19-May-2026: Study to expand Plutonic Mill processing capacity

Below is Page 1 of today's announcement with some key points highlighted in green rectangles by me:

Note the optionality they have. And here's the top of page 2:

CYL is now my second largest real life position (in my ISA) behind GNG (which is in my IPF), and a decent position here on SM as well.

There are four main reasons why I hold them:

1. Management and Chair - i.e. competent management and their Chairman has good form for being involved with companies that improve their value and then get taken out (acquired) by larger companies. My investment thesis is not based solely on M&A potential, but it's always good to have more than one way to win. Optionality.
2. Growth: Doubling of annual gold production between 2025 and 2030, they anticipate hitting 200 koz p.a. in 2029 and then exceeding that, but I'll give them an extra year.
3. Underappreciated assets: They have assets in Victoria in the Bendigo gold belt that are high grade (7.7g/tonne Au) but that the market appear to be attributing zero value to, because CYL don't talk about their Victorian assets because they are currently 100% focused on the opportunity in WA's Plutonic belt.
4. Value: They are cheap compared to their peers in my opinion, despite having more growth in the next 4 years than most of their peers.

So my IT (investment thesis) presumes that they can and do execute on their stated strategy, but every news release I read from them adds confidence that they are on track to do that. Including today's. They also released this on Friday: Drilling at Old Highway confirms resource growth potential. Check out the widths and grades of gold in that announcement that they've found recently.

And that's just typical of the newsflow I've seen from them since I became super-interested in this company in August last year after watching their MD, James Champion de Crespigny, son of former Normandy Mining chief executive, Robert Champion de Crespigny, present at D&D in Kal last August: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFaIUCs_dZE

I wasn't there in person but I watched it on Youtube - I watched almost all of the presentations, so companies I was interested in and companies that I didn't really care about, just to see what they had to say and if I could learn something.

James was mostly using this August 2025 investor presentation slide deck: https://api.investi.com.au/api/announcements/cyl/67d78fd0-d9a.pdf

He impressed me on a number of levels including how he obviously values the people they have there and their capabilities and achievements. He made it clear that it takes a lot of people to build a company that is planning to grow at the rate that they are, and they have to be high performing, which they are, and when I was rating the various presentations and growth expectations over the next 3 to 5 years at that time, I found Catalyst to be right up there at the top of the list; I was also impressed by Blackcat (BC8) and Firefly (FFM) to name a couple of others, but FFM hasn't really had a big pull back since Feb, because they're copper with a little gold, rather than a gold project, and they're still drilling out the resource and providing regular newsflow. And BC8 haven't fallen as much as CYL, and/or BC8 have recovered more than CYL have (in share price terms), so CYL just looks really cheap compared to the others right now.

Here's what they've got across that Plutonic belt (from today's announcement):

I think CYL is the Aussie gold producer that is trading at the biggest discount to intrinsic value based on what their planned production should be if they execute on their plans over the next three years. The market doesn't believe they'll achieve that step-change up to 200koz annual production by 2029 that they are guiding for.

Source: Page 7 of their 13 Nov 2025 Chairman's AGM address and Managing Director presentation: https://api.investi.com.au/api/announcements/cyl/f08f3a92-679.pdf

It is after all, more than double what they have been producing since 2014 through to 2025, as shown above.

Here's a slide that James presented at D&D in August last year:

They've actually improved on those numbers over the past 9 months, except probably at Bendigo because that project is waiting in the wings and receiving no love at this point in time. They might only have 163koz of gold there near Bendigo (or did in August last year) however it's 7.7g/tonne and they have tenements adjoining that mineralised area that they haven't drilled yet, that James believes likely contain significantly more gold, but he is rightly focused currently on the Plutonic belt at this point, saying that Bendigo is a project for later. But it has value is my point, and I don't think there's any value being attributed to it by the market right now.

I think it's a big positive that Mark Connelly is now the Board Chairman at CYL, and he is always a proactive Chairman whose motto is Improve or Move, so create shareholder value or sell to someone else who can and move on to something else - or just move on and let somebody else do a better job - Mark strongly dislikes deadwood NEDs (Non-Executive Directors) - he believes NEDs need to provide value in terms of expertise but "should keep their noses in and their fingers out".

