Undervalued Copper, Twitter Activism and IperionX with Hank Ruehl

We mix things up today with a daily show and interview allin one as we’re joined by Hank Ruehl, who is a natural resource investor through the fund he founded, Sierra Morena Capital.

We dive into the latest escalations in the Rack Attack, withKinterra and CAML falling over for New World, before heading up to Sudbury to take a look at Magna Mining, which has consolidated some forgotten mines.

Next, we unpack the highly dramatic fight for an outcome atTNR Gold, which sits on 2 great royalties. To wrap things up, we peel back the curtain on IperionX, the titanium producer play which is gathering steam in America.

You can connect with Hank Ruehl on Twitter: @HankRuehl

.……………

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Introduction

(03:03) The Rack Attack - Update

(07:17) Competitive tension for US assets

(09:35) Value in Magna Mining

(16:56) The draw of restart plays

(19:20) Twitter activism to unlock TNR Gold’s value

(33:38) IperionX – the West’s new titanium champion?

……………

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Like a sufficiently large crowd of motivated shareholders all
wanting the same thing because, they say, undervalued equity.
I don't recall seeing anything quite like this before.
I think part of the reason that there is this crowd sourced
interest in this particular campaign is because if there is
actual real, realizable value. We do so many retakes.

(00:23):
You wouldn't believe how often we cook it, so don't even worry.
Jonas Benedict Dawling, Travis Ricciardo doing something a
little bit different today. I'm excited.
We've got, we've got a, we've got someone else joining us for
a bit of, a bit of a riff. And it's not like a, we're going
to talk about some stories, somestuff that's happened in the
market. In fact, I can't help myself but
want to provide an update on therack attack in Arizona.

(00:44):
It's on my mind. There's updates, there's things
happening. It's heating up.
It's heating up and we're also going to explore some some
territory like there's a very interesting kind of copper
growth or or base metals growth story that we've never talked
about before, never explored, but we're going to cover it and
I'm actually pretty interested in it.
I'm also super excited to talk about another company, another

(01:04):
titanium tech ish play mining adjacent Iperian X that has been
on the you know, on the cast. We wanted to talk about it for a
long time, but. Retail.
Retail guys love this one. Yeah, yeah.
I feel inexperienced to cover it, but I'm excited that we're
going to do it. Plus is royalty activist drama
and it's all over Twitter, TNR gold or TNRV.
If if you've been following thatone cherry on top, joining us

(01:26):
for as we explore these these topics, mate, we're joined by
Hank rule of Sierra Morena capital.
He's a small fund manager based in the in the US investing in
the sector that we love. So appreciate you kind of
joining us for for a bit of an exploratory conversation as we
we cover a bunch of stuff today,mate.
Yeah, thanks a ton for having meguys.
This should be very fun. You know big big fan of money of

(01:49):
mine big fan of a lot of the companies we're going to talk
about as well. So should be should be pretty
fun. Let's.
Do this. You're a fan of the Yeah, you're
a fan of the companies we talk about and I reckon you like
because you cover the metals andmining sector, Hank, you would,
you would know that whenever there's like any potential
mining services contractor, openpit mining contractor or, or

(02:11):
anything along those lines that kind of pops up and you need,
you need someone who can help you deploy A mining fleet ASAP
to monetise the value in the ground.
Who would you call? Yeah.
I mean, I'd have to say Mineral Mining Services is right up
there. Ms. The team that just gets it
done. Mineral Mining Services MMS the
brand transcends into the UnitedStates even though MMS they are

(02:32):
absolutely like killing it knocking out of the park.
Every kings W WA gold industry, right?
WA gold mate, they do even more than that.
It's not just not just gold. I've I've seen them, I've seen
them covalent it's true. If there's dirt to be moved and
mined MMS, the people you call, you get in touch with them.
They do that with their stacked tech services.
This team mate just stacked withtalent.
Doesn't matter if it's drill andblast, load and haul MMS will

(02:53):
have you sorted. Hank wouldn't you would love to
know that that was that were filled with very talented
technical people all throughout them that can help you come up
with the the mine plan, help youfigure out, you know the
resource updates help you get all of that stuff loaded.
That's what MMS. Do without a doubt.
Let's let's start with the rack attack guys.
I'm, I'm excited and I'm excitedto do this with, with you, Hank,
because you can share a bit of the, the US kind of insight.

(03:16):
We've obviously spoken about this story quite a bit in, in
recent times and it is heating up, heating up, heating up,
right. So we've got Kintera and Camel
going head to head now. And yeah, the the market is
anticipating even more. As they, as they should make, as
they should in in this case, when we last talked about a
Quintera submitted an NBIO 5.7 cents to the board of New World.

(03:39):
Now in short order, the New World board deemed that clearly
kind of capable of becoming a superior offer.
So Quintera, they loved this bitof statement at 5.7 cents.
Then at the end of the day, Camel, they get their hands on
another 7% of the company's ordinary shares.
They pay 6.2 cents for them, so half a cent more.
And that leaves Camel at the endof that with like 12.1% of the

(04:01):
company in, in ordinary stock versus Quintero is like 19 odd
percent. Now what Camel say they're doing
after they get their hands on that line of stock, they're
amending the scheme. So all shareholders will get
paid that price. So they're they're offered
everyone is now 6.2 cents. New world stock flies to 6.5
cents on Friday. So the balls in Quinteros court,

(04:23):
right? What did they come to the party
or not? And yesterday we find out the
answer to that. They drop a supplementary bit of
statement. They've upped their takeover
offer to 6.2 cents as well. By the way, even though it's the
same price as Camels offer, theyreckon that their offer is
superior on conditionality and they're going to vote against
the Camel scheme with their lineof stock.

