A Strategy: Prior to its acquisition of Terrajoule in December 2025, the Company was principally focused on the development of its proprietary COLDry technology. The board has been refreshed over the past 12 months, and as part of the Terrajoule acquisition, ECT signalled an intention to implement a revised strategy aimed at building a diversified portfolio of high impact and disruptive technologies through organic and acquisitions growth, with Terrajoule being just the first part of this strategy.

  

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Michael Zollo - AE Advisors

My pick of the year: G50 Corp (ASX:G50)
Share price: 92c
Company valuation: $194 million

Key assets: Exploring for gold, silver, gallium in Nevada

Why I Like it:

• Timing is right - The Trump administration has heavily backed the US critical metal industry, creating a large fund for the stockpiling of CMs as well as providing loans, funding and fast tracking approvals for projects which show they can supply CMs within the US. Additionally, precious metals have enjoyed a blistering rally in the past 12 months and will continue to be well bid in the next 12 months. G50 sits perfectly within both of these thematics.

• G50 has done what few other critical metals plays have done. They have pursued metallurgical understanding and clarity ahead of a resource. This is because internally, management is confident the resource will be there (currently drilling Golconda and have completed two prior rounds of drilling). Now, when they publish a gallium resource, the market will also have confirmation that they can actually recover the gallium economically.

• High Quality Management - G50 Management have all been involved with US exploration for many years. There has been a wave of ASX companies acquiring US-based projects lately, but many have never stepped foot in the US. G50 IPO’d in 2021 with these current assets. One of the NEDs, Bernard Rowe, is also the MD of Ioneer (ASX:INR) which has an advanced US-based project. The team has a deep understanding of operating in the US and has experience in the development of assets toward production.

Michael Zollo, Director at AE Advisors:

“G50 is a classic case of right place, right time, right theme. The US Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, was recently quoted as saying that his administration wants to see 40% of all semiconductors used in the USA, made in the USA. In the same clip, he goes on to say that you can’t make semiconductors without gallium.

We believe that G50 has the USA’s most advanced gallium project and as such, will shortly come onto the US government’s radar. With large US tech companies recently investing into mining companies for the first time ever (Apple into Mountain Pass, other similar deals likely), we believe that G50 is perfectly placed to get non-dilutive funding from either the US Govt or a large corporate partner at some point this year.”

Paul Hart - Canary Capital

My pick of the year: Nyrada Inc. (ASX:NYR)
Share price: 60.5c
Company valuation: $140m

Key assets: Biotech entering Phase IIa (Q1, 2026) to provide protection to the heart during the insertion of stents to clear blocked arteries following a heart attack (ischemic reperfusion injury).

Why I Like it

• Proven safety from Phase I clinical trial in humans;

• Mechanism of action validated in Boehringer Ingelheim’s phase II human trial in chronic kidney disease;

• This is a platform play which targets many diseases, each with very large market potential

Paul Hart, Executive Director, Canary Capital:

“The science behind Nyrada’s drug, Xolatryp, is already validated in kidney disease through Boehringer Ingelheim’s Phase II study into chronic kidney disease in humans and cancer through Mayo Clinic studies using human cells in the lab.

Xolatryp is looking like a game-changer for many diseases including heart attack, stroke, kidney injury, protection from organ damage during chemotherapy and an adjunct therapy to help treat many aggressive cancers, because it stops calcium overload into cells at the primary entry point by inhibiting TRPC ion channels 3, 6 and 7.

This dramatically reduces toxicity and the resulting death of healthy cells. The drug is safe as shown by a successful Phase 1 study in humans and the mechanism works. It is a true platform play with many potential indications each with massive potential markets.”

Anonymous Broker

My pick of the year: Haranga Resources (ASX:HAR)
Share price: 13.5c
Company valuation: $62 million

Key asset: Haranga Resources is a gold exploration and development company actively advancing assets across California’s legendary Mother Lode Gold Belt and Senegal’s Kéniéba Inlier. The early stage Lincoln Gold Project in the USA, and the advanced exploration projects Ibel South Gold Project, and the Saraya Uranium Project, both located in Senegal.

Why I Like it:

• At Lincoln, Haranga is currently advancing a diamond drilling program aimed at converting the existing non-compliant Lincoln-Comet NI 43-101 foreign estimate (958,910t @ 9.29g/t Au, 4.2 g/t cut-off equating to ~286koz Au) to a JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate.