He believes that it should be the MD/CEO and the Chair who set direction and strategy and are responsible for the execution of that strategy, and the rest of the Board are there mostly to assist and provide some governance guardrails but should not mess with the way the company is run beyond that.

A number of companies that Connelly has been involved in, especially as Chairman, have been acquired by other companies, the latest being Emmerson Resources (ERM). This interview with Mark by the MoM lads explains that really well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8dlKD9Tb68

So in addition to their competent MD, they now have a Chairman that will really be pushing to create value there and ultimately try to facilitate the company being taken over at a good premium by a larger player at some point in the future, at a hopefully significantly higher price than where they are trading today.

I don't usually buy and hold shares in companies purely on takeover speculation or expectation (AZY being the exception to that rule) and I haven't done so with CYL, but it's nice to have more than one way to win, so M&A being a possibility and having a Chair who likes to do deals is a good thing in my opinion, even if no M&A eventuates.

But it's that combination of good Management, Under-Appreciated Assets, Growth, and Value. It's a nice combination. Plus optionality. More than one way to win with this company.

And they also own good ground as their drilling results keep proving.

Here's their last presentation from September 2025, prepared for a North Hemisphere Roadshow: Doubling Reserves year-on-year

And their website: https://catalystmetals.com.au/about-catalyst/

Disclosure: I hold: Catalyst (CYL) are one of my largest positions here on SM, CYL is also the largest position in my largest real money portfolio, my Income Stream Account (ISA), and they are my second largest real money position overall, behind GNG. Very good risk/reward equation in my opinion, especially at these levels.

12 Dec 2024: Results from Hermes drilling program

Page 1 of that announcement:

And here's a larger view of those drilling results from that page:

Decent grades indeed!

The market had bid CYL shares up +4.3% so far today on the back of these results and the promise of further newsflow as the driling continues.

Disc: I purchased $40K worth of CYL yesterday, as I shared here in my "Bull Case" straw yesterday.

CYL are among the sector's best performers today:

As at 1:30pm Sydney time today (12/12/24). Source: Commsec.

14 goldies are up by over 2% today and 12 of those 14 are up by more than 3%. 6 of those are up by over 4% and half of those 6 are up by 5% or more. Of the 58 companies and ETFs/ETPs on my Aussie Gold Sector Watchlist, only 14 are currently down (in the red) today, with a lot more green on the screen than red.

Meeka Metals (MEK, held) is also up on new news, but I'll discuss that in a different straw.

Interestingly, when I looked 15 minutes ago, GR Engineering Services (GNG) (held) were up over 15% however they're now "only" up by +5.49% @ $2.500. They've been up to $2.92/share this afternoon (in the past half hour) which was +23.2% at the time. They closed at $2.37 yesterday. There's low liquidity with GNG most of the time, so there are often large gaps between offers, so buying "at market" can really move the share price, even on low volume trades, same as selling "at market" - always risky with low liquidity companies. While volume is up with GNG today - over 600,000 shares trading already, about 3 x yesterday's volume, and about a third more than Tuesday's volume, it's not crazy high volume, it's just the lack of offers that has caused the SP volatility.

With the gold price continuing to rise, particularly in A$s, more Aussie gold projects become economically viable, and that is good for an engineering and construction company like GNG who specialise in gold mills (gold processing plants) as well as studies through to DFS (Definitive Feasibility Studies) for gold project developers.

Lycopodium (LYL) is another company I hold (my largest real money position as well as my largest position here on SM) which does what GNG do, and more, but mostly overseas, particularly in riskier locations like West Africa, and now in western Pakistan as well (the Reko Diq copper/gold project for Barrick Gold). Both companies are going to do very well over the next couple of years if the gold price holds up at or near current levels, or rises further.

However, right now, they have share prices heading in different directions. LYL is in a downtrend, or they have been, and GNG is in a nice uptrend. In fact when I looked at them 15 mins ago, GNG's share price had gone vertical. Bit lower now, but it was exciting to watch at the time.