A stock I have been watching for a while and now decided to have a punt on is LML. The company has several projects, but the SOLE focus is on the Minbrie project.
Minbrie is either a VMS or SEDEX style base metal prospect that was discovered by accident through the drilling of a BIF prospect by another company that was in JV over the project with LML.
The prospective horizon is the footwall to the BIF unit with several holes demonstrating sulphide mineralisation along the 7km structure with the most notable hole being BUDD192 which returned an assay of 29.5m grading 0.8% Cu, 7.5% Pb, 1.9% Zn, 9 g/t Ag from 131m (unknown true width). Visual sulphides including bornite were noted in the down dip hole BURCD030.
This is a lot of smoke which partially derisks the discovery. Now its about proving if an economic deposit has formed.
Exploration will focus on the northern end at three targets being Domine, Novamac and Early Blaze, noting that Domine encompasses BUD192. Approvals and plans for drilling are being finalised but prior to the new CEO, the drilling was expected to comprise at least 3 holes (max 5) to test in and around BUDD192. Should drilling start this month as expected, assays will be in the new year in Jan/Feb
LML recently appointed a new CEO and Chair. Chair has form with CXO but the new CEO, Chris Wilcox, is of focus given his background at DGO under Ed Eshuays. Cross checking my own network resulted in positive feedback where it could be given so it seems Chris is a good person to have at the helm.
LML recently closed a raise and as of the end of the September 2025 quarter, the company had cash of $1.9m which is enough to support planned exploration activities. Unlike my other recent punter stocks, with a market cap of $m LML is not a low EV play, however, I do note that the EV is likely supported by the more advanced Kookaburra and Green Iron projects. The bang of buck comes from the market cap being low in an absolute sense.
As always, this is a punt and I have small amount invested at the $0.007/0.008 level.
You know it’s a hot market when I have two punter stocks in as many weeks.
I took some SMM today (1.6c cost base) as reported visuals of pervasive/disseminated copper mineralisation at its Jura prospect. I have tracked this one for a bit with this drilling campaign being key to testing the prospectivity of the prospect.
Today’s results show there is some meat on the bone with down dip and strike extensions showing thick intercepts of copper mineralisation around the first hole JURC001. Copper mineralisation is interesting being Chalcocite with subordinate being mostly Native CU or Bornite. These are all higher tenor mineralisation types (63-100%) noting the dominate Chalcocite being ~80% copper by weight.
As such, the key catalyst will be assays and ideally showing incepts with grades north of 1% with assays across the reported holes are expected over the coming 1-6wks.
The key risk comes down to how bankable are the visual estimates with the table below coming from the release. Despite following the stock, I have no firm view on whether the company is a conservative visual estimator or not. In addition, it gets a little trickier given the drilling is RC (chips are harder to assess than core). As such, the risk is that the visual estimates are overestimated thus suggesting greater risk is assay results.
The punt: at $0.016/sh, the mcap is $13m and with ~$5.5m in cash, EV is ~$7.5m which to me is a good starting valuation for punt the represents a post discovery delineation drill out. It’s not a case of if copper is there, it’s a case of how much and if it hangs together enough be economic.
As a reminder, for these punter trades, I keep them small and typically weight sub 3%. These are not always swing for the fence trades and in many cases, more work is needed as well as results from the company to assess whether it should be scaled up into a proper position.
Anyone had a look at RGL?
I initially picked a few up looking at their Tambourah assets way back when. Then it dropped 80%.
General consensus is the David Lenigas is a very good snake oil salesman who now currently resides in Monaco.
However, they just signed a deal on a good gold tenement just south of Black Cat which has the other party investing all the costs to develop the mine and get it up and running. Hopefully, will be a good re-rate.
Hi @Jarrahman - your link to that RGL announcement doesn't work but I checked the company out anyway. If their Executive Chairman David Lenigas does indeed call Monaco home then I reckon it might be because of the way he makes his money, i.e. getting others to do the work, not him, which is smart. In terms of skin in the game, he does own 6 million RGL shares plus another 52.5 million options, but to put that into some context, the company is currently trading at less than 1 cent per share and the entire company is worth less than $17 million in terms of their market capitalisation.
