Tenfold Journal

Bravo Mining - Unlocking Value as Tier-1 Project Luanga Progresses

Bravo Mining…

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14 days ago · 8 likes · 4 comments

Canadian Copper: Funding Secured

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Summary

• I-80 Gold is a gold producer and developer focused on Nevada with a straightforward path to half a million ounces of annual production.

• Shares have pulled back in recent weeks along with the other gold miners, and the stock is trading at roughly a quarter of NPV.

• 2026 is set to be heavy on news flow, but the real important piece for investors is the expected completion of the autoclave in late 2027. They currently rely on Nevada Gold Mines (Barrick/Newmont) for processing, which is a huge drag on costs and margins.

• If they execute, by the end of 2027, I-80 will be producing more than 100,000 ounces annually with a functional autoclave. This will make the company a prime acquisition target, likely at multiples of today’s price.

• The CEO recently bought 1M shares, and the management team has past experience and success in a tougher jurisdiction (Africa) during gold’s bear market of the 2010s.

• Recent transactions, including a royalty bought by Franco Nevada, signal smart money confidence, and could lead to an accelerated development timeline for large assets in the pipeline.

• If management executes, the story will become obvious to the market, and I think today’s valuation supports a triple or more by the end of 2027.

I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend and Easter Sunday this morning, and is looking forward to this week. We have seen a nice bounce in the precious metals complex over the last couple weeks, and I think the worst of the liquidity grab triggered by events in the Middle East is behind us for now. That doesn’t mean it’s straight up and to the right from here, but I doubt we will see another waterfall like we got from the beginning to the middle of March anytime soon. I have been sitting on my hands for the most part since things kicked off in Iran, but I did use the recent selloff in the miners to add a new position to my basket.

The newest purchase is I-80 Gold . My uncle has been poking me to take a look at this one for a while, and I finally pulled the trigger last week after I saw that the CEO made a chunky insider buy a couple weeks ago. It’s based in Nevada, so you don’t have to worry about jurisdiction, and the valuation is very cheap unless you think gold is on its way back to $2,000 per ounce. They have one producing asset that is ramping up, another that is coming online this year, an autoclave facility that is actually the most important piece of their CAPEX budget, and several other projects in the pipeline.

The fact that I-80 has a similar fully diluted market cap to Snowline Gold (both are roughly $2B) doesn’t make much sense to me simply based on what is coming over the next couple years for I-80. If you can hang onto shares for a couple years, I think the market will start to figure out the story over the next year, and it will become blindingly obvious by the time the autoclave is up and running. That rerate can happen even if gold isn’t cooperating, but if gold does provide a tailwind and management executes, I think there is a path to $5 per share or more by the end of 2027.

The Path Forward

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A Quick Update & A New Buy

I have been forcing myself to sit on my hands for the last several weeks, and I think that my post last week about a near term bottom for precious metals and copper might have been pretty well timed. There is some news worth mentioning on one of the holdings I have been sitting on, as well as a new purchase.

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Dayrate Duration

Borr/Paratus Jackup M&A and Brazilian Deepwater Market Update

The following note covers Borr Drilling's acquisition of Paratus Energy's Mexican jackup fleet, Paratus’ remaining PLSV fleet, and key Brazilian deepwater market developments from regional drillers Constellation and Foresea to Buzios productivity enhancements…

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a month ago · 21 likes · 2 comments · Tommy Lee

Investing on the Spicy Side

Spicy #2 - Update #1: Liberty Marches On

I am in the midst of a multi-month walkabout in the Antipodean summer, so have been mostly dark since late January, and thus following along with the market’s gyrations with a significant time lag. But some weather-enforced rest days were the catalyst for a $LIB.V update…

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a month ago · 17 likes · 1 comment · Whirly

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Buying A Chemical Name

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• Ero Copper is a smaller producer with two copper assets and one gold asset in Brazil. They have been increasing production at all three assets.

• They also have an earn-in agreement on an earlier stage project with Vale Base Metals that has a lot of potential, but it is at least a couple years away.

• They just started selling gold concentrate that was stockpiled at their gold mine, which should be a boost until the middle of 2027.

• Shares have pulled back more than 20% since shares almost touched 40 a couple weeks ago, and the valuation is still cheap here.

• For anyone looking for copper exposure through smaller companies, but wants to avoid pre-revenue junior copper names, ERO is a good place to start.

There has been some interesting activity in silver lately, including one firm in China that has a short position larger than the Shanghai warehouse supply of silver, but I wanted to move onto writing about some of the copper names in the portfolio. The largest company, and only current copper producer that I own, is Ero Copper . They recently announced their Q4 production numbers (earnings comes in March), and they have consistently stepped up production at all three of their producing assets in 2025, a trend that is set to continue in 2026. The stock was chugging along until last week, and it’s down more than 20% from its run to nearly $40. It might take some time to work sideways for a bit, but if you’re looking for a copper name with some gold exposure, Ero is still attractively valued and it’s a better buy now than it was a couple weeks ago.

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Operations Overview

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• Some detective work on the shell companies with land packages next to the larger operations.

