It's also worth noting that AustralianSuper is Australia's largest super fund, managing around A$300 billion on behalf of over 3.2 million members - (see here) - and they are one of the industry super funds that has an option that allows members with a reasonable balance to invest up to 80% of their super balance in any companies they choose within the ASX300 index as well as a limited range of ETFs, LICs and managed funds - see here: https://www.australiansuper.com/investments/your-investment-options/member-direct

Each of those industry funds has a different name for that option - AustralianSuper call it "Member Direct". The fund that I use, CBUS, call it "Self Managed", but they all have substantially the same rules, including that no more than 20% of your super can be invested in a single company, that all the companies must be in the ASX300, and that you leave at least 20% of your super in one or more of their managed options - like High Growth, Balanced, Fixed Interest, etc. The fee structures vary but they tend to compare favourably with DIY super outside of industry super funds - unless you have multiple millions in your DIY SMSF in which case economies of scale can make the overheads a lower percentage than the percentages that the industry funds charge - but for me using CBUS works well. Before CBUS added their "Self Managed" option, I was using AustralianSuper's "Member Direct".

Popular ASX300 companies can and do get chosen by members of AustralianSuper to be included in their "Member Direct/Self Managed" portions of their super, and that can cause AustralianSuper's ownership percentage to fluctuate and require them to lodge these "Change in Substantial Holding" notices whenever there is a 1% or more variance in their ownership percentage - up or down. This is because the shares are not held in the name of the individual members, they are held in the name of the fund.

But that does NOT apply here in the case of C79, because Chrysos Corporation are NOT in the ASX300 index yet, so are NOT eligible for inclusion in members' "Member Direct" holdings.

AustralianSuper's shareholding in C79 is therefore held within AS' own managed strategies, not because members have chosen to apportion funds from within their own super to be invested in the company. That's super-positive (no pun intended) in my opinion - because AustralianSuper have a reasonable track record of backing winners (positive shareholder returns that usually outperform the main indices and many or most other super funds), and they also have a decent ESG framework behind them - see here: https://www.australiansuper.com/investments/how-we-invest

In terms of @jcmleng refering to AS picking up C79 at "attractive prices" @GazD I'm guessing that means simply compared to where they are trading today ($8.32 on Friday, $8.57 last Wednesday) - which is substantially higher than where C79 was trading at on 13-November-2023 ($7.23/share) - but the highest AS paid for any C79 shares was $6.60 in the placement - see here Chrysos-Corporation-completes-$75-million-Placement.PDF [7-Nov-2023] - those shares were issued on 13-Nov-2023 - which is when AS's position in C79 increased to 6.38% according to their notice - see here: Change-in-substantial-holding.PDF. See page 3 of that notice for dates and prices, the final line with the $0 price that is listed as a "conversion" was the C79 placement which was done at $6.60/share. All the other prices on page 3 of that notice were between $4.91 and $6.29/share.

AustralianSuper's prior notice - when they BECAME substantial holders of C79 with 5.01% - was on the 7th August 2023, and C79 were trading at $4.95 then and had not been above $5, and that notice (Becoming-a-substantial-holder.PDF) shows that the 5.01% was accumulated at prices ranging from $4.03 up to $4.95.

In summary, that 5.01% was accumulated by AS at prices all below $5/share and then added to at prices between $4.91 and $6.60/share.

The average price paid for AS's 6.48% of C79 is therefore somewhere around $5 to $5.50/share - because MOST of them were bought below $5, with less than 23% of them being bought at prices over $5/share (up to a max of $6.60/share).

I agree that valuing this company with a strong degree of confidence is hard, and I haven't been able to do that myself, however I'm confident that they should be worth substantially more in 5 years' time than they are now, so that's the basis on which I've added them to my Strawman.com portfolio, and in that light I have to agree with @jcmleng that AustralianSuper did buy their stake in C79 at attractive prices - around $5 to $5.50 per share average price, and a maximum of $6.60/share.