(04:44):
Of course this is so good, and 6.5 cents is we're talking about
30% above what was nearly a 100%premium.
So what does this all mean now mate?
It's interesting, like both bothparties are like neck and neck
here and after escalating like bids and scooping up stock
themselves, we're I think we're close to to, you know, the end

(05:05):
game and Cantera, they didn't bid higher than camel like like
they could have. They could have, you know, come
in with with an even higher price than 6.2 cents.
They matched it right. So that's the first sign of
price discipline we've seen in this entire contest.
It's important too, because like, things were escalating
before and Cantera, they, they, they actually have a bid on

(05:25):
market at 6.2 cents. So should the price dip there,
they're actually going to pick up even more than they've got at
the moment. Right now, the stock's trading
at 6.4 cents. Neither party has declared best
and final bid yet. That's important.
That's why there's likely more to go.
So the big question to figure out is, is how much juice is
left here at 6.2 cents? This is a $230 million

(05:48):
acquisition for Cara or or Camel.
Both of these buyers are supremely motivated to do a
deal. They've got different reasons
supporting that motivation, but the price paid for both of them
matters a lot, right? This is going to go to whoever
wants it the most. They can both afford it, but if
I were to to blindly guess just like like just fly out guess

(06:10):
with no like nothing other than a guess, I guess his Kinterra
end up with this at 7 cents. That's my guess.
I like and that's like a complete thumb sucker, right?
But things can like, like, OK, we've seen some price discipline
here, but things can also escalate after price discipline.
Like if you cast your mind back to when while U and BHP were
going head to head in, the finaluplift in that contest that got

(06:33):
the deal done was an eye watering 47% uplift to BHP's
last bid. So anything can happen in these
situations. Like your guess is, is as good
as mine. But I, I'm just kind of sensing
a bit more like discipline on price, like maybe maybe both
parties get a bit sensitive to overpaying around here.
And I think Quintero would be mybet as our favourites to get the
deal done. Yeah, that that, that was a

(06:54):
unique and fascinating bit of drama there with nor on with
Wylo having picked up a stake pretty early.
Yeah, in in the piece. Which they used to justify.
The the theft, yeah, but that got if we got got a 47 up
percent up there from here that.'D be.
That'd be crazy. I mean, that's that.
'D be pretty cool. Extremely.
Improbable. I am sided with you in that I
think Quintero is even more motivated to put this money to

(07:16):
work. But yeah, seven cents would be a
belter. I think you got a prediction to
throw in the mix or just thoughts on this type of action
that we haven't seen in a long time for US based assets?
That's a really good last line there.
This is good competitive attention for AUS Asset.
I wish both parties the best. I wish shareholders the best.
Not necessarily the US asset I would have necessarily picked to

(07:39):
be, you know, front and Center for this kind of competitive,
hyper competitive process. I mean, I know it's high grade,
I know there's some infrastructure advantages
etcetera. But you look at the size of the
prize and like you guys said, just the, the level to which
these guys are bidding and you can't help but think they're
only bidding this much because it's a competitive process,
which is again, but motivated todo a deal.

(08:00):
It's one of the things that thisis something I would say as a
public equity guy, the drag on the private equity guys, but
it's there. They have to do a deal when they
have to do them. They're constrained in that sort
of way. And they only get so many shots
on goal and so on and so forth. And their shots have to be of a
specific size. And for Quintero, I know they've
got, you know, a specific strategy and a specific set of

(08:20):
geographies they have to work with.
So it all, I guess, to lead backto the first question.
That's ultimately I think why I would agree with you guys in
terms of backing them to be the winner here.
And yeah, I think $0.07 is pretty reasonable.
We're seeing, like you guys said, finally this pullback
here, maybe before the last, thelast onslaught that ultimately
gets it over the top. Winners is a funny way to use it
in an auction, isn't it? It's who really wins in an

(08:42):
auction? The seller like but.
The shareholders, the existing. Exactly, exactly.
Good on that. Good on them.
Shareholders you invest in like transition metals, that's like
the MO of your fund and you'd beall too familiar with it.
The low CapEx kind of development story in copper is
there's just like few and far between, like how many
opportunities are there? And then also like how many of
those low CapEx like developmentstories are there that are in

(09:04):
Arizona, you know, an area that is like supremely familiar to
the Quintero team because they they're ex Waterton, they've got
a which has a mine like 100 kilometers.
Away permits in place. Exactly.
So I just think the motivation to go at it for them would be
pretty damn high. Absolutely.
And all those are good things. To be fair.
That's got to be taken lightly, especially in a place like
Arizona where having permits versus not can be the

(09:26):
difference. As an extreme example, the other
end, right, you'll look at resolution.
Obviously scale. Scale is nice, but if you can't
get it out of the ground, it's not a time frame that you want
to. You must be looking at the 230
million Aussie kind of implied equity value right now and
comparing it with your favorite,yeah, kind of copper base metals
growth stock, which as an equityvalue of only 330 million

