Hey @Bear77 this is a pretty down beat assessment. If you don’t mind me asking what’s changed in the 3 months since that leads you to now taking a position in VAU, at least in SM.

No @Stevie_B I don't mind you asking at all. I added VAU to my SMSF yesterday and I'm planning to add it here tonight if my sells go through.

I was watching the most recent Money of Mine (MoM) podcast on Youtube two days ago and Trav reckons the merger between Vault (VAU, formerly SLR) and Genesis (GMD) is closer now than ever, especially after Luke Tonkin announced his retirement and there wasn't any succession plan mentioned at their recent AGM that Trav and JD attended (they also attended the GMD AGM), because perhaps VAU don't need to replace him if the two companies are likely to merge soon. 

We know that there have been talks between the two companies for over a year however there is no love lost between Ral and Luke since Luke tried to scuttle Ral's acquisition of St Barbara a couple of years ago and then tried to scuttle Ral's acquisition of St Barbara's Leonora assets (the main ones being the 2km deep Gwalia mine and the Gwalia mill which Genesis do now own and call their Leonora Mill and Gwalia Mine).  

The sticking points that likely stopped any merger talks proceeding through to an NBIO stage in the past 18 months were most likely (1) price, i.e. Luke reckoned the market wasn't appropriately valuing Vault so he wanted a higher premium than Ral would agree to, (2) the fact that the two men don't like each other very much, and (3) that neither would want to work under or alongside the other and Ral isn't giving up being the head of his company and Luke probably felt the same, until now, because he's announced his retirement, saying he intends to step down "within a period of 12 months from August 2025." That announcement was made on the day they released their full year results in August.  

One of Vault's directors, Ian Macpherson, also retired from the Board at their recent AGM and I don't think they've replaced him either.

Also they've just completed a 1 share for every 6.5 shares held share consolidation (sometimes called a reverse stock split) - so they are now trading around the $5/share mark, and GMD is now up around $6.70/share, so their respective share prices are looking a lot closer now than they were a week ago (pre-share-consolidation), which is better for Vault from an optics POV. 

Remember that post share consolidation (i.e. now), all historical share prices (pre-consolidation) are adjusted up by the same percentage that the share count has been reduced by, so looking backwards we have to divide the prices by 6.5 to get the real prices on those days, prior to yesterday.

Interestingly, when Luke Tonkin (Vault's MD & CEO) announced he was going to step down and away from VAU back in August - see announcement below - as uploaded to the ASX on August 21st, the VAU share price rose +12% from $2.73 (previous day's close) to close @ $3.06. Sure, they also released their full year results that day, so that might have had something to do with it too, but clearly the market was NOT devastated by the news that prickly Luke was not going to be running Vault by the same time next year.

Source: Managing-Director-and-CEO-Succession.PDF

Further Reading:  https://www.australianmining.com.au/tonkin-departs-as-vault-marks-first-year-of-operations

So I'm thinking that the stars are starting to align now for a GMD/SLR merger, which would be effected via GMD acquiring SLR and Ral continuing to be in charge. 

Apart from Luke announcing he is stepping down (that's the BIG change @Stevie_B) and another director retiring this month at their AGM, and VAU doing a buyback to get their share price up and the share consolidation, other stars that are aligning here include:

• GMD very recently announcing they've signed an agreement involving all stakeholders to shorten the Leonora rail line so it will end just short of Gwalia (the GMD mine, not the town) and will no longer run around their (GMD's) Gwalia (Leonora) mill and up through the middle of what is to become their Tower Hill high-grade open pit, so the biggest obstacle in developing Tower Hill will soon be removed. Currently it has an operating rail line running through it and that's going to be removed.
• Genesis would love to truck that Tower Hill ore to the King of the Hills (KOTH) mill just to the north of Tower Hill - and KOTH is currently owned and operated by Vault.
• KOTH is surrounded on three sides (North, East and South) by GMD tenements already - with VAU's tenements only to the west and the immediate south of their KOTH mill - see map below.
• Vault have recently transitioned to an owner-operator mining model at KOTH, rather than using contract mining companies as they had previously done, and that's what GMD already do across their operations (so do NST by the way), so there would not be a third party contractor involved if a GMD-VAU merger was to occur.