• The exploration and development pathway at Lincoln is supported by ~$90m of prior capital investment, including a processing plant (315ktpa), underground decline development of 880m and development drive of 900m, workshops and offices and key foundational permits for mining (Conditional Use Permit i.e. Mining Licence). The infrastructure in place provides Haranga with the opportunity to fast-track the Project towards production.

• At Ibel South two successful Aircore drill programs have led to planning a Phase 3 drill program expected to commence in Q1 CY2026, aimed to target previously identified high grade mineralisation at depth and to test multiple undrilled gold anomalies. To date average hole depths across both Aircore programs was ~30m, with typical deposits in the area known to exist up to depths of a few hundred metres.

Anonymous quote:

“HAR is advancing two highly prospective gold projects in proven gold belts, each with clear pathways to value creation. At Lincoln, the presence of substantial existing infrastructure, permitting and historical resources, provides a significant competitive advantage to early production.

At Ibel South, real exploration upside exists with near-term drilling planned to test known mineralisation at depth and to drill numerous undrilled targets across the existing >5km anomalous corridor.”

Anonymous Broker

My pick of the year: Singular Health Group (ASX:SHG)
Share price: 26c
Company valuation: $87 million

Key asset: US focused medical imaging SaaS company. Its core platform, 3DICOM™, is FDA cleared and enables the secure sharing and viewing of medical imaging across healthcare networks. SHG’s compression and transfer technology allows these large files to be moved quickly and efficiently, making the solution practical in real clinical settings where time matters.

Why I Like it:

• Large, clearly defined addressable market: Duplicate medical imaging is a genuine structural inefficiency in the US healthcare system. It is not a niche issue. It is a multi-billion-dollar cost problem.

• Customer-led commercial validation: What I like most here is that this is not technology looking for a problem. PNS saw the platform, recognised it could address a much bigger issue they have, being the cost of duplicate imaging across their network, and engaged SHG in a paid commercial pilot. That tells you the demand is real and financially driven.

• Scalable expansion opportunity: If the pilot delivers results, there is a clear pathway to expand across the broader PNS physician network. Beyond that, the model is replicable across other MSOs and healthcare plans.

Anonymous quote:

“What stands out to me is that this is commercially driven from the customer side. When one MSO alone is dealing with roughly US$1.76 billion a year in duplicate imaging costs, the incentive to solve that problem is obvious. If SHG can reduce even a small percentage of that waste, the value proposition becomes very compelling.”

That Was the Inside Look

That’s the lot. Thirteen picks from people who do this for a living, day in, day out.

A few of these names we hadn’t come across before, which is half the point. We spend most of our time in the sub-$20 million end of the market, so getting a look at what brokers and advisers are backing across the full spectrum gave us a few new ones to add to our own watchlists.

We want to thank everyone who picked up the phone, replied to the emails, or sat down for a coffee to share their ideas. Whether you went on the record or preferred to stay anonymous, we appreciate it.

Now comes the fun part. We’ve got our Top 10 picks for 2026, and we’ve got the pros’ picks sitting right next to them. We’ll be checking back later in the year to see how they stack up against each other.

If the pros beat us, we’ll cop it. If we beat them, we won’t be shy about it either.

Until then, good luck out there.

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General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 750,000 AZ9 shares at the time of publishing and is currently engaged by AZ9. All prices referenced in this eBook are based on closing prices as at 24 February 2026.

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The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Tuesday reportedly set a one-day attendance record. Perth brokers were out in force, a solid contingent flew in from the east coast, and funds, family offices and delegates from the majors were all working the floor.

We spent three full days on the ground in Fremantle this week, and our full rundown of RIU Explorers Conference 2026 can be found here.

Meanwhile, the ASX 200 pushed to a fresh record high this week, backed by strong earnings from the big end of town. From Telstra to NAB through to BHP and Rio Tinto, reporting season reminded investors why the majors anchor portfolios - the big end of town are making billions.

And while the large caps did the heavy lifting, the bottom end of town has been just as busy. Another conference floor packed out, drill programs funded, and discoveries being rewarded in a way we haven’t seen for a long time.

What caught our eye this week:

• RIU Explorers Conference: Record attendance as capital circles

• Discoveries are lacking: Exploration dollars are being spent, but true greenfields finds remain scarce.

• BHP & RIO: Relying heavily on copper to pick up iron ores slack

• The Middle East: Oil above US$70/b and gold above US$5,000/oz as geopolitical risk returns.

• Lithium: Majors restart plants and deploy billions, signalling a shift in tone for the battery metal.