(09:48):
Canadian. And by the way, it's already
producing. There's growth in it, but it's
already producing. Absolutely.
Every time there's a copper acquisition story, I think was
it Mac Copper? Also ASX?
Yeah, Mac Xanadu was another onerecently, yeah, as well.
And Rex last year. There's been a plethora of them.
Yeah, it's good. It's good to see for the sector,

(10:09):
but it also all you know, and everybody always trots out their
comparison charts of, oh, we have so many million tons that
you know, X percent copper, etcetera.
But back-to-back to, yeah, my, my favorite mining stock,
biggest position for over a yearnow at this point, Magna Mining,
which is polymetallic, it's copper, but also nickel and
PGMS. But yeah, you look at, you look
at their, and this is just their, their current MRE.

(10:31):
If you look at historic or a number of the other mines they
have, they've got 48 million tons at about a 2.62 point, 7%
copper equivalent versus I thinkNew World's was something like
14,000,000 tons at 3.8. And again, yeah, New World's
relatively low CapEx. Now he was producing police did
again as Fab said, one of their minds, but Creedy W is up and

(10:53):
running right now. And the other ones, if you look
at their they've got a they've got a staged very methodical,
but also pretty swift basically roughly 1 mine a year plan to of
restarting these other mines that they have in the Sudbury
region. They the you look at the
economics on some of these restarts and the PEA for their
Crane Hill project, for example,post tax IRR on the restart is

(11:15):
129%. They can get these things up and
running with very little. I think it's 45,000,000 Canadian
net CapEx that they got to put into that and I want to say the
projects worth around 150 million Canadian that spot.
So easy restarts, lot of resources in a lot of places, a
lot of optionality and then the other part as well.
And now I'm just filibustering about Magna, but I like them a

(11:36):
lot is those are resources from for the most part, the Crane
Hill and Shakespeare projects have been owned by Magna before
this last September. But a lot of those, a lot of the
other resources, if you look at Magna are resources that were
most recently done by KGHM, which owned 4 mines.
That one operating mine, Mccree W 3 fast producing mines,

(11:56):
Levalsky and Kirkwood, that again, all of these except for
Kirkwood fully permitted Sudbury, one of the best
jurisdictions in the world for mining.
You've got 2 mills in the area, both of them, the one valet, 1
Glencore, both of them very hungry for feed.
Glencore is down to running onlyevery other shift on their mill
because they don't have enough feed.
Each of those guys are only operating a couple mines at

(12:17):
most. But it's again, there's still a
lot of mineralization left in Sudbury and it's you'll look at
the forget the exact number I should know, but some double
digit percentage of all nickel ever mined on Earth is from
Sudbury. I don't think it gets much play
because there aren't that many juniors operating the space, but
there is Magna. And KG.
They sold out to Magna in September.
Exactly right. For a pretty sweet deal on

(12:37):
Magna's part, it was 5 million Canadian cash upfront and
deferred payments totalling 20 something million.
That'll be conditional on on thestart of production at a couple
of the mines that were sold and some Magna stock and obviously
Magna assumes closure liabilities and stuff.
The thing is KGHM wanted to sell, wasn't doing anything with
these projects, viewed them as non core.
They're within Sudbury, they're all in on Vic, and ultimately I

(13:01):
think they're taking a long way around on that.
We'll see. I wouldn't.
The Magna guys would probably get frustrated, vexed with me
for saying this, but I could seehalf a decade on Magna ends up
getting Victoria too. So we'll see.
We'll see how that all plays out.
But yeah, ultimately these were KGHM products projects.
They've got historic resources, but a lot of those historic
resources, KGHM wasn't doing much exploration honestly.

(13:21):
They were running these mines. Again, they were non core
assets. They were running them just to
stay break even or just about. And so Magnus coming in, they
know these mines. You look at the CEO of Magnum
Mining, he started out as a leadminer and then a foreman at
Mccree W at this mine that they just got from AG sender.
A lot of the Magna guys are partof the FNX and the Quadra FNX

(13:42):
team that also operate in Sudbury during the 2000s when
the top TSX listed stocks in terms of performance over the
course of the 2000s ultimately got bought by KGHM.
Now FN XS successor has taken the same assets back out for a
song. So yeah, so all that was leading
up to say, I think there's quitea bit more.
And if you look at some of Magna's recent drill results,
there's quite a bit more mineralization, both immediately

(14:05):
adjacent to to existing resources that's very easily
accessed from existing Stokes and so on and so forth.
And also stuff that's a bit further out that can actually be
used by Magna to reconfigure some mine plans and ultimately
grow production. They can drive a ramp for
example, through this really high grade close to surface.
It's not too big, but it's we'retalking like 2627% top

(14:27):
equivalent hits over a meter pretty reliably at Levac.
They can hopefully drive a ramp through that into the existing
known mineralization and mine, you know significantly more
tonnage than what KGM was doing there.
To kind of play devil's advocate, Hank, the stock has
more than 4X since the beginningof last year.
So it's not completely without love.
Do you, do you see that just as justified and something to