• Why I sold America’s Gold & Silver after talking to a miner that worked there for three years. He laid out every issue that he saw, and why he moved over to the Lucky Friday.

• Hecla’s Lucky Friday Mine, and the perception that they aren’t working hard enough on their large land package.

• The expected restart of the Bunker Hill Mine this year, and why it could be an acquisition target.

• Thomas Kaplan’s (and Electrum Group) progress at the Sunshine Mine, the excitement around a restart in the next couple years, and why I would look for a potential IPO if you’re bullish on silver.

• Meeting with Idaho Strategic Resources CEO, and how they are different from other companies in the area.

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• Over the Christmas break, I was doing some research into several companies in Silver Valley. I wasn’t just looking at big operations like America’s Gold & Silver , Hecla’s Lucky Friday mine, Bunker Hill, and the Sunshine Silver Mine & Refinery. While most of the research on the tiny companies with land packages in the area turned out to be a dead end, I learned a ton about the history of the area and what is going on today. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough snow to get a day or two on the slopes, but the trip did spark an idea that I’m working on. There’s going to be a local economic boom in the area over the next several years, and not just due to silver prices.

America’s Gold & Silver is planning to restart the Crescent Mine by the middle of this year, and Bunker Hill is gearing up to restart its zinc-silver-lead mine sometime in Q2 or Q3 as well. The Sunshine is a bit further out, but that one is the 800 pound gorilla in the Valley and hasn’t been fully operational since 2001. I was lucky enough to spend an hour chatting with technical services manager at the Sunshine, and I’m hoping Thomas Kaplan and the Electrum Group decide to IPO in the next couple years. There have been rumblings about an offering, but we will have to wait and see on that. The Sunshine is also the site of one of the worst mining disasters in US history, but almost everyone I talked to in the area is excited to see operations restart in the next year or two.

The first thing you notice just from driving around the area and talking to some of the locals is the history in the area. You can learn way more by visiting these places and companies in person than you can by reading investor presentations and financials online. That little 20 mile stretch of Silver Valley has produced well over a billion ounces of silver since 1880, along with plenty of gold, zinc, lead, copper, and antimony. There is a reason that silver majors like Hecla and Couer were born in Silver Valley, even if Couer decided to get rid of their assets in the area. The locals are still pissed about that twenty years later, but I got my first taste on the history of the area on Sunday at a local bar after the drive up. I also got to watch the Seahawks squeak out a close one against the Rams, so that was a bonus.

Sunday - The Drive

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They have a partnership with a large oil company in the Delaware Basin which should be announced this year, and they are planning to move their headquarters to Texas and are looking to add a listing on a US exchange later this year. Both stocks have had monster runs over the last several months, and I usually have a hard time buying charts that look the way they do, I think they still have significant upside to fair value. The gold miner is just going into production over the next couple quarters, and the stock has quadrupled in the last month and doubled in the last week, but I think the valuation is still a joke.

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• A quick rant on the disconnect between the silver miners and the price of silver over the last couple months, and why the western price of silver is still an illusion.

• Kuya Silver is working to ramp production at their Bethania asset in Peru, and they stand to earn their entire market cap (~$237M CAD, ~$171M USD fully diluted) over the next couple years if they execute and silver keeps rallying.

• The Bethania asset has exploration upside with some extremely good drill results, but they also have an exploration asset in Ontario with associated nickel and cobalt, and carried interest on a project in Saudi Arabia with very attractive recent drill results for gold and silver.

• The recent dilution and the share structure is a reason that it is a smaller position, but they have some big name investors on the shareholder list.

• Even after a big run over the last year, there is still a ton of torque to a higher silver price if the company can ramp production over the next couple years.

The hits keep coming in 2026, with Jerome Powell being under investigation by the Justice Department and Trump claiming he didn’t know about it yesterday. I said in my year end post that we will probably see the Trump Administration try to make the Fed an arm of the Treasury, but I was surprised that they couldn’t wait until May when Powell’s term ends. Gold and silver are off to a good start in 2026, and I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to predict that the precious metals will continue to be a good place to hide out if this year turns out to be chaotic.

The Paper Price Of Silver In The West Is An Illusion

One of the things that has been interesting to watch over the last couple months is the gap in silver prices in the West and Shanghai. I’m not a short term trader, but as long as silver in China is trading at a chunky premium, I think silver’s rally has legs. Will it continue up at the 45 degree angle that we have seen since the end of November? I have no idea, but if we see Western silver prices start trading at or near parity with Shanghai prices, it might be time for a pause in the silver rally. You will also notice that platinum and palladium are trading at an even larger premium, and I think that logic applies to those metals as well. I’ll ask the same question that I have repeated a couple times: when a commodity like silver breaks out to fresh 45 year highs, what happens to the price over the next three to five years?

I think we will also start to see more demand from investors for physical silver, and there has been talk of many of the bullion dealers having delays and significant premiums outside of what is normal. The Silver Eagles I helped my grandma purchase a week ago for roughly $85 now go for $98.51, but if I anyone can get their hands on silver anywhere near spot prices, I would love to hear about it. Over the last couple months since I started buying silver miners, we have continued to see the stocks in the sector lag behind the move in the metal.