RIU Explorers Conference Fremantle

Conferences like RIU are a live barometer of risk appetite, and this one said the money is coming back to the junior end of the market.

Gold sitting around record levels and copper holding firm has changed the conversation. If you want to know where the market’s head is at, look at which presentations filled rooms and which MDs couldn’t get off the floor. This year, it was gold and copper, and it wasn’t close.

We sat in on presentations, caught management between sessions, and had the sort of off-stage conversations that never make it into slide decks. Many brokers we spoke with expect both gold and copper prices to hold strong through 2026, giving a launch pad for small-cap explorers that are yet to return results but are drilling.

Once the clock ticked past 5pm each day, the conversations moved from the booths to the bar and poolside functions that ran late into the night. If you want to speak to an MD at RIU, you walk up and have the conversation. That accessibility is what keeps this conference on the calendar year after year.

A few companies stood out on the presentation floor:

• Terra Metals (ASX: TM1) has been one of the headline stories of the past eight months, up roughly 900% off the back of its Dante PGE-copper-nickel discovery in Western Australia. Some of the highest-grade PGE assays ever reported globally, and they were one of the most popular booths at the conference. The focus now is testing deeper for high-grade feeder zones beneath Dante, and with copper and PGE prices both running, results from that program could move things again.

• New Murchison Gold (ASX: NMG) is up around 600% since last year's RIU. In twelve months they've reported an ore reserve, secured mining approval and started producing and selling gold. That pace of development made CEO Alex Passmore one of the most sought-after presenters at the conference. Exploration upside sits on top of existing production, which is a combination that draws attention in a market like this.

Our portfolio company Asian Battery Metals (ASX: AZ9) presented to a near-full room on Wednesday afternoon. The detail that caught our ear was timing - the next phase of drilling is due to kick off within weeks at Oval, with the focus on expanding the footprint at Maikhan Uul and North Hill. Rigs are about to turn on proven copper and gold mineralisation, and you could see brokers actively taking notes as the timeline was laid out.

You can find AZ9 Managing Director Gan-Ochir Zunduisuren’s full presentation from RIU Explorers here.

We also ran into board members from our other portfolio companies Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN), Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) and Top End Energy (ASX: TEE) across the three days, all fielding steady interest from brokers and investors.

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More Exploration but Less Discoveries

The industry is spending more on exploration than it has in years, and finding less.

S&P Global presented the data at RIU this week and it’s hard to argue with. Global exploration budgets keep climbing, but most of that money is going into extending known deposits rather than punching holes in new ground.

Newly discovered contained copper has fallen sharply since the 1990s. Roughly 400 million tonnes have been added to global copper resources since 2005, but the vast majority came from expanding mines that already existed. The industry is getting bigger without actually discovering anything new.

Gold is the same. Five major gold discoveries globally since 2020. Five. Average discovery sizes have also shrunk to around 3.5 million ounces, well below the previous decade’s average.

That’s partly why TM1 ran 900% and NMG ran 600% over the past twelve months. When the pipeline is this thin, a genuine greenfields find gets repriced fast because there’s so little competition for capital. The explorers drilling fresh ground in this market are the ones with the most leverage if they hit.

BHP and RIO: Copper is Doing the Heavy Lifting

For the first time, BHP made more money from copper than iron ore, and that’s a big tell for where the cycle is heading.

In the six months to December, copper contributed US$7.95bn in operating earnings versus US$7.50bn for iron ore, with copper now making up 51% of group earnings. Realised copper prices jumped about 32% over the year, while iron ore demand out of China flattened and prices rolled over, even as unit costs in the iron ore business rose.

Iron ore still matters, but it’s increasingly treated like a mature cash cow while copper is being priced as the growth engine tied to electrification, data centres, EVs and grid spend.

Rio told a similar story from a different angle. Net profit landed at US$9.97bn, the weakest since 2020, with softer iron ore pricing and costs creeping higher in the Pilbara. Copper picked up the slack as Rio’s Mongolian mine Oyu Tolgoi keeps ramping and realised prices improved.

Rio held the dividend at US$4.02 a share but warned Pilbara mining costs could rise again next year, which tells you margins are getting tighter. Management is pushing harder into copper across the growth plan and exploration budget, and BHP is doing the same.

When the two biggest miners on the ASX are both hunting copper projects, it tells you something about where the next decade is heading. Juniors with drills turning on copper targets are in pole position if they can hit.

Trump, Iran and What It Means for Oil and Gold

Geopolitics is pricing back into markets, and this time it's centred on Iran.