(14:49):
continue? Absolutely.
I actually, and for what it's worth, is it not so humble
ragged. I've held it basically since
then. My average is $0.53 Canadian.
But at the same time, and I've said this, I don't think this is
a unique thought among Magna shareholders is I think you look
at the concrete progress they'vemade over the course of that
time. A year and a half ago, it was
just Crane Hill and Shakespeare.Metals prices were relatively

(15:13):
where they are now. Copper's obviously come up a bit
etcetera. But there there was, it was a
pretty different company. The KGHM acquisition was
transformational. I think the market recognized
that. Obviously, again, it's been up a
fair amount. It was TSX, the top 50 stock.
But I think you'll look at you project a couple years out here.
I think actually in some ways now almost Magna is is done a

(15:35):
relative disservice by being treated as a small subscale
producer rather than as a developer that can promise the
world. And I still think that there's
that in this in the world of mining, there is some sort of
premium for people in at least in terms of excitement
engagement for people that go out and find Greenfield hits in
the middle of nowhere that are this kids that look a lot like
that might look a lot like the sort of stuff Magna is drilling

(15:57):
as resource expansion at Mccree West or whatever.
I guess to, to finally answer your question, I think I think
ultimately you model out where could these guys be in terms of
forward-looking statements here,not investment advice etcetera,
but where could these guys be interms of cash flow three years
out. And I think it's very reasonable
that they're doing 70, five, $80million US in 2028 from a

(16:18):
combination of recruiting W Levak and Crane Hill and maybe
Popolski at that point as well. In in free cash.
In free cash. In free cash.
To to to understand your philosophy a bit better, Hank,
'cause I quite like it. You seem to really hunt out
these low CapEx restart type players of brownfield expansion.
Can you expand a bit on on why you've come to that being the

(16:40):
one of the foundations of your investment approach?
I think one of the biggest, one of, I think there's a number,
there's a number of reasons for it.
One is 1 is just that it really does seem to me that the
actually, again, you look at newWorld cop, new world resources
stuff with a, with a relatively high IRR, stuff that's got a
relatively crown field stuff tends to have a relatively short
start up time, so on and so forth.

(17:01):
It's not going to be the, it's not going to be a Vacuumia
district play or whatever, but it's it's going to get in
production probably before thoseguys do, assuming it's a halfway
decent project. And that I think on the one hand
you've got some mining investors, they'll tell you the
worst thing a mining company canever do is go into production.
But if you've got good management, which is by no means
guaranteed, then I think then you're actually you're really

(17:22):
off the races. You get that developer to
produce a re rate. A lot of brownfield places.
There's another quote that I really like actually from this,
from this oil and gas guy who I really respect the best place to
look for resources where a lot of other people have looked,
etcetera, etcetera. And obviously that can be true
with Greenfield stuff as well. But I just especially brownfield
stuff often can be the gift thatkeeps on giving, especially

(17:43):
again, if you have people that know how to work it.
But again, I think the other finally, the reason for it is
just this isn't that big a sector.
There are only so many big players.
They make their moves from time to time.
Occasionally they do and you geta Filo success story or whatever
and those are awesome. But while Filo is happening,
there can be a Florence copper or a sand Dionicio and Spain
permit that there. There can be a lot of 1530

(18:05):
thousand ton a year mines for copper that you know, while the
big guys are really winding up for the 20 thirties.
So just like that, it's more sure time is money and there's
more surety when you can actually get stuff going.
That deal with KGHM like that was that's price like you're
you're buying a liability, it's like you're yeah, so.

(18:25):
For KGHM, it was they were losing money on care and
maintenance for the other mines and they had no intention of
bringing those into production. Yeah, yeah.
And I guess there, there is somerehab obligations here that are
being assumed. But this team there are they
understand the area and they, they got a good grip of that.
But there is a perception that these mines are like a cigar
butt, right? That they're.
Yeah, that's one of the things that I think I try to combat
whenever I talk about them. Absolutely.

(18:46):
There's the old tired mines. You look at them.
I think KGHM projected that Merfredi W had about five years
of mineralization left. That was their mine plan for it.
I was there about a month and a half ago, was talking to an old
miner there and he said that, yeah, that's also what they said
20 years ago. So there's I think and again you
get back to the Magna guys know the area, they know these mines

(19:08):
specifically. And if you invest a little bit
of upfront both development and exploration CapEx, which is
exactly what they're currently doing, I think they will
continue to get many more years out of these mines.
Hank, I can't we can't have you on the podcast and not delve
into a story that has engulfed the attention of much of into it
in the last couple weeks. I'm talking about TNR gold.

(19:31):
I think there's essentially A grassroots E activist play going
on at this very small cap royalty like vehicle.
I think we've got a that the scene here.
What the heck is TNR and why? Like why is this company
existing? What's the activist angle?
Yeah, absolutely. It's been a fun one to follow.
There's a lot of back and forth.I've been probably even getting

(19:52):
into it on Twitter more than I typically would just because
it's an interesting story. But yeah, it's let's talk about
TNR Gold. So it's a royalty company.
You guys said it's got functionally 2 main royalties.
One's Mariana Lithium fanning project in Argentina, 20,000.
Tons of lithium carbonate equivalent a year, it'll be half