The thing to remember with all of the silver miners is that they are all about to report a Q4 with a record average silver price well above $50 an ounce. We are only two weeks into Q1, but silver hasn’t spent any time below $70 so far. I have been surprised that we haven’t seen any real corrections or pauses for silver since November, but even if we chop sideways for a while to start 2026, any of the companies currently producing are going to have blowout numbers if they execute on production, and Q1 is going to look even better. I have been a broken record on this, but many of the silver mining stocks aren’t even pricing silver at $50 an ounce, and I like to think that none of the miners that I own aren’t anywhere close to pricing $60 or $70 an ounce.

Kuya Silver Overview

One of the more recent (and more speculative) purchases in my silver miner basket is Kuya Silver. They have three main projects in different stages. The Bethania project in Peru is in the process of ramping up production, and they are shooting for ~1.2-1.5M ounces of silver equivalent production annually in the first phase. They have a large surrounding land package, and nearby drill results have been very high grade. They also have the Silver Kings exploration project in Canada, and carried interest in the Umm Hadid project in Saudi Arabia.

Bethania Production & Exploration

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• Sierra Madre is in the early innings of ramping production at La Guitarra, and I expect the company to produce more than ~1M ounces of silver this year.

• The company just announced the acquisition of Del Toro for $60M, and if silver keeps running, we could see production there in the next 12 months. Historically the asset produced ~2.5M ounces annually.

• Those two assets have exploration upside, with La Guitarra producing since the Spanish colonial era. Del Toro has closeology going for it, as it is adjacent to an advanced exploration project of one of the majors.

• Today’s valuation ($246M US, $337M CAD) is going to turn out to be very cheap if the company executes on ramping production, especially if they can get into the ~3-5M oz range annually in the next couple years.

• The company is tied at the hip to First Majestic. Both the La Guitarra transaction and the Del Toro transaction were with First Majestic, who is the largest shareholder of Sierra Madre.

• The company is currently profitable, but costs are currently high as they are spending to ramp at La Guitarra. They don’t hedge and they started production at the third mine in the block at the end of Q3, so Q4 numbers should be good.

Over the last month, I have been going down silver miner rabbit hole (“pueblos”, as one of my friends likes to call them), because many of the miners haven’t kept up with the silver price. Most of the big miners aren’t even pricing in $50 or $60 an ounce for 2026, and some of the juniors, even after a very good performance in 2025, are still extremely cheap relative to silver. If you want to hear me ranting more on precious metals, that valuation gap on some of the miners, and current events in Venezuela and where we might be headed on that front, I recorded this pod on Tuesday. In short, I thought I was going to be done buying silver stocks a couple weeks ago, but I kept turning over rocks and deciding that it would be worth owning a little bit of this and a little bit of that. One of those more recent purchases is Sierra Madre Gold & Silver (SM.V on the TSX-V).

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Sierra Madre: Production In Mexico Set To Ramp

Sierra Madre is a silver miner with several assets in Mexico. After a recent transaction, Sierra Madre now has three assets worth mentioning. La Guitarra, Del Toro, and the Tepic Project. From my understanding, the Tepic Project is on the back burner for now, but there is more exploration upside there and potential for future production. In December, they bought the Del Toro Mine from First Majestic for $60M. This is how the company ended up on my radar.

Near-term, our plan for Del Toro is to advance exploration and prepare an updated resource report while our operating team focuses on completing the two-stage expansion at La Guitarra. Our initial plan is to commence the mine restart process at Del Toro in mid-2027, with production currently slated for mid-2028. If silver prices continue on their current upward trajectory, there is a possibility of restarting Del Toro within a 12-month time period."

- Alex Langer, CEO

The Expected Timeline At La Guitarra

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I hope everyone is looking forward to 2026 and has something fun planned for New Year’s Eve. I think next year is going to be interesting on several fronts, and we have seen the market start to price in some changes in important sectors, and I think it’s just the start of a secular shift. I’m still working on a draft for the 2026 predictions for markets, and that should be up early next week. I wanted to put together a full list of what’s in the portfolio with cost basis, current price, and quick notes on each one, especially since I haven’t been able to do a full writeup on every name. It’s more diversified, but after the last couple months, the portfolio is tilted towards the metals with a mix of other positions thrown in.

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• America’s Gold & Silver is a silver miner that has producing assets in Idaho and Mexico. Their assets also have significant exploration upside.

• They recently bought the Crescent Mine for a song, which is right down the road from the existing Galena operations in Idaho’s Silver Valley.

• They are currently the only producer of antimony in the US, and there are rumblings that we could see a new antimony circuit in Silver Valley.

• I think USAS will be able to meaningfully increase their silver production over the next couple years, especially from their mines in Idaho, which will drive costs down and lead to much better margins.

• Every silver miner obviously has torque to the silver price, but the operational changes coming in 2026 for USAS add a huge kicker for investors.