In terms of whether the gold price around all-time highs is making the C79 share price a bit frothy right now, it is possible, however the switch from fire assays to C79's new PhotonAssay technology is unlikely to slow down substantially if the gold price falls, in my opinion. Existing gold producers still need to do these tests all the time as part of running their mines, and people will always be looking for the next gold mine, so there will always be tests required, regardless of the gold price. C79's growth will be more about the speed of adoption of the new tech and their ability and constraints around production and commissioning of new PhotonAssay units. I would expect that their biggest problem is going to be keeping up with demand in the next few years. The benefits of their tech are many, and because of their leasing model, the costs to the end-user are the same as they are paying currently for inferior technology (fire assays), or less, at scale, but never more. So it's not so much if, but when, because there's basically zero downside in changing over to PhotonAssay, and many benefits. The user's costs don't even increase, either up-front, or ongoing. So, like I said, it's just about when people decide to make the change rather than if. They will, at some point, and it's C79's job to manage that increasing demand as best they can.

Additional: I just had a look at AustralianSuper's June 30, 2023 portfolio disclosures - go here: https://www.australiansuper.com/investments/what-we-invest-in, then scroll down and click on the "View Superannuation Investments" button, to get here: https://www.australiansuper.com/investments/what-we-invest-in/our-superannuation-investments and then "PreMixed" will be underlined in red. Choose the one next to it, "DIY Mix" and then "Australian Shares" will come up, then scroll down and choose page 2, then scroll up until you see "Chrysos Corporation" in the left column. You can see there that this option (the "Australian Shares" part of the DIY Mix option) held 476,893 Chrysos (C79) shares (@ the June 30 closing price of $5.13 = $2,446,462). Scroll to the right (there is a column scroll button with an arrow on it) and you'll see that C79 represents just 0.04% of the $5,882,575,338 ($5.9 billion) in equities that are held within that strategy portfolio by AustralianSuper; It was 0.041588% so it rounds down to 0.04%. For contrast, the top 10 positions within that portfolio are:

1. BHP, 11.83%
2. CBA, 8.78%
3. CSL, 7.14%
4. NAB, 4.72%
5. Woodside Energy Group, 4.29%
6. Woolworths Group, 4.07%
7. Macquarie Group, 3.68%
8. Wesfarmers, 3.23%
9. Transurban Group, 3.05%
10. Westpac Banking Corp, 3.05%

For some context - the following companies have the same weighting within that portfolio to C79 (i.e. 0.04% of the portfolio):

• Insurance Australia Group Ltd
• Allkem Ltd
• APA Group
• Jervois Global Ltd
• Baby Bunting Group Ltd
• Stockland Corporation Ltd

The following lot are at 0.03%, so even less:

• Ramsay Health Care Ltd
• IGO Ltd
• Mirvac Group
• Amcor Plc
• GPT Group
• Dexus
• Whitehaven Coal Ltd
• Medibank Private Ltd
• Carsales.Com Ltd
• Atlas Arteria Group
• Trajan Group Holdings Ltd
• Washington H Soul Pattinson And Company Ltd
• Aurizon Holdings Ltd
• AGL Energy Ltd
• Worley Ltd

And the following are even less, at 0.02%

• Lendlease Group
• Incitec Pivot Ltd
• Treasury Wine Estates Ltd
• SEEK Ltd
• AMP Ltd
• Charter Hall Group
• Challenger Ltd
• Bendigo And Adelaide Bank Ltd
• Lynas Rare Earths Ltd
• Fineos Corporation Holdings Plc
• Cleanaway Waste Management Ltd
• ALS Ltd
• Iluka Resources Ltd
• Bank of Queensland Ltd
• AMA Group Ltd
• Alcidion Group Ltd

And the following are lower still, at 0.01%:

• Qube Holdings Ltd
• Altium Ltd
• Technologyone Ltd
• Murray Cod Australia Ltd
• Nib Holdings Ltd
• Jervois Global Ltd
• Clover Corporation Ltd
• Alumina Ltd
• Nexted Group Ltd
• Metcash Ltd
• A2 Milk Company Ltd
• Virgin Money UK PLC
• Nine Entertainment Co Holdings Ltd
• Ansell Ltd
• Downer EDI Ltd
• Domino's Pizza Enterprises Ltd
• Block Inc
• Scidev Ltd
• Orora Ltd
• Good Drinks Australia Ltd
• Region Re Ltd
• Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd

Some big names there - really interesting I reckon that AS have given around 4 times the weighting of ALU, TNE, SQ2, HVN, DMP, DOW & QUB to a relatively tiny company like C79.