(20:12):
a percent royalty after a 900K buyback, roughly speaking.
There's a couple they're holdinga bit of that on behalf of a
shareholder, whatever, but let'scall it generously $1,000,000 US
year, a little above 10K lithiumcarbonate.
And if you look at where lithiumproducer trading etcetera and
this is now I'm going to start to get into a little bit of
projection, what should this be worth etcetera.
And actually for what it's worth, the the executive

(20:33):
chairman of TNR Gold has a blogspot article from a couple
years ago where he actually laysthat one.
He thinks the valuation case of TNR Gold is.
I actually think the numbers, the lithium number he used is
higher than the one that I've used just because prices have
moved so on and so forth. I think is his, let's call the
Mariana Lithium, it's probably a$10 million US royalty.
I think again if lithium. That's not in production yet,

(20:55):
that asset, but it's it is. It's about to be.
It's very like this year exactly.
And then the, so you know that if you look at where TNR was
trading in May 2025, that's that's worth more than the
market cap of TNR gold, which isaround 10 to $12 million
Canadian about a month ago. And so the big, but the bigger
prize for TNR gold is it got a 0.36% royalty on Los Azils, the

(21:17):
McEwen mining project, which is that sets a mine that's
essentially going to be producing 3,000,000 lbs of
copper for at least 30 years andmaybe for 75 years or whatever.
And you'll look at Kurel, I think had a Kurel, the executive
Chairman, Tamar, I think had a valuation for it of about $0.40
Canadian equivalent or actually no, sorry, about $40 million US,

(21:37):
which ultimately and I think 40 to 50 is probably reasonable for
that. If you take $10,000 on copper
and you take again, the fact that again, look at New World
resources people like people like cash flow and copper.
Now that's not going to be cash flow yet.
That's what I think 20-30. But but it's a very long life of
mine. It's a big project.
So in any event you combine those two royalties, let's even

(21:58):
call what's Azul is 40 million, let's call area and A10 and this
was a company that was trading at 10 to $12 million Canadian a
month ago. And so there is this disconnect
between where the royalties of trade versus where the valuation
of TNR gold is. And both sides of this kind of
campaign that seems to have started up certainly agree upon
that fact that this is this is avehicle that's trading nowhere

(22:21):
close to where it's assumed now would be.
And so then as an investor, you always have to ask, why is that
the case? Why it's about the certainty of
when and how and whether those cash flows accrue to
shareholders. There's a big.
There's a big factor when you'redoing the calcs and that's yeah,
you've got to figure out what's the MPV of corporate costs and
what's your dilution like on your way to becoming profitable.
And when you're sub scale kind of royalty company, your
overheads are pretty tremendously interested.

(22:43):
You don't quite get any value ofwhat the portfolio is sometimes
worth, especially if their development royalty like.
Yeah, I think that's very, that's super well said.
And I think actually, if you, ifyou look back at TNRS financial
statements from 2024, again, this was a $10 million company
and they they spent over the course of 2024, they spent

(23:06):
around it, they had around a operating loss of around
$1,000,000 Canadian over the course of that year.
They actually raised a $300,000 Canadian placement, which they
said was for exploration of the property purposes for their
shotgun gold. They've got an exploration gold
project in Alaska, which franklypuzzles me a bit.
I'm not sure where that comes into the business model of a

(23:27):
royalty company, but fair enough.
But if so, they raised that placement 300K.
They did about 140K Canadian of share buybacks again, I guess in
in recognition of the fact that the stock was undervalued.
And then if you look at the way they spent the $1,000,000
Canadian operating expenses, youhad 25K for administration fees,
180K for consulting fees, 192K for directors fees, 168K for

(23:49):
management fees, 63 K for officeand miscellaneous, 189 K for
professional fees. These are all separate line
items. 20K for property expenses, so maybe that's
shotgun gold. 78K for shareholder communications and
on top of that another 79 K justfor good measure for share based
payments to to management. And also just to tell remind
people of the corporate set up of TNR Gold.

(24:12):
There's four directors, there's the executive chairman, Carol
Clip, the son VP of corporate development, Constantine Clip.
Between them they own about 14% of the company.
And then you've got two other directors, one of whom's owns
0.2% of TNR Gold and one of whomowned as of the record date for
the AGM 0 shares. To the management don't own
stock. The board to the not the non

(24:36):
family. The non controlling family board
numbers don't own stock functionally.
Gotcha. And Hank, there, there was a
takeover attempt here a couple years back now.
Absolutely. September 2023 Lithium royalties
made a takeover offer for CNR at0 point at $0.08 Canadian, which
a year and a half later last month, TNR Gold was trading at

(24:56):
5:00 to 6:00 cents Canadians, certainly a premium to where
they were. It was also a premium to where
they were at the time. Before that, they were around
5:00 to 6:00 cents and and so management rejected that.
They said it wasn't reflective of the underlying value of TNR
Gold's royalties. Again, I think the activist side
and also just for what's worth, I don't consider myself a part
of the activist side. I own a small portion of TNR

(25:16):
shares because I agree with the general thesis that I think this
thing's undervalued. I look forward to seeing how it
all plays out. But, but TNR management said,
yeah, this isn't reflective of our airline value, we're turning
it down. But the day after they received
that offer, before they publiclyresponded, they actually granted
themselves one and a half million stock options at 5
Canadian cents, which was the price it was trading, then

(25:38):
pretty immediately shot up to seven cents.
And they've also prior, sorry, even prior to that they enact A
shareholder rights plan with thegoal and other companies do this
as well to insulate themselves from the prospect of a would be
acquirer buying up enough shareson market to launch a hostile
takeover. The Canadian poison pill.
Exactly. Exactly.
And they've also got change of control payments for Purell and

(25:58):
Constantine that are five times their their annual compensation.
I gotcha. So I can understand the like the
interest there's real value in this portfolio.
It's undervalued by the market. There's it appears the register
is not like there's no no one there of size that can block a
potential activist campaign. The value of the portfolio has
been validated by like a literally a royalty company.