Even though we hit all time highs for silver on Friday, I’ll spare everyone the rant on silver because I have been beating the drum on it recently. If you share the view that silver is going to continue higher in 2026, a lot of the silver miners have meaningful upside from here. Americas Gold & Silver is one of my favorites, and like Vizsla Silver , they have a district scale asset with their Galena complex in Silver Valley. We will see if they turn into a major, but I think the stock is still extremely mispriced today. I will be on the road for the next couple weeks for the holidays, but I will be working on my outlook post for 2026 while I’m traveling. That will take some time to get together, so don’t expect a bunch of new posts until the new year. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Let’s get into America’s Gold & Silver . I think it makes sense to start with Silver Valley, and why I find USAS so interesting.

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Silver Valley Background

The USAS mines in the Galena complex have significant exploration upside in my opinion. If you poke around the history of major silver mines nearby, like Hecla’s Lucky Friday Mine, the Sunshine Mine (which is no longer operational, but billionaire Thomas Kaplan is trying to restart it in 2028), Bunker Hill (with a planned restart in 2026), and the Galena Mine, it shows that Silver Valley is full of long life assets with high grade silver. They also produce some combination of lead, zinc, copper, and/or antimony in significant amounts. Call it closeology or something similar, but I think USAS is worth a look based on their Idaho operations alone.

• Lucky Friday: Began operations in 1942, and is currently producing almost ~5M oz/year. Historical production of more than 165M oz of silver, and they expect the mine to last at least until the 2040s. It’s already close to two miles deep.

• The Sunshine Mine: This one has a bit of a morbid history as the site of one of the worst mining disasters in US history in 1972 with 91 deaths. The mine began operations in the late 1800s, with historical production of more than 360M oz of silver. Restart is planned for 2028, and they expect more than 7M oz/year after restart.

• Bunker Hill: Began operations in 1885, with historical production of more than 165M oz of silver. Bunker Hill Mining is planning to restart this mine in the first half of 2026.

• The Galena Mine: Began modern production in 1947, with a peak production of more than 5M oz of silver. It has produced more than 240M oz of silver, and the management team thinks they can get it back to 5M oz/year.

America’s Gold & Silver Overview

USAS is a silver miner with a market cap of $1.76B. I think investors can expect increasing silver production over the next couple years, with improved costs and margins. One of the main things that makes digging through the silver miners difficult is that many aren’t actually all that exposed to silver. 87% of USAS’ revenue comes from silver, so it checked the box for me on that front. The management team has been successful in the past with their involvement in Klondex Mines and Karora Resources, and they joined USAS in late 2024. They have been busy since then, and they make a compelling case that all of their properties have been starved of capital for far too long.

The highlight of their portfolio is certainly the Idaho operations in Silver Valley, but they also have Mexican operations that have been starved of capital. They just completed the acquisition of the Crescent Mine for $65M ($20M in cash and 11M shares), which is nine miles down the road from Galena. That deal is going to look like a heist in a couple years, and they are planning to restart production at that mine in Q2 of next year. The Galena mine is the only mine in the US that currently produces antimony, and I find USAS more attractive than names like Perpetua Resources and United States Antimony Corporation . The mineral has been in focus since China’s export ban, and while that situation remains in flux, it’s worth mentioning even though the company’s main focus is silver.

The Galena Complex

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• Vizsla Silver is a silver miner with a large land package in Mexico, and they are developing the world class Panuco project, which should produce ~20M oz/year.

• They expect first production in the back half of 2027, but recent changes in permitting policy from the Mexican government could give investors a catalyst in the first half of 2026.

• The remaining CAPEX expected for the project is low compared to the size of the project, and the expected AISC is just over $10/oz.

• If management can execute over the next couple years, the Panuco project is just the start for Vizsla.

• There are some risks with owning the stock, including permitting and execution between now and first production, but unless silver collapses back to $30/oz, overvaluation isn’t one of them.

Silver has been on a tear lately, and the calls for $100/oz in 2026 have been growing louder. That means it’s probably time to cool off for a bit heading into 2026, but there is some debate about looking for a short term pullback, and how much that matters if the physical market is asserting itself over the paper market for silver. “If silver has been suppressed for decades, what happens when you get price discovery?” It’s an interesting thought experiment, but I will leave that debate to the experts. Is it overcooked short term after a ~35% run in the last month? Probably, but does the silver train stop at $70 in 2026? I don’t think so. When a commodity breaks out to fresh 45 year highs, what happens to the price over the next three to five years?

Silver miners haven’t kept up, even though they should in theory have more torque. I don’t have a great explanation for silver going from $63 to $66 yesterday and and being up 1% and 0.5%, respectively. We will see if Vince Lanci is right and the miners will catch up when the metal itself takes a breather, but the market certainly doesn’t seem overly enthusiastic about the silver miners right now. Half of me is looking at the silver stocks I own like this:

The other half of me knows that it will happen eventually. I have one more stock to write up in the silver basket, but I think having a chunk of silver miners is going to work out pretty well over the next year. My guess is that it will work a lot sooner than that as more investors start to realize what $60 or $70 silver means for the miners.

