I agree with your assessment there @BazManCan in terms of RMS being the best value amongst the larger gold producers on the ASX, they are now a $7.6 Billion company and they were added to the S&P/ASX 100 Index on September 22, 2025, less than a month ago. This inclusion was part of the regular quarterly rebalance of the S&P/ASX Indices and followed a period of growth which included the acquisition of Spartan Resources.

If you look across the mid-tier gold producers listed on the ASX you may come across some which appear to offer more value, but being an avid follower of the Aussie Gold Sector, I can't find better value than RMS right now in terms of quality at a relative discount to their peers, which is why RMS is the largest position in my SMSF right now, and is my second largest real life position across all of my portfolios. The only position that is larger is Lycopodium (LYL) in my income portfolio which currently makes up over 80% of that particular portfolio - and LYL are not a gold miner, they're a Perth-WA-based engineering company that specialise in designing and building gold mills for gold miners, mostly overseas, plus a heap of other work as well.

But in terms of gold miners, RMS is my largest real life exposure. Here on SM I still own more NST than RMS, but I agree with you that NST has had a decent run and RMS look like they've got further to run, paricularly now they own the Spartan assets. RMS also have lower costs than NST do - RMS have the lowest AISC (All-In Sustaining Cost) per ounce of gold produced than every other major Aussie gold miner except for Evolution (EVN) and Evolution only has lower AISC because they produce so much copper and they're using all of those copper byproduct credits to reduce their group AISC for their gold production. If you attributed EVN's costs to their gold production and to their copper production separately, RMS would have lower gold production costs than EVN..

The main reason why RMS have such low costs is that they are now mining higher grades of gold than their peers, and their mills are already built and ramped up so they don't have the massive capex that companies like NST have (with their KCGM expansion next to Kalgoorlie followed by the massive Hemi development in northern WA), although RMS are certainly spending money on mine development, but even without taking capex into account, their opex is lower and their grades are higher; RMS is just in a really good position right now. The sun is shining and they're certainly making plenty of hay!

The other thing about RMS is that while they are going through a purple patch currently, they still have the high grade gold in Never Never (part of the Spartan acquisition) to come in the next couple of years and there's a lot of high grade gold there. They're good now, and they're only going to get even better over the next 2 to 3 years.

I've written about RMS a fair bit here on Strawman.com - so you can check out that if you want to know more about why I like them so much. It'll start with my valuation which is more of a price target thing with me and actually needs to be updated (raised) again now - and that's all in chronological order, so scroll down for the recent stuff at the end.

My three best picks across Aussie gold producers are RMS, GMD and NST currently, and each for a slightly different reason, other than they all have excellent management.

RMS has lower costs plus growth and it's not yet reflected in their share price in my opinion.

GMD has growth but a lot of it IS already priced in, however I am prepared to back Raleigh Finlayson to keep creating more value at Genesis through both organic and inorganic (M&A) growth.

And NST are the biggest Aussie player in the sector now that Newcrest has been swallowed up by Newmont, so if gold stays up here or goes higher, gold miner ETFs like GDX are going to have to keep buying more of them, and global investors buying shares in gold companies directly are going to be buying NST also. NST is a top 10 ten global gold miner, and in about 2 to 3 years when KCGM is fully ramped up to over double its current annual ore processing capacity, NST management have stated that they expect NST to be a global top 5 gold company. So my thesis around NST has now moved to inflows - people will buy them to get gold exposure.

However RMS are now in the ASX100 index, so they're becoming far more relevant and getting on a lot more radar screens now.

Overall, if I could only buy shares in one gold company today, it would be Ramelius (RMS). Next would be GMD. Then NST. Then a bunch of others. I do hold quite a few, but I do not currently hold OBM, WGX or VAU in the mid-tier goldies because I don't much like their management and their historical track record of capital allocation and other decisions. I don't have any such issues with the goldies I do hold though, like the three I've discussed here.

So, yeah, I can't splash any cold water on your assertion that RMS is looking like the best value amongst the gold producers right now @BazManCan - and I guess I should probably rebalance my SM portfolio here to reflect my higher weighting to RMS IRL.