But the way they go about things is quite interesting - by way of farm-ins where other companies spend the money and do the work and take a percentage of the profits. It's not silly when you don't have the money to do very much yourself.
This is the last part of their last Appendix 5B (Mining exploration entity or oil and gas exploration entity quarterly cash flow report) for the June quarter. Their September quarter 5B will have to be lodged by the end of this month (October) but most companies leave it until the end of the month, especially companies this small.
No Financing Facilities and 224K left in the bank, with a quarterly cash burn in the June quarter of 557K. At the end of June they had enough cash to last just one month, and look at what they said their plans were - highlighted in the orange and yellow rectangles above and below:
--- ends ---
The company intended to reduce exploration expenditure and "may seek to raise funds". No sh!t Sherlock! That's a Captain Obvious statement if ever I heard one. Seeing as they only spent $401 K on exploration in the June quarter, being $134 K per month, they weren't doing very much to start with, but yeah, they can reduce that, to zero most likely, or very close to it.
As far as a company that was cum-capital-raise, yeah, they fitted that description for sure.
Their SP closed at $0.004 on the day, up +33.33% from their $0.003 close on the previous day. When your share price is three tenths of one cent it can only move up or down by 33.33% - i.e. $0.001 - that's the SMALLEST amount it can move by. That's one of the reasons we can't buy shares here on SM for less than 2 cents each. However the reason their SP went up instead of down when they were clearly on the bones of their arse financially according to that 5B is more to do with the 13 page Quarterly Activities Report that came in front of the 5B in the same announcement; not everyone reads the 5Bs and the Activities Report started off on Page 1 with loads of high grade gold (Au) hits as well as some decent silver (Ag) and copper (Cu) hits as well, as shown below:
Source: July 31, 2025: RGL: Quarterly Activities/Appendix 5B Cash Flow Report.PDF [Page 1]
The fact that those hits were from "this year's RC drill holes" and "this year's AC drilling" rather than from the quarter that the report was for (the June 2025 quarter) is just accentuating the positives I suppose. Some might call it positive spin, but it seems to be working for them.
They then announced this on September 15th: RGL-Partners-with-Canadian-Company-on-Saint-John-Project.PDF
Let's see if I can blow that map up any bigger...
That's the best I can do.
Note that there was no cash exchanged in this deal. RGL was granted 2,860,000 A.I.S. Resources shares and AIS can earn up to 75% of the project by spending all the money on project development, with RGL retaining a 25% free-carried interest in the project through to decision to mine. "Free-carried" meaning RGL don't need to spend a dime on that project during that period. Their SP closed flat at $0.004 that day.
Next we get RGL's September 30th announcement: Mining-Agreement-for-Northern-Zone-Gold-Project,-$18M-Raise.PDF
Note that the amount they raised was $1.8 million, not $18 million as the file name suggests - you can't include decimal places in file names.
That one is 6 pages long and the gist of it is that RGL raised $1.8 Mill via a placement and they've signed an agreement that means that a company called MEGA Resources will fully fund the Northern Zone Gold Project operations with the Project Owners (who are mostly RGL who own 80% of it) to receive 50% of the profit. So, once again, RGL are free-carried through to the project becoming a profitable operation, and even then their financial commitment would be just 10% of their share of the profits generated by the project to be reinvested back into expansion grade control and step out drilling.
These guys ain't dumb!
Interestingly Riversgold (RGL) gained their 80% ownership of the Northern Zone Gold Project back in May 2023 when they formed a strategic alliance with Oracle Power through a legally binding farm-in agreement, paving the way for Riversgold to potentially acquire an 80% ownership stake in the project, which they have subsequently done, so Oracle Power still own the other 20%. (Source: https://www.riversgold.com.au/project/northern-zone-gold-project/) RGL gained their 80% share through a farm-in, and now they're getting the project developed through another farm-in, this time by MEGA Resources - see below.
Highlights
- Riversgold have signed, on the Project Owners’ behalf, a Right to Mine and Co-Operation Agreement with established WA Goldfields mining services provider MEGA Resources (MEGA) - for full project funding, mining, and haulage services at its Northern Zone Gold Project which is located 25km from Kalgoorlie.