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Vizsla Silver: A Silver Giant In The Making

The bull case on Vizsla Silver isn’t all that complicated. If the management team can execute over the next couple years, you’re looking at a company that is going to be a silver major by the end of the decade. The CEO has said that their goal is to be producing 50M oz/year of silver in the next decade, and their first project is a major step towards that goal. They own three sizable blocks of land in Mexico that are more than 30,000 hectares (~116 square miles), and I think the first project they are developing is worth more than the current market cap of $1.79B.

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Summary

• Silver Mountain & Excellon Resouces are two junior silver miners that are planning to bring assets online in 2026.

• They both have infrastructure in place, production that won’t require a ton of CAPEX, and all in sustaining costs that are expected to be fairly low.

• Depending on what happens with silver prices, I think both companies could earn their entire current market cap within a couple years of bringing production online. This doesn’t even take their other assets or exploration upside into account.

• For anyone looking at a basket of silver miners, I think both companies are worth a closer look. I’m partial to Silver Mountain for a couple reasons, but Excellon’s Tres Cerros project offers interesting exploration upside.

Silver is now bouncing around in the low-60s, and it seems like the next stop for the gold/silver ratio might be 60. and look like they are set up to run to new highs, but we will see if investors start to put serious money to work in the miners. They definitely aren’t pricing in silver at $60/oz (or higher) or 2026 right now. To be fair, you won’t see me cheerleading the silver price every time we hit a new high, or calling for a massive parabolic move from here, but I think that the move in silver has legs if you have some patience. We might be due for a cooldown after a 20% move in the last three weeks, but I still think the silver miners are a pond worth fishing in at current valuations.

Some of the silver stackers have been talking about silver manipulation for years, but it is interesting to think about if we are about to see the physical market for silver assert dominance over the paper markets. The quote below from a recent video by Chris Martenson stood out. They talked about what your silver would be worth if you bought the open and sold the close, versus what your silver would be worth if you only held it during overnight hours. It’s not something you would see if there wasn’t a thumb on the scale.

Two Peas In A Pod

I wrote about Andean Precious Metals last week, which is still probably my favorite risk/reward for anyone looking at silver miners, primarily because it’s lower risk in my opinion. The two companies I’ll be focusing on today are Silver Mountain Resources (AGMR.V or AGMRF) and Excellon Resources (EXN.V or EXNRF). There are a lot of similarities between the two companies, and I think both are worth owning, but I’m partial to Silver Mountain for a couple reasons that I will get into. I think shares of both companies could rerate materially if they can bring production online in 2026 as expected. The list of similarities is fairly long:

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• Silver has recently made a push to all time highs just below $60/ounce, but the silver miners have diverged and have a chance to play catch up.

• Andean Precious Metals is a lower risk way to get exposure to precious metals, and the valuation is still very cheap, even after the run it has had this year.

• They have a silver oxide processing plant in Bolivia and a gold mine in California, where they are looking to extend the mine life.

• The balance sheet is very strong, and insiders own a huge chunk of the shares outstanding.

• If you’re expecting higher gold and silver prices in 2026, Andean is going to generate a ton of cash, and I wouldn’t be surprised if shares double again by the end of next year.

I’m sure that some of you have been paying attention to what has been going on with silver lately, and I don’t think the recent move in silver is done. There are other people that are far more qualified to comment on the plumbing of gold and silver markets, but it is interesting to see some of the recent news. You have Black Friday COMEX shutdowns, Shanghai silver trading above 60, and rumors that Paul Tudor Jones buying $1.9B of silver futures. With all of that, it’s easy to look at silver as being overcooked short term, but if we do start to issues with physical delivery and paper markets, silver’s run is far from over. Even if we do take a pause here, I think the setup is very attractive looking ahead to 2026.

I could pontificate about the gold to silver ratio, or why I think it’s probably going lower in 2026, but I think gold and silver are both in durable bull markets. I think we could see gold to silver ratio hit 60 (not tomorrow, but at some point in the next couple years), and I don’t think that will happen with gold sitting in the low-4,000 range. I will try to avoid the hyperbolic price targets (silver to $100 an ounce by the end of Q1 2026, etc.), but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if silver grinds higher between now and the end of 2026. I have read and listened to a couple pieces in the last week, but a couple stood out. This recent piece on the gold to silver ratio will be an interesting read for anyone that wants some historical context on where we are today, and Vince Lanci’s video on the recent price action in silver is also worth a listen.

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I have been adding a basket of silver miners, along with some smaller copper miners, and I will be writing up those ideas as quickly as possible. To be clear, I think investors should own physical silver before buying miners (especially some of the juniors), but I think there is a disconnect right now between the price of silver and the price of some of the silver miners. I have owned physical silver for a while now, and I think the miners are worth a look here. Despite silver’s run from the low-50s to just under $60 an ounce, many of the silver miners haven’t participated in the rally to the same degree. A lot of the silver miners seem to be pricing in a return to $30 or $40 an ounce, and I think there is an opportunity in some of the miners unless you expect silver to collapse in 2026.