Trump has given Tehran 10 to 15 days to agree to a nuclear deal, with two carrier strike groups already in the region and the Pentagon reportedly ready to act if talks collapse. Prediction markets are putting odds north of 50% on some form of US military action in the coming weeks, and asset prices are already moving.

Brent crude oil, roughly two-thirds of the world's internationally traded physical oil crude, has climbed to near six-month highs above US$70 a barrel as traders price in potential supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint that handles a huge share of global oil trade.

Goldman Sachs has flagged that even a shortfall of 1 million barrels a day could lift oil prices significantly if the strait's security comes into question.

Gold is holding above US$5,000/oz and every escalation seems to add another layer to the bid. At these levels, fear is doing as much work as fundamentals, and investors are piling into bullion as a hedge against whatever comes next.

Oil rises on supply risk, gold rises on uncertainty, and equities tend to cop it when energy costs spike. We’ll be watching this one closely over the coming days.

Lithium: The Majors Are Writing Cheques Again

After two years in the doghouse, lithium is starting to get some attention again.

Spodumene peaked at roughly US$8,200/t in late 2022 and spent the next two years sliding to lows near US$575/t by mid-2024. Prices have since clawed back to around US$2,100/t on the back of Chinese production curbs and renewed EV demand, and the majors are starting to put real money back in.

That improvement is now translating into real capital decisions:

• PLS (ASX: PLS) is restarting its Ngungaju plant by July, backed by a deal with China’s Canmax that floors the price at US$1,000/t.

• Wesfarmers is looking to potentially double the size of its Covalent Lithium operation in Western Australia, which is already making money.

• Rio Tinto is committing US$300m to increase its stake in Canadian lithium miner and processor Nemaska Lithium, a joint venture with the province of Quebec.

When majors reopen plants and deploy billions after a downturn, it signals confidence the worst of the lithium winter has passed.

Two years ago nobody wanted to touch lithium. Now PLS is restarting a plant, Wesfarmers is looking to double its throughput and Rio is the majority holder in a Canadian processor. The cycle looks like it's turning.

Worth noting for juniors though - all three are expanding what they already own. Nobody is out there buying discoveries from small-caps the way they are in copper. For a lithium junior, that means finding the ore is only half the battle.

You've still got to fund it, process it and sell it into a market where the big end of town is already entrenched. That hardly ever ends well.

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The Wrap

For small-cap explorers, this feels like one of those windows where sentiment, capital and commodity prices all line up.

That doesn’t guarantee anything, but the companies with drills turning and results due are walking into about as good a setup as you could ask for. And the RIU floor this week told us the appetite is there from the broker and fund side.

The Iran countdown clock hits zero inside the next two weeks (though Trump is known to extend a deadline). If that escalates, oil and gold both move higher and equities get choppier. If it resolves, the risk premium comes out and things settle.

Either way, it's the wildcard that could soon override everything else we've covered this week.

Oh, and the US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs on Friday night. He signed a new 10% global tariff under a different law before the ink was dry, and flagged more to come. Markets will need to digest that next week.

From our side, it’s as busy as it’s been all year. Drill results coming, portfolio companies advancing, and a market that’s actually rewarding the work.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 200,000 10X shares, 600,000 TEE shares, and 750,000 AZ9 shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, 10X and AZ9 at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

Meanwhile, we were 8,000km away in Cape Town, walking the floor at 121 Mining and Indaba while the small-cap resources market started to wake up.

We tipped our first portfolio addition of 2026, nickel got a pulse, and gold forecasters are now throwing around numbers that would've got you laughed out of the room two years ago.

What caught our eye this week:

• Exultant Mining becomes our first portfolio pick of 2026

• On the ground at 121 Mining and Indaba in Cape Town

• Trump pushes AVZ to sell its Manono stake to a US buyer

• Nickel bounces as Indonesia caps production

• Solstice hits serious copper width in WA

• Gold forecasts creeping toward US$6,000/oz

• CSL sheds $70bn and loses its CEO

• Zinc inventories running low as the concentrate market tightens

• WA lithium refinery shuts down while PLS locks in a price floor

Our Latest Investment: Exultant Mining (10X)

We tipped Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) on Wednesday as our first investment of 2026. Gold, silver and copper have all run hard since the company listed in December, but the share price has drifted below its IPO price. That gap is why we're now on the register. You can find our full breakdown here.

The valuation is what pulled us in. A $7 million market cap, $4.3 million in cash, and only 37 million shares on issue. Strip out the cash and you’re paying $2.7 million for more than just greenfield assets.