- MEGA is a full-service mining contractor that will now be providing all of the funding for the operation; MEGA will also provide geological and engineering services and manage project approvals.
- The Northern Zone Gold Project Kalgoorlie is owned 80% by Riversgold and 20% by Oracle Power Plc ("Project Owners"). No upfront funding is required from the Project Owners.
- MEGA will share profits equally (50/50) from operations with the Project Owners.
- 10% of project profits generated monthly (funded on a 50/50 basis) will be reinvested back into expansion grade control and step out drilling.
- MEGA is aiming to break ground during the January quarter of 2026, subject to the partnership gaining all of the final tenement permissions, mining approvals and the signing of a binding ore purchase agreement with a third-party processing mill.
- The Northern Zone Gold Project Kalgoorlie drilling has already identified a gold mineralised porphyry around 600m wide and around 500m deep from diamond drilling.
- New Northern Zone drilling programs are being planned to test extensions of known gold mineralisation.
- Firm commitments received to raise $1.8 million (before costs) via single tranche placement to sophisticated investors.
Yeah, that'll work.
Some excerpts from that announcement:
About MEGA Resources
MEGA is a Western Australian-based mining company, see https://megaresources.com.au/. MEGA stands for Mining, Engineering and Geology across Australia, representing the collective expertise and industry experience of the company. MEGA is focused on the development of its own mining projects, supported by an in-house mining service team. In addition to internal projects, MEGA works with selected companies to provide mining expertise and technical knowledge, in addition to funding solutions through its partnership with mining giant BGR Mining & Infra Limited. MEGA supports companies such as Riversgold in monetising their projects and achieving long-term success. MEGA is committed to delivering value through a combination of hands-on mining experience and strategic partnerships that create meaningful, sustainable outcomes for all stakeholders.
About BGR Mining and Infra Limited
BGR is headquartered in Hyderabad, India and was founded in 1988 as an engineering contractor (see https://www.bgrmining.com). Today, BGR is one of India’s largest and most respected private mining companies, having a net worth of half a billion AUD, with an order book exceeding AUD 16 billion and contracts extending for the next 25 years. BGR has consolidated its services as one of the leading mining developers and operators (MDO) in India. BGR integrates design, planning and modern operation technologies for safer and more productive mines. Having achieved steady growth over the years since its inception, BGR has now set its eyes on the global stage to deliver mission-critical projects in a timely manner.
Interesting that they've mentioned the Kalgoorlie "Super Pit" there - under the map - which is the second largest open pit mine in Australia (behind Newmont's Boddington gold mine in WA) and is owned by Northern Star (NST), the largest Australian gold miner, but I guess it never hurts to try to associate a very early stage gold project like theirs with the Super Pit which is probably the most well known gold mine in the country. It is however a very big stretch to compare the two, even if you can get them both on the same map. You can see that there are a number of gold mines that are closer to "Northern Zone" than the Super Pit is.
For those who don't know, the main mill at the Super Pit is the Fimiston mill, just east of and right on the edge of Kalgoorlie. They've marked "Fimiston" on the map (next to Kal) but not the "Super Pit" - yet they've referenced the Super Pit under the map as part of the description of what the map is showing. Some people also refer to the Super Pit as "the Golden Mile" or just Golden Mile, which is shown on the map above, but Golden Mile is the name of the geographical area that the Super Pit is in, and the Super Pit does take up a fair whack of Golden Mile, but not all of it. That map seems to me to be a bit half-arsed, but there you go. RGL's SP closed up +16.67% (or up +$0.001) @ $0.007 that day (30th Sep).
Then 11 days ago (Oct 6th), RGL released this: Kalgoorlie Gold Project Area Getting Bigger.PDF
This one says that they've signed a binding agreement with Goldblade Corporation Pty Ltd to become the sole legal and beneficial owner of granted tenement P25/2540 (see Figure 2, below), located approximately 500m to the north of the Company's Kalgoorlie Gold Project (Northern Zone). The Northern Zone intrusive hosted gold project is located on P25/2651, 25 km east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia (refer to Figures 1 and 2 for location, below). RGL has also applied for P25/2848 immediately contiguous to the east of P25/2651. The Company continues to assess opportunities for additional tenure in the region.