Andean Precious Metals Overview

That brings me to the largest component of my silver miner basket, and what I think is one of the lowest risk opportunities among the silver miners. Andean Precious Metals (APM.TO or ANPMF on the US OTC) is a precious metals company with assets in California and Bolivia. They are producing gold and silver today, but they are actively looking to expand their operations. The balance sheet is rock solid, insiders are very aligned with other investors, and the stock is very cheap, especially if you are expecting higher average silver prices in 2026 like I am.

Their Bolivia operations remind me a little bit of Amerigo Resources, which processes the copper tailings from the Codelco mine in Chile. The difference is that they aren’t reliant on one mine, and instead take their silver oxide feedstock from multiple nearby silver mines. I think it makes sense to take a basket approach when it comes to the silver miners, and Andean is the lowest risk piece of my basket. Unless you think gold is going back to $3,000 and silver is going back to $30 or $40 an ounce and staying there, I think Andean Precious Metals has plenty of upside from here, even after the run it has had.

The San Bartolomé Plant (Bolivia)

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Summary

• Millennial Potash is developing the Banio project in Gabon. The stock is up 800% YTD (for good reason), and I think the run is set to continue in 2026.

• The US imports 97% of our potash. We recently added potash to the list of critical minerals, and the USDFC is directly involved with Millennial’s Banio project.

• After two new drill holes, Millennial recently released a new Mineral Resource Estimate with ~6B tons of measured, indicated, and inferred reserves. 95% of the project is still unexplored.

• One of the insiders has been buying in large chunks since August of last year, and he hasn’t stopped buying even with the run in the stock. The board, insiders, and management own more than 40% of the stock.

• The economics of the project already look extremely attractive as far as production numbers, OPEX, and CAPEX from the Preliminary Economic Assessment, and those estimates could prove to be conservative.

• Millennial could be an acquisition target after the Feasibility Study next year, but I think there is still significant upside for investors in 2026, even after factoring in jurisdictional and political risk.

Millennial Potash is a small cap potash developer with a market cap of $348M CAD ($247M USD). They own the Banio project in the Western African country of Gabon. The project is 1,238 square kilometers along the coast. The stock is up roughly 800% YTD, for very good reason in my opinion. I understand that the default is to look at a stock that has run like that and assume that the train has already left the station, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think there is still plenty of meat left on the bone for investors buying today, even after the massive run it has had this year. It’s also in a sector that doesn’t get much attention, even among investors that focus on commodities or hard assets.

I was looking at charts of some of the bellwether companies in the agricultural sector, and I think it’s an interesting pond to fish in. This is admittedly an apples to oranges comparison with Millennial. Looking at Mosaic , Nutrien , and Intrepid Potash makes it obvious that you aren’t buying a cyclical peak in fertilizers or potash if you’re buying anything in the sector today. When it comes to agricultural stocks, we are a lot closer to a trough in my opinion. Since the beginning of 2025, investors have obviously started pricing a different future for Millennial compared to some of the larger agricultural stocks.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Potash As A Critical Mineral

I have been doing more digging on potash this weekend, there are several things worth highlighting for investors thinking about owning Millennial Potash. The US relies on Canada for the vast majority of our potash imports, and this post from is a great look at the overview of situation and the infrastructure of the industry. The US government added potash to the list of critical minerals, and they have also been involved directly with Millennial (more on that later).

Nutrien recently decided to build a $500M to $1B potash export terminal in Longview, WA instead of in Canada. Earlier this year, also delayed their massive Jansen project due to cost overruns to the tune of $1.7B, which could produce as much as 10% of global potash demand after Stage 2. They now expect Stage 1 to be complete by mid-2027 and have pushed Stage 2 out to 2031, but we will see if they decide to kick the can again in the future.

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The Recent Mineral Resource Estimate

The recently updated Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for Millennial’s Banio project in Gabon is what got my attention, and why I started buying the stock. They recently released new drill results, and the market was a big fan last Monday. They hit thicker seams than their last drill program, with one at 100 meters and the other at 112 meters (last year’s results were 70 meters). With those drill results, the measured and indicated reserves was up to roughly ~2.5B tons, and the inferred reserves was roughly ~3.5B tons. So you have ~6B tons of measured, indicated, and inferred reserves, and they have only explored roughly 5% of the Banio license so far. I’ll get into some back of the napkin math later, but I think Millennial Potash is a very compelling speculation heading into 2026, even after the run it has already had.

2025 11 17 Resource Estimate

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US DFC Support & What’s In Store For 2026

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Summary

• Navios Maritime Partners is a diversified shipping company with exposure to Dry Bulk, Tankers, and Containers.

• The valuation is extremely cheap no matter how you slice it. Shares trade at roughly 3-4x 2026 earnings, and 0.35-0.4x NAV. It’s dirt cheap on an absolute basis, and it’s cheap relative to other shipping companies.

• The company has a token dividend payout, but capital returns have mainly come in the form of buybacks. They have bought back 1.4M shares since Q2 of last year.