10X has three projects spread across NSW and Western Australia in mining belts with genuine discovery history.

• Peak View: Historic drilling returned up to 4.25% copper, 880 g/t silver, 17.2% zinc, 9.1% lead and 1.16 g/t gold.

• Black Hammer: Historic records show grades up to 14% copper and 26.4 g/t gold.

• Deep Dykes: Untested.

Gold has more than doubled since the start of 2024. Silver has rocketed from just over $20 an ounce to around $80, and copper keeps grinding higher on electrification demand.

We wanted a way to play all three, and 10X is it. First drilling at Peak View is only weeks away. We’ll be watching closely.

Cape Town Conferences: 121 and Mining Indaba

We were in Cape Town this week for both the 121 Mining Investment and Mining Indaba. Both were packed.

121 was the busiest we’ve seen it. Every meeting slot full, conversations spilling into hallways, and international groups running diligence on companies they wanted to back.

North American funds, European groups, Middle Eastern capital and Japanese investment banks were all there looking to acquire, farm in or partner. Last year these meetings were just feeling things out. This year, people meant business.

Mining Indaba logged its largest attendance in 32 years with more than 10,500 delegates. Government officials from the DRC, Angola, Zambia and Malawi were selling miners on why they should bring projects to their neighbourhood.

With gold around US$5,000/oz, every second meeting came back to ounces. The other half came back to copper and why nobody can find enough of it.

Among the names getting a lot of love at 121 were Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN), West Wits Mining (ASX: WWI), Prospect Resources (ASX: PSC), Chariot Resources (ASX: CC9) and DRC Gold Corp (CSE: DRC).

Next stop is RIU in Fremantle. Conference season's just getting started.

AVZ, Manono, and the US Angle in the DRC

Manono is the largest undeveloped hard rock lithium deposit on the planet. It's been stuck in politics and legal fights for years.

We've covered the AVZ saga in painstaking detail before. The short version reads as follows: ASX darling finds the world's biggest lithium deposit, gets tangled in disputes over ownership, allegedly loses its licence, spends years in arbitration, and gets delisted in 2024 at a $2.4 billion valuation. Shareholders haven't been able to trade a single share since.

This week, the AFR reported that the Trump administration has urged AVZ to sell its stake to a US company, with a meeting reportedly taking place in Washington on January 21.

The US wants a seat at the table on critical minerals supply chains, and Manono is the biggest prize going. That kind of pressure isn’t comfortable for management trying to work toward an outcome for holders who’ve already been through plenty.

But serious Western interest in the DRC would likely mean cleaner deals and more credible partners down the track, which the country desperately needs.

AVZ holders have been patient for a long time. There's still a lot to play out here, and we'd be watching closely rather than jumping to conclusions.

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Solstice Minerals Copper Discovery in WA

Solstice Minerals (ASX: SLS) dropped a copper hit at the Nanadie project last week that made us do a double take.

The headline intercept was 62m at 1.55% copper and 0.66 g/t gold, with a second zone of 97m at 0.73% copper and 0.32 g/t gold. They stand out in both grade and thickness.

Most WA copper plays are narrow and low grade. Widths like 62 metres at 1.55% copper can support bulk mining economics if the continuity stacks up across strike and depth.

The job now is repeating those results and figuring out how big this thing actually is. One drill hit doesn't make a mine, but we like what we're seeing this early on.

The share price is up more than 100% over the past two weeks, even with a pullback of around 20% this week as the initial rush faded.

Holders who got in early have done well. The question from here is whether the next round of drilling can back up hole one.

Nickel Finally Gets a Pulse

Nickel’s been hammered for the better part of three years. Indonesia flooded the market with cheap supply, prices tanked, and mines across the world went into care and maintenance because the numbers weren’t stacking up.

The first sign of relief came from Indonesia, of all places, this week. Reports indicate that their largest nickel producer, Weda Bay, will cap their ore production quota at 12m tonnes this year (compared to 42m tonnes previously). National quota adjustments are also being flagged. That’s a big cut from the country that controls most of the world’s nickel supply.

For context, quotas directly influence how much ore can legally be produced and sold, so any reduction can tighten supply.

Nickel prices responded with a rise of around 2% to roughly US$18,000 per tonne.

It’s early days, and one quota adjustment doesn’t undo years of oversupply. But if Indonesia’s serious about pulling back, the Aussie nickel names sitting in care and maintenance might start getting a second look.

