Possibly @thunderhead or the other possibility is that because AustralianSuper has over 3.7 million members, making it the largest superannuation fund in Australia by both membership and assets under management (A$410 billion in AUM as at 31 December 2025) and one of the 40 largest asset owners in the world (see here), who lets their members invest in ASX300 companies directly through their "Member Direct" option (my own Industry Fund CBUS calls their version of that option "Self Managed" rather than "Member Direct" but it's exactly the same) AustralianSuper holds just over 5% of lots of Australia's larger companies, including a number of ASX100 companies like PME because their members have chosen to hold those companies in their super fund and those holdings are in AustralianSuper's name rather than in the names of their members.

It can be hard to tell, because while AustralianSuper do use a lot of external fund managers to manage much of their FUM, they also have some inhouse investment managers who do directly invest some of their FUM directly into ASX companies, but one of the ways to try to tell if their +5% "Subs" status has been caused mostly by the target company being popular across AustralianSuper's 3.7 million members who have chosen to personally add the company to their own "Member Direct" portion of their super funds or income stream accounts (Member Direct can be up to 80% of their total account balance at the time of any purchase and can grow beyond 80% after purchases, and ASX100 companies like PME can be up to 20% of their total fund balance at the time of purchase in terms of a single position in a company), is to look at the daily buys and sells which can be found within the "Subs" notices.

For example, in this latest notice from AustralianSuper for PME (Becoming-a-substantial-holder.pdf) the following example from page 4 shows:

1. Transactions on most trading days.
2. Transactions of sometimes as little as 35 shares. (as little as $4K worth of PME)
3. Net Buys or Sells varying from day to day. (so not continuous buying or continuous selling but a daily mix of buying and selling)

This is not how AustralianSuper's own fund managers would trade; If they were buying a position they would trade large volumes and they would be mostly buys if they were building a position, such as the $47.8m buy on the 20th March and the $72.6m buy on the 17th March, but those could have also been purely because of member buying. They do after all have over 3,700,000 (3.7m) members.

To me this looks like the majority if not all of it was buying by AustralianSuper's members - people like you and me - rather than by AustralianSuper's own fund managers. It still indicates positive sentiment however perhaps not that there's smart insto money necessarily moving into PME. It might be, but "Subs" notices of this type that contain such daily trades with many being on very small volumes, is not definitive proof of AustralianSuper becoming bullish on PME rather than just a bunch of their members seeing an opportunity to add PME to their accounts while PME's share price has been smashed down.

BTW, AS (AustralianSuper) members can also add some ETFs to their Super Fund and Income Stream accounts - see here: AustralianSuper Member Direct Investment Menu.pdf

P.S: A friend recently asked me to recommend a super fund, and I said to go with an Australian Industry Fund because of the lower fees which meant better long term investment earnings, which is a result of them not having any shareholders that they need to provide a return for, Australian Industry Super Funds exist solely to benefit their own members. And within that to go with the biggest, AustralianSuper, because their economies of scale allow them to charge lower fees and lower insurance premiums because they can negotiate lower rates from their insurance providers and lower fees from their external fund managers. They also have a history of decent returns. I was an AS member for a few years but moved that balance back to my CBUS account once CBUS fully developed their own "Self Managed" option which is almost identical to AS' "Member Direct" option. AS (AustralianSuper), as the country's largest industry fund, were the first fund to develop that direct investing option for their members, and I embraced that immediately by moving 95% of my CBUS balance into a new AS Super account. Moving all my Super money back to CBUS later was just a loyalty thing (once CBUS provided a similar platform to invest directly in ASX300 companies) - as I've been a CBUS member since my late teens when I started work in construction (so over 40 years) and they've been good.