The main two changes are Luke Tonkin announcing he is leaving Vault and the VAU SP being high enough now that GMD doesn't have to offer a rediculous premium to get the VAU Board to agree to recommend the deal - so, yeah, there WILL still need to be a share price premium in the offer, but not as large in percentage terms as what the VAU Board would have been demanding when the VAU share price was substantially lower and probably reflected Vault trading at a discount to their peers then - probably a discount that Luke had earned, but a discount nevertheless.

Anyway - you can watch the lads talking about why Trav thinks the deal is closer than ever here:  https://youtu.be/nEARzH-SzMo?t=1653

A number of my points that I've made above were stolen from Trav when I watched that pod. But not all of them - some were mine.

Hope that helps explain my change of mind. I'm still not a huge fan of Vault Minerals as a company but I am interested in this opportunity to get what I think is likely to become either more GMD shares or cash that would likely be worth more than what I'm paying for VAU shares this week.

To be honest, my main issue with Vault was their management, and various capital allocation decisions that Luke Tonkin had made in prior years, and now that he is leaving Vault, the company is starting to look a lot better - even if Genesis don't buy them. But I think Genesis will buy them.

One thing Luke has got right lately is the KOTH mill expansion - using GNG (who I hold). That is much wiser capital allocation than some of his M&A in prior years - and attempted M&A - not everything he tried to do panned out well.

Thanks for the detailed response @Bear77. You certainly go above and beyond - that is very much appreciated.

But I was clearly wrong, as was Trav at MoM, about Genesis (GMD) swallowing up Vault (VAU) @Stevie_B - Instead it's Regis Resources (RRL) who have managed to get Vault to agree to a merger in which Vault shareholders will receive 0.6947 new Regis Resources (RRL) shares for each Vault share held. So no cash, only shares, and the word is that some of the current Vault Minerals (VAU) shareholders were hoping to end up with GMD shares rather than another gold miner operating in a different part of WA like RRL, and aren't best pleased, but it is what it is.

I would normally expect the share prices of RRL and VAU to now move in lock-step (together), i.e. be correlated, IF the market expects this deal to go through because Vault is only worth as much as 69.47% of Regis market capitalisation - as explained above - IF the deal does go through. However on many days they have NOT moved together, sometimes one has risen while the other has fallen, suggesting that there is at least an element of the market that does NOT expect this deal to go through in its currently proposed form, or not at all.

Interestingly, the deal documents actually provide an "out" clause to BOTH RRL and VAU if EITHER of them receives an offer considered superior to this current merger proposal, so the deal could be scuttled by someone coming over the top for VAU OR someone bidding for RRL where that offer is considered to be superior to the currently proposed merger.

Otherwise there is a hefty break fee of $50 million, if one of the parties get cold feet and their board changes their recommendation. Source: "The SID also includes reciprocal exclusivity arrangements, subject to a ‘fiduciary out’ (including customary ‘no shop’, ‘no talk’, ‘no due diligence’, notification and matching right obligations), and reciprocal break fees. The amount of the break fee, should it become payable by either party, is approximately A$50.7 million." from page 4 of the deal announcement to the ASX on May 5th.

I don't think Raleigh Finlayson at GMD is going to get involved in this, well, not in terms of Genesis coming over the top with a better offer for Vault now anyway. I reckon that's unlikely, for a few reasons, including:

1. GMD have recently made FID on their new Tower Hill mill between their Leonora (previously called Gwalia) mill and Vault's KOTH mill, and GMD have contracted GNG (GR Engineering Services) to build it, and it's going to be a big mill and was GNG's largest contract by dollar value announced since OZL's/BHP's West Musgrave nickel/copper processing plant contract a few years ago (which got canned when BHP put all of their WA nickel assets on C&M). If Genesis also owned KOTH, they'd own three operating gold mills (gold processing plants) within a stones throw of each other, Gwalia, Tower Hill and KOTH; all in a row, south to north (obviously AFTER Tower Hill was built, commissioned and was operating); My thinking is that GMD recently deciding to go ahead and build a gold mill at Tower Hill is a clear sign that Ral isn't pursuing KOTH any more, and KOTH would be the main reason he would be interested in VAU. It was previously expected that the Tower Hill ore could be trucked north to the KOTH mill if KOTH became a Genesis (GMD) asset, but that option isn't needed now that Genesis are building a new mill at Tower Hill.
2. GMD acquired all of FML's (Focus Minerals') Laverton assets last year, which then made them (Genesis) the natural buyers/owners of MAU (Magnetic Resources) and MAU's Lady Julie gold project, and recently GMD did pull the trigger on MAU and are taking MAU over now, and because GMD now own all the land around MAU's tenements there (via the FML-tenements acquisition last year), including the tenement directly north of the planned Lady Julie OP that allows that pit to be extended north where they know the gold does extends, that is not only very sensible, it is also hard to believe anyone else would try to trump GMD for MAU because of GMD's tenement holdings around Lady Julie, and MAU know that which is why they (MAU) have accepted an offer that is below where their MD George Sakalidis was pitching the company for (trying to sell it for) over the past two to three years. Ral played the long game and he did not end up overpaying for Magnetic IMO. Building Tower Hill, which will be GMD's largest capacity mill with their highest grade ore feed, plus integrating all of those new assets around their Laverton Mill is plenty to be going on with without GMD doing a VAU takeover as well; and
3. While they're calling it a merger, RRL is acquiring VAU, and Luke Tonkin who was the SLR MD and is now the VAU MD, is retiring, so Jim Beyer, the RRL MD & CEO, is going to run the merged company, and he doesn't have any issues with Raleigh Finlayson at Genesis like Luke Tonkin absolutely did (as I have explained in this thread a couple of times), so it is not beyond the realm of possibilities that RRL (the proposed new RRL including VAU) could at some point in the future still offload the KOTH mill and adjoining tenements to GMD. After all, Ral at GMD isn't at all interested in Vault's Deflector gold project or other assets, particularly Sugar Zone in northern Ontario, Canada, and Ral is also not interested in any of Regis' assets, which do not fall into that Leonora-to-Laverton area that Ral is so keen on consolidating under the Genesis Minerals (GMD) banner, so while I do think that Genesis has been and probably still is the natural owner of KOTH, I'm not sure it's going to be this year or even next year, it could be years away. Or never.

So, yeah, nah, I was wrong about that impending deal (GMD acquiring Vault), and I did NOT see this proposed RRL-VAU merger coming. That is not one that I'd ever seriously considered as making much sense. I'm still not convinced that it does, but there is some logic behind putting two mid-tier goldies together to create a ~A$10.7 billion (~US$7.7 billion) gold company that will get on a few more radar screens than either of them were likely to on their own. There's the obvious "synergies" that come from reducing the duplicate management teams, i.e. getting rid of Board members, Luke Tonkin, etc, but beyond the head office head-count-reduction cost savings, it's not clear why you'd put these two particular companies together, from my POV anyway, but there you go. That's what looks to be happening.

I imagine this has been cooking for a few months now, since as far back as mid-way through last year, and is probably why Luke announced his impending retirement back in August last year - saying he would leave within 12 months, so by August this year, and the lack of commentary about any succession plans from VAU, because they knew they would not need to replace him.

Disclosure: I normally do hold GMD shares. I do not hold GMD, VAU or RRL shares today (May 13th 2026). I am intending to buy about $60K worth of GMD and $30K worth of VAU in my ISA next week when I can, VAU just to get some exposure to the new proposed merged entity, and the best way is usually by taking a stake in the target company which in this case is VAU, just in case the offer gets increased or trumped by someone else. Whether I do go ahead and buy some VAU will depend on what the RRL and VAU share prices do relative to each other and relative to the sector between now and then, but that's the working plan at this stage. I WILL be buying GMD shares regardless.

For some context, my current plan is to buy and hold more CYL, BC8, NST, GMD, RMS, CMM, EVN and FFM than VAU, so VAU would be a fair way below my favourite gold/copper sector exposures.