If nickel keeps climbing, the obvious ASX names in the frame are BHP (Nickel West), IGO (Cosmos) and Panoramic Resources (Savannah).

Will the Gold Price Keep Going? Some Think So

Gold continues to bounce around the US$5,000/oz mark, which in itself would have sounded absurd a few years ago. After a run that dragged bullion into mainstream news and work lunch conversation, a consolidation phase is healthy.

BNP Paribas says US$6,000/oz is on the table if central banks keep stacking gold.

Beyond that, some forecasters are building cases for even higher numbers, mostly anchored to sovereign debt blowouts and the idea that currencies keep losing ground against hard assets.

We're not building a portfolio around any single bank target, but the consensus seems to be that gold holds steady or goes higher, and that backdrop keeps us interested in small-cap gold plays.

Even if the metal chops around US$5,000 for a while, juniors with ounces in the ground are in a good spot.

Gold Juniors in our portfolio include: Black Horse Mining (ASX: BHL), Bubalus Resources (ASX: BUS) and our latest addition, Exultant Mining (ASX:10X).

CSL Gets Barbecued

We spend most of our time on companies with sub-$50m valuations, so volatility comes with the territory. We actually enjoy it, in a weird way. So when a blue chip like CSL (ASX: CSL) falls nearly 17% in a week and more than 40% over six months, even our interest is piqued.

CSL's half-year result landed with a thud this week. Net profit after tax fell 81% year on year to $401m, with revenue down 4% to $8.3bn. Management pointed to restructuring costs and asset impairments, but the market wasn't buying it.

The one-off items they pointed to made investors question what's actually "one-off" about them, and the sell-off was swift.

The soft result was followed by CEO Paul McKenzie departing effective immediately, with an interim replacement stepping in. When a $70bn company loses its CEO overnight, you know it’s going to be rough going as a shareholder.

It’s a reminder that even the biggest names on the ASX can get crunched when earnings disappoint and leadership walks out at the same time. We see it in small-caps, but at this end of town it tends to hit harder because nobody expects it.

Zinc Quietly Tightening Up

Zinc hasn’t been getting the airtime that gold, silver and copper have, but plenty is going on underneath.

Zinc concentrate, the raw material miners produce before it gets refined, is getting harder to come by.

Global zinc stockpiles have been edging lower. When inventories shrink, prices can move faster if demand improves even slightly.

Zinc, the fourth most consumed metal on the planet, is mainly used to coat steel to stop it rusting, so it tracks closely with construction and infrastructure activity.

If supply stays tight and prices keep firming, the ASX zinc explorer with real projects and a path to production could start getting attention again. It doesn't take much for attention to swing back when the fundamentals line up.

WA Lithium Refinery Closure and the Pilbara Contrast

Albemarle, one of the world's biggest lithium producers, is shutting down the last operating line at its Kemerton refinery in WA.

The plant takes raw spodumene concentrate and turns it into battery-grade lithium hydroxide. It’s a reminder that downstream processing doesn’t automatically turn a profit just because the commodity is strategic.

Jobs are going as the plant moves into care and maintenance, with the company citing cost pressures and market conditions despite recent green shoots in lithium pricing.

Producing lithium hydroxide from spodumene is capital intensive and energy heavy. Margins depend on the spread between raw concentrate prices and the realised hydroxide price, and that spread has been volatile.

Compare that to Pilbara Minerals (ASX: PLS) new offtake agreement with Canmax that was announced this week. The offtake includes a floor price of US$1,000/t for spodumene and a US$100m unsecured, interest-free prepayment.

PLS gets a price floor and $100m upfront with no interest. They keep the upside if prices run. That's a strong deal.

The two stories side by side tell you something about the lithium chain right now. The miners digging up the rock can hedge their downside and still ride the upside. The processors turning it into battery-grade product are wearing the margin squeeze. Where you sit in the chain matters as much as the commodity price itself.

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A Busy Week to Come

Plenty moved this week, and it feels like we're only warming up.

We add the first stock to our portfolio of 2026, and the commodity mix of gold, copper, nickel and zinc news is a good set up heading into the back half of Q1.

Cape Town was buzzing, and we’re backing it up with RIU Explorers in Fremantle this week.

Till next week.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares, 187,500 BHL shares, 600,000 BUS shares, and 200,000 10X shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN, BHL and 10X at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.

This week, Equities Club had boots on the ground in Cape Town for 121 Mining Investment and Mining Indaba. Two conferences running side by side, thousands of delegates, and corridor catch-ups between every scheduled meeting.

