The one before Beaver Creek

Selling GROY; Adding Orogen, Clean Seed Capital and Magna Terra Minerals

We now live in an attention economy, where people are trying to draw our interest by any means possible. Since low-quality information is just as effective at satisfying our information-cravings as high-quality information, the most efficient way to get attention in the digital age is by mass-producing low-quality “junk info”— a kind of fast food for thought. Like fast food, junk info is cheap to produce and satisfying to consume, but high in additives and low in nutrition. It's also potentially addictive and, if consumed excessively, highly dangerous.

The Intellectual Obesity Crisis

The whole piece is worth reading, but that quote is something I’ll be keeping in mind as the junior mining world descends on Beaver Creek, Colorado this week. Expect lots of company releases but the old newsroom axiom applies - just because something happened doesn’t make it news.

Weekend notebook …

• Tether swallows EMX via ELE

• Portfolio updates: GROY, Orogen, Magna Terra, Clean Seed Capital

• Beaver Creek gameplan

• Interesting links: Sex and money

Another one off the board

With this week’s takeover of EMX Royalties by Elemental Altus, my watchlist of needle-moving gold royalties that would interest a major is looking picked over.

• Odyssey, Cote, Vares: Gold Royalty

• Spring Valley/Moonlight: Sailfish Royalties

• Timok royalty basket: EMX Royalties

• Frotet: Kenorland Minerals

I talked to everyone I could about the Elemental-EMX deal, here are the main takeaways.

This is Tether’s world. The rest of us just live in it.

Current Elemental CEO Fred Bell isn’t even on the board of his own company and nobody expects incoming CEO David Cole to last long term. The expectation is Cole will leave as soon as he’s eligible for his enhanced change of control payment ($1.25 million in total compensation for termination without cause subsequent to change of control). He wouldn’t be the only one leaving as all the mining experience and value-add board members (Alphasense, La Mancha, Sandeep Singh) have departed ELE since Tether arrived.

And only one ELE shareholder benefits from this. It’s not you.

Speaking of change of control payments

Tether’s $100-million financing into Elemental wasn’t required to close the deal. It was required to make sure Elemental shareholders owned 51% of the combined company, thus triggering a change of control at EMX.

Gold Royalty is the logical next target

It pains me to say this as someone now completely out of this position (see below), but GROY has a lot of chunky assets reaching nameplate capacity. The paradox of GROY is the share price has moved well above net asset value because they haven’t done any more dilutive deals or tried to run a placement - just like they’ve been screaming at the market. Of course with the stock trading above NAV, now is the time to run a placement or use their paper to make accretive acquisitions, which they can’t do because the stock would collapse.

If you can’t eat, you get eaten. Particularly when there’s a new growth-obsessed player with infinite capital, you own a plug-and-play growth portfolio and there are change of control fees there for the taking.

Portfolio Updates

All gold stocks moved this week and I definitely sold down my Gold Royalty stake too early. GROY added 13% and FISH surged 16% so I won’t be adding either back to the portfolio. I sold my remaining GROY warrants between $1.70 and $1.75 and have now completely exited the position.

While there’s more room for Gold Royalty to run, the window to add more Orogen Royalties in the $1.70s and low $1.80s is closing. This is completely mispriced based on the exploration partnerships and potential of the royalty portfolio. Orogen might be the first company to get bought out by a major twice in the same metals bull market. I’m considering taking profits on Kingfisher Metals and buying more Orogen - after all OGN has an exploration partnership with Kingfisher on HWY 37 and a royalty on Hank.

It’s definitely been more than four hours. I may have to call a doctor because of the boner I have for this stock. By owning Kenorland, Altius Minerals and now Orogen I am covering a lot of promising ground in owning the next monster royalty on the ground floor.

Adding Magna Terra

Continuing with prospect generators. I was the fat finger trade on Friday that pushed Magna Terra Minerals above 10 cents. A nice exploration portfolio, a long term goal of generating royalties through drilling and Micheal Gentile as financial backer. A starter position I’ll build up over time.

Created with TradingView

New position: Clean Seed Capital

Note: This is a corrected version of what went out in the newsletter. My apologies to Graeme and Agam for not getting this right.

Not much volume as this former shit show trades on the NEX board. Clean Seed Capital has transitioned from trying to manufacture its own smart seeder planting equipment, and practically bankrupting the company, to a synthetic licensing model.

Their licensing and white-label manufacturing agreement with Indian industrial conglomerate Mahindra allows Clean Seed to leverage their IP without the capex and infrastructure required to build their own manufacturing plant. Mahindra is building Clean Seed’s technology, known as the Mini Max smart seeder.

Mahindra secured a license to manufacture and distribute throughout India, Turkey, and other regions. At the same time Mahindra builds the machines directly for Cleanseed for other jurisdiction around the world through the white-label manufacturing agreement. Clean Seed’s distribution agreements with large dealers in Brazil, Mexico, etc cover territories where Mahindra is not a major player.

Clean Seed Chairman and CEO Graeme Lempriere has done the job of pulling the company back from the brink and getting it ready to trade once again on the TSX Venture. With up to date financials and an annual general meeting in the books, the company is poised to receive revenue from the first batch of Mahindra-built smart seeders.

With a TSXV uplisting, Clean Seed can run a small placement, convert debentures to equity and have the profile of the company change almost overnight into an asset light, cash generating pseudo-licensing play.

It’s taken a long time to accumulate this position. If Graeme can continue threading the needle Clean Seed is a potential 10-bagger based on my 9.5 cent cost basis.

Other Notes

• There’s now options trading on SPUT

• Those Kinross CVRS are still grossly undervalued

Updated Portfolio

As of September 5, 2025

Mining

• KGCRF - Kinross Contingent Value Rights

• Banyan Gold

• Mayfair Gold

Industrials

• Comstock Inc. - Silver

• Aecon - Nuclear

Royalties

• Gold Royalty Corp. Warrants

• Altius Minerals

• Clean Seed Capital - Agriculture

Exploration/Prospect Generators

• Kenorland Minerals

• Orogen 2.0 Adding in size

• Magna Terra Minerals

• Kingfisher Metals

• Vulcan Minerals

Specials/Workouts

• NGEx Minerals

• Chibougamau Independent Mines

• Star Royalties

• Eagle Royalties (Exiting portfolio upon completion of RTO/resumption of trading)

Raw Commodities

• Sprott Physical Uranium Trust

Beaver Creek 2025

Instead of drinking from a firehose of information by taking too many meetings that I have to prep for and jamming my day with presentations, I’m limiting my 1-on-1s to companies I own, companies I’m strongly considering investing in, or management teams that have impressed me and I want to learn more. It’s not a long list - two meetings became redundant because of recent M&A and were cancelled, a third I didn’t put my request in early enough and they’re fully booked. There is one company where the IR person screened me out - and never responded when I asked why. That tells me more than the meeting would have and I save the 25 minutes.

Not all those who wander are lost. Rejecting hyper-optimization, creating space to take things in, and putting faces and names to Twitter profiles among other things will be successful trip. You never know who will help liquidate my next net-net microcap. I’m also realizing the mining industry over indexes for boxing fans.

Interesting Links

Sex and money this week.

What Every Man Should Know About Sex

Lessons from Five Years as a "Private Investor"

10 Money Rules I’m Teaching My Kids (and Still Live By Myself)