Weekly Wrap: Mount Ridley in the Portfolio, High-Grade Gold and a $6bn AI IPO Nears
MRD rockets into the portfolio, gold explorers 10X and BHL keep hitting, and a $6 billion AI IPO heads for the ASX
Ten years ago this sentence would have read like satire, for a few different reasons - a humanoid robot walked alongside First Lady Melania Trump at the White House this week.
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.
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.
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.