(26:20):
Yeah. So where does?
That with the royalties by the way, ultimately ended up
acquiring a separate royalty on Mariana that actually valued
that, that valued the royalty that TNR has at basically
similar to or more than the market cap of the company at the
time. Yeah.
So, yeah. And then the stock of TNR, it
just drifts back into oblivion, even though it may be short term

(26:42):
backed in a takeover a couple years ago.
It's just it's just drifted off and it was like like three 3-4
cents recently. Pretty much again there there
wasn't much activity over the course of 2024.
Again, they did that three indicate placement.
They did the little share buyback, no additional royalty
transactions, no exploration work.
And basically, yeah, again, justjust corporate overhead to to

(27:02):
keep the lights on or whatever. So yeah, so then you get to last
month and and you enter a colorful Twitter personality,
the koala as he calls himself who exactly?
And for what it's worth, I wouldconsider him a friend.
I'd consider him a competitor ifanything.
Actually, both are mining investors.
There's we talk sometimes, but we're certainly not coordinated.

(27:24):
There's lots of stuff that you won't catch me in alpha man
anytime soon. And so there's so there's no,
there's no formal relationship whatsoever between us.
But but I like the way he's thinking in general terms about
TNR, at least that again, there's there's this unrealized
value here. And functionally basically, I
know Marianne is going to start passioning later this year.
But again, you look at the just baseline kind of GNA expenses

(27:46):
from last year and the lion share of that royalty is going
to get eaten or already up to asof March 31st, they were up to
almost 300,000 Canadian in accounts payable with basically
no cash left on their balance sheet.
Mariana Basic you're looking to share for basically the next
five years. The majority of that cash flow
is just going right to management, which gets back to
the thought of should the micro cap to royalty, stand alone

(28:09):
company, public company really be a thing or should they
recognize shareholder value ultimately for themselves and
for other shareholders by conducting a competitive process
where they dispose of these royalties anyway?
Yesterday, so Koala buys stock on on market, which is the it's
pretty substantial volume relative to previous trading
history, which is the share price higher.

(28:30):
A bit of noise surfaces about what's going on.
What is that? How do you read the situation?
At this point or you know, or atthat, or I guess at that point,
at that point, I think, yeah, it's a tough item.
At that point, I think Koala didyou know what a shareholder
would do? It's you, you buy up the stock
and then, then and only then once he he clearly bought a fair

(28:52):
amount of stock on market. Did he express any public
opinion about TNR or its management?
Encourage Encourage shareholdersto vote against the re election
of directors. He certainly did.
And then the AGM happened about a little over a week ago.
TNR, all directors were re elected.
TNR has not released the voting results.
They actually, in a tweet earlier today, the executive

(29:13):
chairman of TNR, both said that they weren't required to release
the voting results, but then also said that they might
release the voting results. And they were consulting with
lawyers about whether or not to release the voting results.
Then also released a purported transcript from Grok of asking,
oh, were these results because they used the words overwhelming
support for these voting resultsthat they haven't released.

(29:34):
And Carol asks Grok, well, were these results overwhelming or
not? And so then Grok says yes, they
were. The result of XX percent is
considered overwhelming. The actual voting percent, once
again, is redacted. So I'll leave listeners to draw
their own conclusions about whatall that means.
But I think I, for one, think it'd be great to see those
voting results at some point. If there's one observation on on

(29:56):
activist campaigns that involve,I guess turfing an incumbent
board, it's that the incumbent board really does not like that
proposition. They especially don't like it in
this public and they go to some pretty extreme lengths to defend
their position. No.
And one can certainly understandthat.
And again, again, I don't consider myself part of an
activist campaign. And I think there's I think
there's a pathway to realizationof TNR value that involves the

(30:20):
existing board staying in place right up until the time that
that the royalties are sold off and everything when everybody
can go home happy. I think that the Koala certainly
came out strong, it seems with the call to withhold votes and
management certainly has responded.
But even more strongly and more personally, I'm not sure how
productive any of that is relative to just the question of
how does one realize value. Because again, before, before

(30:42):
the call came along, let's just rewind again, This was a stock
that had been stuck in that 5 to6 cent trading range for about
18 months since the last offer. And there were really no signs
on the horizon. There's this cryptic
announcement about a strategic review and what exactly that
means, but so I'm not sure how prospective shareholder pre
Koala would have had assurances that that there'd be any swift

(31:03):
for that. This is why the whole campaign
is like really quite interestingto me is because you've already
had a third party like a like Lithium Royalty Corp.
They want they've wanted to buy this, they wanted to pay $0.08
for this. They couldn't do what Koala has
done and buy stock and kind of launch a grassroots kind of
activist campaign because because like the the poison pill