Gold around US$5,000 had every fund manager in the room chasing ounces. Copper explorers with decent intercepts were fielding back-to-back meetings. And our portfolio company Fortuna Metals kept coming up in conversations we weren't expecting.

We ran into plenty of familiar faces. ASX-listed juniors we cover, fund managers we’ve shared a beer with in Kalgoorlie, and brokers doing the rounds between booths. A few international groups quietly admitted they’ve been watching the ASX small-cap space more closely than most people realise.

Conference season has always been about the side conversations as much as the formal presentations. The “been busy I see” chats over a coffee, the tone in the room between meetings. And the tone this year was noticeably different from twelve months ago.

The tyre kickers have moved on and capital is actively looking for a home in mining again. We’ve got both conferences covered, plus a few small-caps generating strong interest.

121 Mining Investment Conference

121 Mining Investment Cape Town is built around one thing: pre-booked, one-on-one meetings between capital and projects.

This year was the busiest we've seen it. Back-to-back meetings, full schedules, overflow conversations spilling into hallways and coffee lines. The whole format is built around decision-makers sitting across from project teams for 30 minutes at a time (and every slot was full).

The international interest stood out. North American funds and European groups were there alongside Middle Eastern capital and Japanese investment banks. These groups were running active diligence, looking to acquire, farm in or partner with small-cap mining companies.

When global capital flies into South Africa specifically to meet ASX-listed juniors, it tells you how the mood has shifted from a year ago. Last year these meetings were more tentative. This year, people had mandates.

Of course, conference interest and actual cheques are two different things. We've seen enough of these events to know that some of these meetings will lead nowhere. but the intent felt real this time with a number of groups running structured due diligence.

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The Commodities Everyone Was Talking About

You can read all the broker reports you want, but nothing beats walking a conference floor to get a feel for where capital actually wants to go.

At last year's Indaba we highlighted Prospect Resources (ASX: PSC) and Apollo Minerals (ASX: AON) as the two African picks to watch. PSC is up over 360% since, while AON is up 175%. The themes we picked up on the ground twelve months ago played out, and this year the signal was even stronger.

Four commodities dominated conversations in Cape Town.

Gold - With the price sitting around US$5,000/oz and Africa home to some of the highest grade deposits on the planet, gold was the loudest conversation at both events. Every jurisdiction was in play. Everyone was chasing the next big find, and from what we saw, gold juniors with any kind of story will have no trouble raising capital. Many were doing so at levels that would have been unthinkable two years ago.

Copper - Everyone wants it, but finding it is a different story. There's a lot of money flowing into copper exploration right now, set against a pretty thin pipeline of actual discoveries. Zambia and the DRC dominated the discussion, Zambia for its untapped potential and the DRC for its proven world-class deposits. If you're a small-cap copper play with some decent intercepts in hand, funding is there for the taking.

Rare Earths - This one caught us off guard. There's genuine appetite to invest in African rare earth projects, but most groups we spoke with are sitting on their hands waiting for drilling confirmation and resource size. Once a couple of projects deliver results, we'd expect that to change quickly.

Lithium - After two years in the wilderness, lithium was back as a talking point. The tone was cautious though. A lot of people got burned in the last lithium winter and aren't rushing back in. The funding freeze is starting to thaw, particularly for assets with near-term production potential, and those projects were fielding plenty of meetings.

Companies that caught the attention of many at 121 Capetown:

• Fortuna Metals (ASX: FUN) - Rutile in Malawi

• West Wits Mining (ASX: WWI) - Gold in South Africa

• Prospect Resources (ASX: PSC) - Copper in Zambia

• Chariot Resources (ASX: CC9) - Lithium in Nigeria

• DRC Gold Corp (CSE: DRC) - Gold in the DRC

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Fortuna Metals: Malawi Turning Heads

We caught up with Fortuna Metals’ (ASX: FUN) managing director, Tom Langley, between what felt like an endless run of meetings. He was flat out.

Tom flagged strong interest from multiple international groups, particularly those scanning for quality projects in stable African jurisdictions. FUN kept coming up in our conversations too, often from people we weren’t expecting to mention it. The proximity to Sovereign Metals’ Kasiya rutile project to the north was a recurring talking point.

FUN’s project sits in the same geological setting as Kasiya, yet the market has it priced at a fraction of Sovereign’s valuation. That gap caught a few groups off guard. Several admitted they hadn’t properly understood the scale of FUN’s ground before the recent updates.