Ed Mead, Technical Director for Riversgold, commented, "These tenements are very strategic and important for our future gold production development plans, especially with respect to the deal announced by RGL with MEGA Resources on 30 September.”
Highlights:
- Riversgold to acquire 100% of granted tenement P25/2540
- Located ~500 metres due north of RGL's Northern Zone Kalgoorlie Gold Project (the Project)
- This represents a 170% increase in Project size
- Application for new tenement P25/2848 immediately east of Project
They're persisting with those "Super Pit" references eh!?! [Still without marking "Super Pit" on the map] [yeah, we know it's in the Golden Mile - just saying it ain't that clear unless you know]
Lucky they raised that $1.8m in the second half of September eh!!
Still, $75K isn't much to pay for land that is truly prospective for commercially viable gold, so they may have done a good deal there for sure - IF they do find commercially viable gold in those tenements.
But wait folks, there's more - also released on the same day (Oct 6th), a day on which their SP rose +12.5% (or +$0.001) to close @ $0.009, they released this: Grade Control Drill Rig Booked for Kalgoorlie Gold Project.PDF.
--- end of excerpt ---
I just love that image. That's the "type of grade control rig" they've booked to work on their tenements from (on or about) October 27th, however that one is working in a pit, and that's not what their booked rig is going to be doing - it's going to be "Drilling to focus on the shallower gold mineralisation between west and east mineralisation identified from previous drilling". So, not deep drilling then. And not in a pit.
And while Riversgold (RGL) say they have booked this rig, they won't be paying for it - no, that would be MEGA Resources, their JV/farm-in partners there who will be paying for it. Because RGL are free-carried by MEGA through to profitable gold production at the Northern Gold Zone project.
No, they're certainly not silly.
Very news driven share price, and the company is getting away with seemingly creating value without spending much money, however how does that all translate into shareholder returns? With a company like this 100% of the TSRs are going to come from share price movements because they burn cash, they don't sell anything, except percentages of their own projects to other companies as illustrated by these announcements. So - share price:
Over longer periods, not so good (that's using monthly data points over 10 years), and the current Board have only been involved with Riversgold since August 2019 for one director (Simon Andrew) and since 2022 for the other two. There is no data for directors prior to 2017, but it seems the company has been operating since 2017.
However, over the past 12 months it's a different story:
Sure, $0.003 (three tenths of one cent) is a low base to come off (their year low was $0.0025 or one quarter of one cent as shown there above that one year chart), but to not go broke, and to keep the momentum up in the past month on the smell of an oily rag has been almost inspirational.
Almost.
It's not for me, but I can understand the appeal of Monaco.
Market is hot for resources spec. A new punt I have come across is SVY. Met with them last week at a conference on the GC.
They are drilling epithermal targets south of the Cayley load. Phase two drilling at the Fairview Gold prospects was completed a week or so ago with assays expected next month. This is the catalyst for the punt. The risk is that this general area of Vic is known for poorly developed epithermal vein fields, thus assays could come in light and suggest a thin and patchy field.
Mcap of ~$12m and cash of ~$3m is a good a good starting point as they can keep exploration going beyond the pending assays whilst the current EV doesn't factor in the broader asset base (which includes a 28mt copper resource) and regional perspectivity.
I'm off to a site trip tomorrow so hopefully I can get a better understanding. I may change my mind and sell if I become less sure of the trade.
For disclosure, my risk IRL is a small amount and paid up to $0.019/sh.