• Dry bulk is setup for a great 2026, and Navios is mostly exposed to spot rates for that sector. Tankers have been strong lately as well. For containers, the sector where I’m not as bullish, Navios has locked in charters for the fleet for more than 90% of 2026.

• Navios’ diversified fleet is a great way for generalist investors to get exposure to shipping for 2026 and beyond. I’m expecting post-COVID highs in 2026, and a share price in the triple digits if the discount to the rest of the sector closes.

Navios Maritime Partners is my favorite way to own a piece of the shipping sector. Their diversified exposure to dry bulk, tankers, and containers spreads risk across what is a notoriously cyclical sector of the market. I know it has “Partners” in the name, but for anyone worried about tax treatment and the K-1 tax forms that come with MLPs, you don’t have to worry. Owning shares of Navios doesn’t require K-1 form when tax time rolls around. They reported earnings earlier this week, and there is a lot to like as an investor over the next 12-18 months. I think we will see the stock at post-COVID highs sometime in 2026. If it closes the valuation gap with the rest of the shipping sector, that puts the stock somewhere in the triple digits if you’re patient enough.

Fleet Overview

Navios’ fleet is split across three shipping subsectors: dry bulk, tankers, and containers. Below you can see the average age of those ships, the fleet profile, and contract coverage. As you can see, they are more contracted in the container and tanker sectors (more on that later). They have been in the process of refreshing the fleet by selling vessels near the end of their 20 year useful life, and they are expecting the delivery of 25 vessels over the next couple years, mainly product tankers and container ships.

Dry Bulk: Upside Exposure To Spot Rates

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I’m going to get right into it this week, but this is one of the more interesting rocks I have turned over in the last month or so. SkyWater Technology (SKYT) is a US based pure play semiconductor foundry with operations in Minnesota, Florida, and after an acquisition earlier this year, Texas. Instead of designing and selling their own chips, they partner with customers to design and produce those chips. They aren’t focused on consumer products like phones or computers, but they partner with everyone from government agencies for aerospace and defense, to companies in the automotive, medical, and industrial sectors. They call it “Technology as a Service” (everything has to be ‘as a service’ these days), but basically they work with clients to design and manufacture specialized chips for a variety of purposes. I took a flier on the company after the Q3 earnings last week.

One of the newer areas of focus for the company has been quantum computing (the word ‘quantum’ was used 52 times on the recent earnings call). A lot of investors hear the word quantum and think science projects with little or no revenue that also happen to be meme stocks, but SkyWater has added four new quantum computing customers since Q2, for a total of seven customers. While quantum is a relatively new piece of the business and “modest” chunk of revenue today for the company, they expect it to be their fastest growing category, and plan to highlight it at the analyst day in March. I have made jokes about some of the quantum meme stocks in the past and their valuations, but I do find the technology interesting (even if understanding it is way out of my wheelhouse).

We will have to see what comes of some of these science project companies, but I think we will continue to see companies pursuing and developing quantum computing. The point is that SkyWater is an actual company, with actual revenues and PP&E, and it happens to have some exposure to quantum computing. Perhaps more important than customers in quantum computing is the connection to the federal government. Bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the US has been a priority of the federal government in recent years (especially for anything related to the military), and SkyWater is a DMEA-accredited Category 1A Trusted Foundry. In plain English, they meet the standards of the DOD (now Department of War I guess) to manufacture chips for systems regarding national security.

The Fab 25 Acquisition In June

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Hunterbrook, 10/31/2025

Hunterbrook, 11/3/2025

The Pipeline Is Now A Pipe Dream

As things stand currently, the chances of bringing the pipeline online are effectively zero. First, they would need to win the Kern County court case, where the court needs to decide if SB 237 applies to Sable’s pipeline. Sable will argue that PHMSA only defines active and abandoned. There is no definition for “idle” and as a result, Sable’s pipeline has been active this entire time, and was never idled. If they lose, the January 1, 2026 deadline for SB 237 kicks in and would require a Coastal Development Permit. They would also need to win the appeal of Judge Anderle’s ruling from October 15, 2025, where he denied the writ.

The CCC currently has a cease and desist (CDO) order, a restoration order (RO), and an $18 million fine. The permit transfer was also denied yesterday, this time with a 4-1 vote. If they can figure out 237, overturn Anderle’s decision, and resolve the permit transfer (all unlikely, but 3 for 3 is even less likely), then they would need to resubmit the final restart plan to California’s State Fire Marshal (OSFM) and get an approval (also unlikely). Then they would need to get by Geck after the 10 day period, and if they somehow did manage all of this, you can expect more delays and litigation. All of this is a long way of saying that the pipeline is dead.

The Offshore Route Isn’t Much Better

The short version is that the offshore route requires a shitload (the technical term) of money and time, and Sable has neither. Reuters put the number at $1.7B, and there is talk that they could get it done by the end of 2026, but I would take the over on $2B (and probably more), and if you still trust management timelines on this one, I have a bridge to sell you. Whether the exact number is $2B, $3B or $4B doesn’t really matter because they don’t have that kind of firepower unless the Federal government backstops it. That brings to the permitting and timeline problems with the offshore route.