On Monday, FUN released its latest shallow drilling results from Mkanda. Of 96 hand auger holes assayed at the 0-2m interval, 36 graded above 1% rutile, with the best hitting 1.78%. The mineralised footprint now covers more than 25 square kilometres and remains open in most directions, with three broad high-grade zones emerging across strike lengths of 5 to 10 kilometres.

Aircore rigs are expected from around May to test deeper ground on a tighter 200 by 200 metre grid. Sovereign’s saprock boundary at Kasiya sits at 20-30 metres, so there’s a lot below what FUN has sampled so far.

More assays are due throughout Q1, and the company is also reviewing samples for rare earth and graphite potential following Sovereign’s recent heavy rare earth recovery at Kasiya 20km to the north.

When international groups start circling early-stage assets before a full re-rate, that can accelerate a story. It’s part of why we have FUN as a portfolio company.

FUN is still early in its exploration timeline though. Conference buzz is encouraging, and the interest we saw in Cape Town was real, but the investment case comes down to what comes out of the ground. We’ll be watching for results.

Indaba: Biggest Ever, But Changing

Mining Indaba is still Africa’s biggest mining conference. This year it posted its largest attendance in 32 years, pulling in global majors, mid-tier producers, government delegations and financiers.

Government officials were everywhere, particularly from the DRC, Angola, Zambia and Malawi. They weren’t just showing up. They were actively pitching investment frameworks and competing for capital.

The countries that make it easiest to do business are clearly the ones attracting the most attention, and that message came through in every panel and private meeting.

The format is shifting though. Bigger booths, more corporate branding, energy suppliers and equipment groups taking up floor space. It increasingly feels like a trade show running alongside a mining conference.

The serious deal-making has moved toward focused formats like 121, where you're sitting across from decision-makers with a specific agenda. That's probably a natural evolution for an event this size. It still matters for setting industry agendas and getting face time with government, but for investors looking for actionable leads, the smaller formats are where the real work gets done.

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Whats Next From Here

African countries are more open to mining investment right now than at any point in the past few years. The ones that follow through on that (rather than just talking about it at conferences) will benefit.

More so than any time in the last few years, the majority of African countries we spoke with are open and actively looking to attract mining investment. The ones that follow through on that, rather than just talking about it at conferences, will be the ones that benefit.

The continent has no shortage of quality deposits. The question has always been governance and execution.

This week backed up our investment in FUN. The project is progressing and it’s starting to generate interest from outside parties, which is what you want to see when you’re invested in a small-cap at this stage.

Next week we’ll be at the RIU conference in Fremantle as conference season kicks off in Australia. RIU is a solid event with a big range of junior explorers. If you’re on the west coast and can get along, it’s well worth the trip.

Twelve months ago, people were asking whether the money would come back to small-cap mining. This week in Cape Town, it was already in the room.

General advice warning

The contents of this document are intended to provide general securities advice only and have been prepared without taking account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of that you should, before taking any action to acquire or deal in, or follow a recommendation (if any) in respect of any of the financial products or information mentioned in this document, consulting your own investment advisor to consider whether that is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs. If applicable, you should obtain the Product Disclosure Statement relating to the relevant financial product mentioned in this document (which contains full details of the terms and conditions of the relevant financial product) and consider it before making any decision about whether to acquire the financial product. Whilst the Equities Club Pty Ltd (“Equities Club”) believes information contained in this document is based on information which is believed to be reliable, its accuracy and completeness are not guaranteed and no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given or implied and no responsibility for any loss or damage arising in any way for any representation, act or omission is accepted by Equities Club or any officer, agent or employee of Equities Club or any related company.

Neither Equities Club, nor any of its directors, authorised representatives, employees, or agents, makes any representation or warranty as to the reliability, accuracy, or completeness, of this document or any advice. Nor do they accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way (including negligence) for errors in, or omissions from, this document or advice.

Disclosure

The directors, authorised representatives, employees and associated persons of Equities Club may have an interest in the financial products discussed in this document and they may earn brokerage, commissions, fees and advantages, pecuniary or otherwise, in connection with the making of a recommendation or dealing by a client in such financial products. Equities Club owns 1,554,000 FUN shares at the time of publishing this article. Equities Club has been engaged by FUN at the time of writing.

Confidentiality notice

The information contained in and accompanying this communication is strictly confidential and intended solely for the use of the intended recipient/s. The copyright in this communication belongs to Equities Club. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication please delete and destroy all copies immediately.

Equities Club Ltd (CAR No. 001308139) is a corporate authorised representative of ShareX Pty Ltd, Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) No 519872.