Proof of site trip
Core
More core (there's 80kms of it)
Sexy core (they didn't let me take a souvenir)
Less sexy (oxidised) core
Rapeseed farm
18th October 2025: @BkrDzn and @DrJP I was a shareholder in SVY in 2014 and 2015 after Chris Cairns built up Integra Mining and sold it to SLR (Silver Lake Resources, now called Vault Minerals) in August 2012 for $426 million, however the initial hype around Chris "doing another Integra" soon faded and the SVY share price kept sliding on underwhelming drilling results so I got out. They then had a massive spike up in September and October of 2019 (well after I had exited) when they discovered a high-grade copper-gold-silver deposit at the Thursday's Gossan prospect in Victoria where I had understood they were actually chasing gold. The discovery, named the Cayley Lode, was shallow and contained extremely high copper grades, with the first diamond hole intersecting a 32-meter zone averaging 5.9% copper, 1 g/t gold, and 58 g/t silver, including some sections assaying up to 40% copper (source). These results prompted a massive surge in Stavely Minerals' share price, including +287% in a single day, and a more than five-fold increase over a short period, as shown below in their "since IPO" or "Max time" chart (since 2014):
The AI technicals below that chart are based on recent upward share price movements that don't show up on that 11.5 year chart, but they have had a generally rising share price since June 30th this year.
Unfortunately, those very high grades of copper were confined to a small portion of the project area because today Stavely's Thursday’s Gossan prospect, which includes the Cayley Lode and the chalcocite-enriched blanket, hosts a Total Mineral Resource Estimate (using a 0.2% Cu grade lower cut-off) of 27.3Mt at 0.69% copper, 0.10g/t gold and 3.4 g/t silver for 416Mlbs of contained copper, 86,000 ounces of gold and 3Mt of silver. Click here for details of the June 2022 Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE). Source: https://www.stavely.com.au/projects/stavely-project/
Interestingly the presentation of the updated MRE in 2022 has some different numbers (shown below from slide 3) but those numbers below might be for the entire company's Resources rather than just their Thursday's Gossan project:
Source: https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/SVY/02532360.pdf [June 2022]
Regardless, the very high grades they originally found in the Cayley Lode - of up to 40% copper within a 32m wide high-grade zone were not representative of the remainder of the project. And the gold reserves are very low grade at around one tenth of one gram per tonne.
According to Google, Stavely Minerals' Thursday's Gossan project has not been commercialised yet because it is still in the early stages of exploration, with several hurdles to overcome before commercial viability can be established, includinge the need for more drilling to define a consistent mineral resource, metallurgical and geotechnical assessments, financial modeling, and obtaining permits. In addition, initial drilling has faced challenges, such as the inconsistency of the mineralized structures, as seen at the Junction prospect, which has required further interpretation and drilling.
Further Reading:
https://www.listcorp.com/asx/svy/stavely-minerals-limited/news/drilling-commenced-at-high-grade-copper-junction-prospect-3073965.html [26th August 2024]
https://www.stavely.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Minerals-Exploration.pdf
Imagine you jumped on this company when they first reported hitting 40% copper back in September/October 2019 at levels around 50 cents to $1.40/share (see chart above) - and they're now trading at 2.1 cents/share. It's been a massive rollercoaster, eh?!? That's exploration for you.
And I do NOT regard Chris Cairns as a snake oil salesman - he's a straight up geo who tells it like it is and is a member of JORC, the committee that sets the rules and guidelines for how this stuff can be reported - and the ASX requires JORC-compliant reporting of this stuff in ASX announcements so JORC is important - see here for my report on and a link to The Hole Truth Podcast Episode #101, titled "Mining 101" which is in the form of a Q&A session with three industry experts, one of which is Chris Cairns.
He is very well respected in the industry and I reckon he's spent more time out in the tenements than he has in the office, which isn't a bad thing:
That's Chris on the left and Simon Lawson on the right; Simon was the MD of Spartan, now the deputy Chairman and the head of exploration at Ramelius (RMS) since RMS acquired Spartan recently, and Simon is also the Technical Director at Gorilla Gold (GG8 - I hold GG8 and RMS). Out of shot to the right is Hedley Widdup of Lion Selection Group (LSX), who is the third expert on the panel for that epp of The Hole Truth pod.
So I rate Chris as a top geo and a straight talker who doesn't like to put positive spin on Stavely's results, but you can only report what you've got in your results, and at the end of the day you can only find what's actually there. And it's really a copper play, not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm bullish on copper now myself, but it's no longer a gold company now in my view. Interesting point you make @BkrDzn (about 4 weeks ago here) about the area risk in that this general area of Vic is known for poorly developed epithermal vein fields, thus assays could come in light and suggest a thin and patchy field.