The Santa Barbara County air permit is a major roadblock, and the only way the company can avoid that roadblock is if they park the FPSO 25 nautical miles outside of the coastal zone. That triggers the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which brings me back to the Federal backstop. The Department of Energy (DOE) projects must comply with NEPA for something like a federal loan guarantee, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) also has to comply with NEPA for the permit. Whether it’s 9 months for an environmental assessment or 2 years for an environmental impact statement is beside the point, because Sable doesn’t have that kind of time.

The point is that I don’t think that the permit Jim was talking about on the leaked investor call is coming by Thanksgiving. They did put out an 8-K on October 10, saying that they were updating the Development and Production Plan for the Santa Ynez Unit (DPP) and said that they believe the existing permit is still “active”. Unless they somehow get an air permit from Santa Barbara County (not happening), you need to put the FPSO outside of their reach, which is the 25 miles I mentioned above. That takes a lot of money (which they don’t have), time (which they don’t have), and a new permit, probably after a lengthy BOEM review process, because it would effectively be a brand new project (list below).

• Air permit (EPA OCS above 25 nautical miles): This will also trigger its own CZMA review (6-months, below for more info). It will require Commerce Secretary override.

• NEPA (above).

• National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) authorization.

• Oil Spill Financial Responsibility (OSFR) and Certificate of Financial Responsibility (COFR).

• Oil Spill Response Plan (OSRP), Vessel Response Plan (VRP), and Facility Response Plan (FRP).

• BSEE safety systems approval (Subpart H), pipeline approvals (Subpart J), and construction/installation notices.

• Coastal Zone management Act (CZMA): This gives a coastal state a binding say (federal consistency) over federal actions. The California Coastal Commission (CCC) is the state reviewer. The CZMA process takes 6-months and given Sable’s history with the CCC, they will likely reject the plan. This is the part that will be sent to the Commerce Secretary, where the company thinks Howard Lutnick will override on the premise of “national security.”

Is That All?

None of that adds up to a quick turnaround, and whether it’s one year or two is beside the point. It’s time and cash the company doesn’t have. If they get all of that done, and manage to get a Federal backstop, then they can start building the infrastructure required. They can’t spend money (that they don’t have) to lock down an FPSO without a permit, and they legally can’t start building the infrastructure until they have the permit. That brings me to the Exxon loan.

On November 3, 2025, Sable Offshore Corp. (the “Company” or “Sable”) and Exxon Mobil Corporation (“Exxon”) entered into an amendment (the “Amendment”) to the Senior Secured Term Loan Agreement (the “Existing Secured Term Loan” and, after the Amendment is effective, the “Senior Secured Term Loan”). The Amendment will become effective upon the satisfaction of certain conditions, including the Company receiving equity contributions in an amount of no less than $225.0 million, net of underwriting fees and other transaction costs and expenses, and other customary closing conditions. However, there is no guarantee that the Company will be able to satisfy the necessary conditions to effect the Amendment.

The Amendment, once effective, extends the maturity date of the Existing Secured Term Loan to the earlier of (i) March 31, 2027 or (ii) the date falling 90 days after first sales of Hydrocarbons (as defined in the Existing Secured Term Loan). The Amendment increases the interest rate from ten percent (10%) per annum to fifteen percent (15%) per annum, compounded annually, payable in arrears on January 1st of each year. At the Company’s election, accrued but unpaid interest may be deemed paid on each interest payment date by adding the amount of interest owed to the outstanding principal (paid-in-kind) amount under the Existing Senior Secured Term Loan. The Amendment also includes additional reporting covenants and a financial liquidity covenant that requires the Company to have not less than $25.0 million in unrestricted cash, measured at the end of each month.

- Sable Offshore 8-K, 11/3/2025

Conclusion

Basically Exxon is coming back for their $225M pound of flesh, and the amount of dilution required to extend the maturity of the loan would be enormous, and then the debt starts PIKing at 15%. Even if that was possible, what bank is going to help them raise equity? What institution is going to buy the equity? That doesn’t even get into their accounts payable and cash levels, or the year plus of cash burn from today to their first dollar of revenue.

We will see what they say with the Q3 10-Q, but the picture looks very bleak for the company and for anyone that is currently long. If they somehow figure out a way through the Labyrinth of Daedalus above, what is the outstanding share count by the time they have a single dollar of revenue? The other thing to consider is management, and I was too slow to change my opinion on the management team. They certainly don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt anymore, and I don’t see any reason to trust what they have to say on timeline, dilution, the legal situation, permitting, or how much the offshore plan would cost.

I cut it loose after the Anderle hearing, so I have no position, but I don’t think it makes sense to hang on and bank on the federal government riding in to save the day. I should have got rid of it sooner, and I learned a lot of expensive lessons with this one, including to never invest in California. The stock has already been cut in half in the last week, and the market is starting to price in a donut. The death spiral has already started, and I don’t see any reason for it to stop.

Thoughts On Anderle’s Decision

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