The following companies (or equities) represent less than 0.005% so have been rounded down to 0%, but they were all still in AS's Australian Shares portfolio within their DIY Mix options as at June 30th, 2023:

• Micro-X Ltd
• Hipages Group Holdings Ltd
• Prospa Group Ltd
• Whispir Ltd
• Quickstep Holdings Ltd
• Jameson Resources Ltd
• Avjennings Ltd
• Magellan Financial Group Ltd

AussieSuper have stuffed up there somewhere with their numbers for MFG as they said they held 5,336 units of MFG worth just $1,067, but MFG closed on June 30th at $9.49/share, so 5,336 MFG would have been worth $50,638, however even $51K would have still rounded down to 0.00% of the portfolio. Even the $286,065 that they had invested in MX1 (Micro-X) rounds down to 0.00% of that $5.9 Billion portfolio because it's 0.00485% and reducing that to two decimal places makes it 0.00%

The portfolio we have been looking at there is just the Australian shares within the DIY section of AS. If you go back to "PreMixed" and look at their "High Growth" portfolio, you'll find (on page 17) that C79 is 0.01% of that portfolio; 535,410 C79 shares worth $5.13 each (June 30 closing share price) = $2,746,653, and that portfolio holds shares from all over the world, not just Australia, and the equities listed there represent only 59.36% of that "High Growth" portfolio, and that 59.3% (so just the equities portion) adds up to A$15,719,379,791 ($15.7 billion of FUM). In that case there are more C79 shares held in that portfolio, but because the overall value of the whole portfolio is around 5 times bigger than the other one, the C79 weighting is smaller (0.01% vs 0.04% in the other one).

You can download these AS portfolios as CSV files (from here, scroll down - the CSV file options are near the bottom) and look at them in MS Excel as spreadsheets if you want to. That's what I did with the first portfolio I talked about above (the AustralianSuper DIY Mix: Australian Shares portfolio). Obviously if you do that with the "Member Direct" portfolio, you won't find C79 in there at all because it only contains ASX300 companies as I explained earlier. At this stage the data has not been updated since June 30th, 2023, but they do say that they do update it every 6 months, so there will be a December 31st update; they just haven't done that yet (as at 14th Jan 2024) - but I expect they probably will soon, like within the next few weeks.

Thanks for this insight @Bear77.

I like the deep look Australian Super and take your point around what’s an ‘attractive price’. I’m really interested in Chrysos and wondered if the difficulty I had with valuation was just me.Wwith regards the possible froth in SP I would note that your points in defence of Chrysos ongoing value prop with regards the share price is not what I was worried about but more about whether it was a factor driving people’s perception of the stock and therefore the multiple of (choose your metric) they are willing to pay…

I’m wary that the positive feeling I had following the @Strawman meeting with Dirk might reflect the compelling story of this stock more than its promising financials… so when to buy? I’ve taken a very small position IRL with the intention of building further if the business continues to execute. I suppose in simple terms that would look like continued growth and adoption, ongoing positive unit economics and some sense of fiscal responsibility in this setting of long term growth and investment.

@GazD, I wish I knew how to complete a valuation - thats a 2024 goal of mine! So, no, have not done a valuation.

Made the comment with 2 data points:

• 100% hindsight! I think the price was already much higher when the announcement was made.
• I first opened my C79 position in Dec 2022 at $3.03 when it was completely unloved, though to $6, with cost now averaging $4.27. I also used the $6.50 IPO price as another price marker. So I thought the range with Aus Super bought in was attractive.

I like companies where the product offering is the non-negotiable operational requirement of its buyers and where the product is essentially the defacto industry standard. C79 has a strong baseline revenue, the upside of per unit testing and, with each deployment, further entrenches itself as the industry standard, which, I think, will transcend the gold price.

I think the bullishness is due to the fact that market now better understands the C79 busines model, the positioning of the technology in industry and the business economics. I am guessing it did not get attention given the high upfront capex etc.

This is only the start of a good run I think!

Discl: Held IRL and in SM