(31:24):
that was deployed, the right issue, which kind of nullifies
the ability to have influence inin in that sense, the only way
you can actually get an outcome is if it it's like a non
coordinated, non centralized, kind of like a sufficiently
large crowd of motivated shareholders all kind of reading
the tea leaves and wanting the same thing because they say,
they say undervalued equity. Absolutely.
Which is, and I think we were, I, I don't recall seeing

(31:47):
anything quite like this before.And it's been, it's certainly
been fascinating to watch it play out on Twitter.
Do you look at ceo.ca as well? And there's people are, and I
think part of the reason actually that there is this,
this, I don't know, this crowd sourced interest in this
particular campaign is because I, I think there's some sort of
question once again, like there is actual real realizable value

(32:09):
here. Unlike a lot of junior miners
that, that might have high operating expenses relative to
their market caps, but it's not clear.
There's a bunch of it's all exploration or whatever.
So there's not really. Again, there's.
There is realizable value here. There's nothing particularly
abnormal about like the the management team and dilution and
high. Overhead, yeah, I mean, it's not
crazy the thing that is differentiated.

(32:30):
Is is the value of the portfoliois so, yeah, so clear.
Hank, if you have to, if you have to put some money on an
outcome, where are we in by the end of the year?
What kind of happens with this one?
Oh man, I don't know. And I think a lot of it will
depend on, on the how willing management is to look at the
situation and say, hey, we actually we have an opportunity

(32:51):
to make a lot of money for ourselves and our shareholders
by, by by hastening our efforts to, to really start a
competitive process here and wind down the company.
For what it's worth, my, I'm actually both in terms of
literally having put my money, I'm a little bit on the fence
again, I've got a small investment.
I think if I see progress towards anything that looks like
it'll cause those royalties to get sold all very likely buy in

(33:14):
more at the moment. I think it's a hard one to
forecast. I don't know it's a it's a
opaque registry. I don't know really many of the
other shareholders again, the the kind of the crowd sourced
activist campaign. It's a fascinating thing to
watch. I think we'll see.
We'll see how much sustained bullet has assuming that's even
the way that it plays out or optto go.

(33:34):
So I'm going to give a really lame answer of I'm not sure.
No worries. I reckon we can talk a bit about
Iperion X. You guys can.
Very curious, right? This is I'd love to if you guys
got time. Yeah, this is a really
interesting 1 and I'm excited that you want to chat about it,
Hank, because it's not a mining company and they've got a couple
bits of patented technology in asort of metallurgical process

(33:59):
that is is their kind of edge. And the the rough numbers around
what the opportunity could be enticing, but it's a hard 1 to
get up to speed with to validate.
So how have you gone about that process of getting comfortable
with it? It took me a long while to I
guess is the first thing I'll say.
I this is when I watched for probably close to 18 months and
pretty much since I started the fun, but didn't pull the trigger

(34:20):
on and missed out on a lot of games in the process just
because a lot of the stuff you said it's that's not a pureplay
mining company. I think that the story has
evolved over the years and continues to evolve in terms of
now there's I think an ever greater focus on finished driven
near net shape titanium product manufacturing as opposed to even

(34:41):
ignorance spherical powders. And certainly relative to and I
know when I was first looking atit in 2023, a big part of the
cell was their their upstream mineral sands project in
Tennessee, which you know the which they're still working on.
They're doing DFS and that it, it looks like a perfectly fine
project and eventually I think it'll be a good component of
their operations. But that's not really, as I
think you guys know as well. And as the markets have seen,

(35:03):
that's not really where the lion's share of the value is
here. It's actually about being able
to make fasteners for planes or smartwatch cases or whatever
that that with, like you said, patented technologies that just
have a significantly significantly fewer steps,
significantly less loss of mineral over the course of the
process, significantly lower energy consumption and

(35:24):
ultimately, for all those reasons, significantly lower
cost. And even.
And this was another thing that I was frankly skeptical of for
the longest time is you come, you look at enough critical
minerals plays in the world and there's always some sort of
trade off for why X company in the USI lost a lot of money on
sure, why global, for example, because just as a that's a bad
example of they just couldn't mind cobalt more cheaply than

(35:45):
guys in the VRC or Indonesia or wherever.
And so whenever you look at first world jurisdictions or
whatever, as I do, you get used to the thought of maybe if
there's enough government help, etcetera.
It seems like from all indicators, And again, the proof
will be in the pudding once these guys are ramped up.
But that actually there's just astructural advantage to the
metallurgical processes that they have patent in and they or
the company they bought it from ultimately the University of

(36:07):
Utah have been working on for over a decade at this point.
So that's like we're students ofcommodity markets.
From time to time, technology will disrupt cost curves and
there'll be some new way that can help produce some commodity,
the cheaper price and everyone else.
And if you've got a pattern, happy days, you know, with the
pig. And that's the pitch here for

(36:27):
what iperion X is doing. I know people that I like.
I have tremendous respect for that both like mega, mega
Iperion X bulls and also mega Iperion X bears.
And the bulls kind of point to this tech being validated and
the bears point to the there being no sales and the tech not,
hence the tech not being validated.
And I suppose that's the opportunity you take as well if

(36:48):
you're, if you're long or short this one.
But how did you get comfortable in your view that everything
works? Yeah.
And that it can go from web scale to commercial scale?
So I suppose the big question. I think actually going, it's
been my backyard relatively. It's just down in Virginia.
I drove down, got breakfast on the way and was there by 8:00
AM. It's actually walking through
the facility seeing the parks they're making.