I'll keep them on the watchlist but I'm not a holder as I'm not convinced they've got the best ground at this point. There's metal there, but there seems to be more metal elsewhere with projects that are hitting more and more copper, like Firefly Metal's Green Bay Copper-Gold Project in Canada - see here: High-grade copper and gold intersections extend known mineralisation at FireFly’s Green Bay by 650m [16th October 2025 - two days ago] but I'm just talking my own book up here I guess because I hold FFM (Firefly) in my SMSF since last Monday (13th October) when I did some rebalancing and added in a few copper and gold names that had just been added to the ASX300 Index last month. FFM have a good chart today, but then so did SVY in October 2019. I got interested in FFM after watching their D&D Presso in August. Their CEO Darren Cooke presented and he was impressive, and so is their Green Bay copper project. Prior to joining Firefly, Darren spent 6 years as part of the Business Development Team at Northern Star (NST) so he's got plenty of good experience.
So FFM isn't a penny stock, they're an ASX300 company with a $1.15 Billion market cap, but their share price has doubled in the past 6 months:
Their year high of $1.73 was reached two days ago (on Oct 16th) and their year low of 66.5 cps was on April 7th, just off the left edge of that 6-month chart above. My main copper exposures are now CSC, FFM and EVN, with EVN being a gold and copper company.
I also hold the following gold companies in my SMSF: RMS, NST, GMD, CMM, CYL, BC8, ALK and SX2, with those last two - Alkane Resources (ALK) and Southern Cross Gold (SX2) - being gold and antimony plays but antimony plays in different ways. ALK is a gold and antimony producer through its recent merger with Mandalay Resources (in August), which includes the Costerfield mine in Victoria. SX2 is an exploration company with a major gold and antimony discovery at its Sunday Creek project in Victoria, not too far from ALK's Costerfield mine, with SX2's Sunday Creek project being potentially one of the largest antimony deposits outside of China, Russia, and Tajikistan (according to Google anyway). Click here for SX2's D&D Presso in August where I don't think Michael Hudson (President, CEO and Managing Director of SX2) felt too comfortable presenting a Victorian gold and antimony story to a predominantly Western Australian audience in Kalgoorlie; he certainly didn't sound as confident or polished as many of the other speakers there. The thing about the gold at Sunday Creek is that it's high grade - he was talking 10g/tonne in one presentation that I watched. But they're still developing that project, so we'll see how that pans out in the fullness of time.
So those are all ASX300 companies, as that's all I can hold in my SMSF which is through CBUS, an industry super fund. However, I also run a speccy portfolio that holds a number of companies that are more the size that interest you @BkrDzn and that speccy PF currently has 14 companies in it, 13 gold and other resources explorers and/or developers and/or early stage gold producers plus BluGlass (BLG) who are a tiny but innovative tech company that are into microchip design and manufacturing but whose primary focus is on developing and manufacturing GaN (gallium nitride) lasers - Andrew had a meeting here recently (on August 20th) with their Head of Corporate Relations, Stefanie Winwood.
The 13 resources exploration and/or project development and/or early stage producer companies that I hold in that real money speccy portfolio are currently (at 18th October 2025) - in order of weighting from largest to smallest holdings - MEK, HRZ, KAL, RHI, GG8, ERM, GHM, AZY, GBR, TCG, AMN, BCI and TR2 with BLG (BluGlass) being smaller than all of those other positions. Three of those companies also have some royalty income or at least own royalties that entitle them to income from other companies' production - although some of those royalties are not currently producing any significant income. The most interesting royalty plays amongst those are ERM and RHI, with the latter owning a royalty over the iron ore that MinRes (MIN) produce from Onslow Iron Ore.
That speccy portfolio of 14 companies currently has a cost of $149K and a market value after close of trade yesterday of $176K, so I'm up +18% but it's early days - I bought half (7) of those positions in the past week after spending most of last weekend creating and then shortening my shopping list, and then adding more names to that list on Monday and Tuesday (and removing two companies who just looked too expensive). Those 7 new buys were mostly funded by the cash I received from Goldfields for my GOR (Gold Road) shares.