(37:10):
I actually, I think that's all surprisingly really helpful and
not just in the oh, wow, I saw it, but in terms of walking
through, OK, here is this piece of equipment and they've
currently got installed for their 125 ton a year pilot plant
scale operation. But it actually isn't going to
require any modifications to be able to handle a hundred 1000
tons a year throughput, which iswhat the current building that

(37:31):
they I guess the current roof over their their powder
production operations. It looks like that's what back
and handle and so there's look, there's always risk in scaling.
And I think actually back to your other point, I think
there's probably even more, I wouldn't even call it risk.
I just think there's going to beteething problems in terms of
sales. The more downstream you go, the
more towards finished products, the more bespoke those contracts

(37:53):
are going to be. A lot of them are going to be
pretty small dollar things. The margins on it may be
perfectly good because you're essentially 3D printing again, a
bolt or whatever that these guyscan make for under a buck and it
would sell for $22.00. So it's that's great.
If you're only selling a few hundred of them, it takes a long
way to justify a billion dollar market cap.
So I certainly hear where the where the shorts are coming from
on that. At the end of the day, I think

(38:14):
though, if the tech works, the size of the market opportunity
is what it is. These guys can't out compete
Everybody in that assuming that the tech works and they have
enough, they're just on that. I actually think of course I
would say that. So I first invested in November
of this past year. I think this is an exciting time

(38:34):
to be invested in my humble opinion because you're right on.
There's in my mind just enough proof that things work.
But if you one waits till the time that you're actually OK,
they're doing $200 million a year in turnover then OK, cool.
You've almost by that point, I think it's going to be
blisteringly apparent to the markets where the opportunity is
and has been. That's so yeah, I guess I think

(38:56):
sales that's going to be a process for them and there's
probably going to be an art to actually going out.
But again, they've got, you know, you look at 4 blocky DoD
at this point where they're they've got enough third party
contracts and validation. I think the tap really is real.
The DoD part is really interesting because these guys,
you can see the narrative being painted that they'll be a

(39:17):
Western champion of swords. Yeah, but on the one hand, you
want to have that kind of support from your government.
That's a handy thing to have, but you don't want to be reliant
on it. So how do you think about that?
Yeah, you're super. You don't want to be beholden to
them. I went back to my predilection
for low CapEx operations. I think if you look at these

(39:40):
guys balance sheet, I think theyhad $66 million US on as of
March 31st before, before they got their $47 million DoD grant.
They could have my understandingand later this year we'll get
they're going to release some whole updated plan of what their
expansion plans are going to be and whether they'll all cost
etcetera. I know there's been projections
of 2000 tons next and I'd be essentially cloning the existing

(40:03):
facility. I think from conversation with
them, it sounds like they may try to scale that up further,
but that'll take longer, higher CapEx, etcetera.
But again, this isn't a mining company.
It doesn't take that that much money to and most of these the
patents. Are proprietary, but most of the
actual equipment is shelf or only requires some modifications

(40:24):
etcetera. It's not like they're having to
build a ton of stuff from scratch.
That's. Anyway back to your question
about yeah, you don't want to beonly ADOD show.
The first thing to say is actually in the scheme of shows
to be a 1 trick pony on it. I've got a good buddy who's who
basically mainly just invests inthe in defense, private equity
and for better or worse being beholden to the USDOD, there are

(40:46):
worse sole customers to have in this world.
You can, you can get a pretty good market cap and some pretty
good margins from that. But but I think ultimately if
you can use those guys and again, there's, there's Ford,
there's Aprim. I think I actually think some of
the other civilian applications,maybe not aerospace as much
they're selling smartwatches as well.
There's I think some of that stuff actually the sales cycle

(41:07):
is going to be shorter. So I think they're going to be
able to build that in tandem anyway.
And for what it's worth, there'sobviously a huge push in the US
right now in the city where I sit with you see, to to make,
make everything in America or everything about critical
minerals. I think it was also a green
story. And if we ever get a shift in
politics here again, I think I fear in X in particular, it's a

(41:27):
functionally A0 carbon manufacturing process, etcetera.
That's, I think, an underrated thing as well.
Fascinating mate. Yeah, the the US military is
known for handing out some big contracts, so they're not the
worst customer to have in the world.
And the but the DoD funding is known for maybe maybe picking
some curious choices to allocateto as well.
Also true, because yeah, I know.Fantastic.
Thanks a bunch for joining us, Hank.

(41:48):
I really enjoyed picking apart through these stories and yeah,
learning about some companies wedon't speak an awful lot about.
So thanks for making the effort quite late over your time.
Absolutely, guys, next time you're here or next time I make
my way out to Australia, it'd begreat to get a beer.
Absolutely, mate. You should join us for thanking
our partners. Stay on the line for that one.

(42:08):
A massive. Thank you.
Your favorite company, Hank Mineral Mining Services as well
as Grounded Sandy Ground Support, K Drew and Cross
Boundary Energy. Who to Rove?
Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD is an idiot.
If you thought any of this was anything other than
entertainment, you're an idiot. Then you need to read out a
disclaimer.