Likewise, in my super, the Goldfields money for my GOR shares there helped fund two new additions but I also sold out of 3 companies, BGL (Bellevue Gold), ARB and MAQ, and trimmed a couple of my other positions to free up some cash. I'm bullish on ARB and MAQ longer term but I just see more nearer term upside in those other companies that I've added to that Super portfolio this week.
The BGL sell was due to that company being my lowest conviction holding in that portfolio based on what I consider to be inferior management at Bellevue who may have some more production downgrades up their sleeves yet - and my investment thesis had mostly played out already - which was that they were oversold at between 80 and 90 cps where I bought most of the position between April and August this year, and they didn't look quite so good up at $1.23 where I sold out on Monday. Less upside potential at over $1.20 compared to under 90 cents per share.
In other words, there were more compelling opportunities elsewhere in my view, so I cut them loose and booked the profit. Another factor that I considered were that BGL had made it obvious that they were for sale if the price was right and had confirmed that they had interested parties in their data room at times during recent months and yet there have been no offers made that have been strong enough to be disclosed to the market. So the most likely reasons for that is that the companies doing the DD on BGL either didn't like what they saw, and/or were not prepared to pay a price high enough that BGL would have agreed to take it to their shareholders.
I don't generally base an investment thesis on M&A potential, although it is always nice when it does happen, but in BGL's case my investment thesis was that they'd either have to get their sh!t together or they would get taken out because of their high gold grades, but it has become obvious to me since that there are multiple options across Australia that could represent better opportunities to a potential acquirer of such an asset and that there could still be significant downside in Bellevue (BGL). And as their share price rose they looked less and less like a probable M&A target. So the M&A angle probably only works if they underperform from here which would likely involve another production downgrade or two, something I'm happier to watch from the sidelines now. If it was to happen. So I no longer hold Bellevue Gold.
My other portfolio, my income portfolio that can hold any companies at all like my speccy portfolio can, currently holds just two positions, Lycopodium (LYL) and GR Engineering (GNG).
But getting back to Stavely (SVY), I'll keep them on a watchlist like you are @BkrDzn but like you I'm also seeing better opportunities elsewhere at this point.
Interesting map @edgescape - and only the single deposit in Australia, being Cadia, so, as you say, Northparkes doesn't make the list, and neither does Olympic Dam.
Firefly Metals' previous company name was AuTeco Minerals, and they released the following slide as part of their "A high-grade ready-to-go copper-gold mining project with world class exploration upside in Newfoundland, Canada" presentation in August 2023:
So they include Olympic Dam as one of the largest copper producing mines on the planet in 2022, and even EVN's Ernest Henry makes that list, alongside Carrapateena and Prominent Hill and DeGrussa, but they are talking copper mines in that slide rather than copper-gold specifically. Where's Grasberg, the world's second largest copper mine? It's on the X post map which was based on 2021 data and AuTeco's chart is based on 2022 production so they shouldn't be miles apart on the worlds largest copper producers. Ahh, the fine print says AuTeco's slide is only listing mines owned by ASX-listed companies. That explains it. Also, the X post is only showing the 6 largest copper-gold porphyry deposits globally and the 10 largest copper porphyry deposits plus the smaller blue dots with no names are "Large to Giant porphyry copper deposits".
Here's where Green Bay is located in relation to that subduction zone running up the west coast of North America - i.e. it's nowhere near it, right over on the eastern side of Canada.
Pebble is right in it, Bingham is a little east of it, Green Bay is nowhere near it, but as we see here in Australia with Olympic Dam, you can still get world class deposits outside of those zones, however I do get the point, that those zones do host most of the world's largest copper and gold porphyry deposits.
There is also plenty of money to be made from VMS (Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide) copper-gold deposits like Green Bay.
One of the major advantages of Green Bay is the existing infrastructure and smooth permitting environment there for new mines.
Cheap Hydro Power at their doorstep, an airport close by, and a deep water port 6km from the proposed mine - click the image to watch the video. I found it compelling anyway.
Video Source: https://fireflymetals.com.au/green-bay-cooper-gold-project/