Beaver Creek Notes

Tether speculation; portfolio sells and buys; Remembering Ricky Hatton

There are very few times in my life where being a short brown guy has worked in my favour. I think a mining conference might be one of those times.

I had brand recognition at Beaver Creek. After all there aren’t many Sultans amongst all those suit-wearing mining executives.

Weekend notebook …

• Beaver Creek wrap

• Portfolio update

• Clean Seed correction

• On boxing: Ricky Hatton and Bud Crawford

Interesting links returns when I have a chance to sit down and read something. After all, I was at a mining conference last week.

Beaver Creek in the books

Quick thoughts on what I found interesting.

Tether

Disclosure: I cancelled my meetings with EMX and Elemental Altus after the merger announcement. None of this reflects any official company position.

Everyone has a take on the new entrant with the firehose of cash and an appetite for royalties, but nobody has any solid information. The impression of Tether is they’re inexperienced buyers at best. Talking to my crypto industry contacts I think the mining folks are missing context: Tether wants to move quickly to tokenize real world assets without taking on operational risk. There’s also a rush to deploy capital before margins come down in their USDT business and an overall operational philosophy that hard assets are underpriced in fiat terms.

Gold Royalty

The pro-forma market cap of GROY is closer to $1-billion USD after all the warrants are exercised and debentures are converted. That’s probably low if you’re valuing Gold Royalty on a private market value basis, or what Tether would have to pay to swallow the prize.

I don’t see these guys taking Elemental paper. If Tether wants the prize - and 30,000 gold equivalent ounces by 2030 is a prize - they’d have to come up with more than a $1-billion US in cash. Probably closer to $1.5-billion.

Tether made $13-billion USD last year.

The elephant in the room

I talked to the GROY team about their acquisition track record and having a stock that goes up specifically because they have sworn off M&A. I’m not the first person who’s asked about that and they were prepared. The answer is any future acquisition would be self-evidently accretive, therefore the market wouldn’t puke the stock. They also noted the ability to use debt financing going forward now that there’s cash flow and cash flow growth.

No way to know until an acquisition actually happens, but this tracks as Gold Royalty is now subject to the law of large numbers. It’ll take something big to move the needle going forward, assuming Tether doesn’t swallow them first.

Other notes: The royalty on Cote is front-loaded. Payments from the Cote will diminish over time as production moves away from their area of interest. At the same time production from Malartic is moving underground so that cash stream will increase. GROY is doing a small amount of prospect generation work in Nevada, continuing the business they picked up from ELY Gold Royalties back in 2021.

Sailfish

Kenorland’s Frotet royalty is a little too far from production, leaving Sailfish Royalty’s Spring Valley royalty as the last man standing. FISH has a sub $1-billion market cap with a cornerstone gold NSR available for purchase if Tether decides to pick up the phone. Mako Mining management confirmed they’d be interested in extinguishing the San Albino streams and royalties as part of any deal where Spring Valley gets sold.

Mako and Regulus Resources

These are very different companies. But in terms of differentiated thinking, creative tactics and value creation as the end goal, they’re the closest I’ve seen in this sector to running like private equity. Both would probably get more credit for what they do as private businesses or if they changed their name to Waterton.

Banyan

I couldn’t get a meeting. According to the organizers CEO Tara Christie was sold out for months with a long waitlist. If I want more shares I’ll have to pay up. Christie did a great job of laying out Banyan’s relative valuation and the accretive transactions with the receiver for those who haven’t been keeping up with the Victoria Gold CCAA process.

Hemlo

The Jason Kosec/Hemlo purchase has a lot of you Minera Alamos shareholders curious and confused, at best. Or you’re just spitting mad about where the priorities of MAI’s chairman lie going forward. The purchase price works out for everyone directly involved:

• Barrick got paid. That’s a great price for a non-core asset.

• Wheaton Precious Metals is going to get paid. They extracted a lot of value out of the Hemlo asset in exchange for non-dilutive capital.

• Hemlo Mining/Carcetti Capital which should get paid at spot gold. They seem to have executed the mining equivalent of a 1980s-style leveraged buyout. Someone has been reading Barbarians at the Gate.

I suspect the Wheaton deal could be renegotiated if that was the impediment to flipping Hemlo in future.

Particular congratulations are in order for those of you who got into that Carcetti private placement. Nicely done.

Be aware and beware

One speaker was touting his many winners, before mentioning that he owned more than 160 mining stocks. If I went to 160 strip clubs I’m sure I’d have at least one humblebrag about nailing a stripper, but what would it have cost me?

Portfolio updates

Star Royalties released the investor update from their AGM.

Nobody disputes the value of the STRR portfolio, the issue is who is best suited to crystallize that value for shareholders before it’s eaten up by the G&A costs of running a public company.

I was stopped out of my Kingfisher Metals position at 40.5 cents. I don’t normally use stops but it seemed like a good idea as drill results were due out and I wasn’t actively monitoring the market during the conference (I didn’t realize the position was fully liquidated until I landed in Toronto).

Under normal circumstances I’d hold through and wait for more data, but Kingfisher wasn’t a large position and I spent almost an hour with Orogen Royalties management at Beaver Creek. I’d rather lock in my KFR profits and get my HWY 37 exposure through OGN. Orogen also comes with Ermitaño expansion and a potential monster royalty in Colombia among other things. I was a buyer up to $2 this week.

New undisclosed position: I’ve started nibbling away at an illiquid special situation. I think there’s a spin out coming.

Speaking of spin outs, NGEx Minerals shareholders approved the LunR Royalties spin out.

Mayfair Gold is raising $35-million to move Fenn-Gib forward.

Altius Minerals touched an all-time high.

Comstock lives! It’s trading above the $2.25 deal price.

As a smart investor pointed out to me, anyone who sold LODE for the tax loss on August 12 could buy their position back this week.

Correction: Clean Seed Capital

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

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 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 to sell into other jurisdictions 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.

Another white-label agreement

Clean Seed announced an expansion of its product offering this past week - complimentary products to the Mini Max. Seems clear the OEM mentioned is Mahindra.

“This expansion provides Clean Seed with access to a broad range of fully warrantied, globally manufactured implements — to be marketed under a Clean Seed brand,” the company said in a release.

“Details on branding, product range, and rollout timelines will be announced in the coming months.”

I’ve moved Clean Seed from the royalty bucket into the more appropriate industrials basket.

Updated Portfolio

As of September 12, 2025

Mining

• KGCRF - Kinross Contingent Value Rights

• Banyan Gold

• Mayfair Gold

Industrials

• Comstock Inc. - Silver

• Aecon - Nuclear

• Clean Seed Capital - Agriculture

Royalties

• Altius Minerals

Exploration/Prospect Generators

• Kenorland Minerals

• Orogen 2.0

• Magna Terra Minerals

• Kingfisher Metals

• Vulcan Minerals

Specials/Workouts

• NGEx Minerals

• Undisclosed position (adding)

• Chibougamau Independent Mines

• Star Royalties

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

Raw Commodities

• Sprott Physical Uranium Trust

On boxing

Bud Crawford is the best fighter of his generation after blitzing Canelo Alvarez in the championship rounds of a fight worth finding on Netflix. The problem with boxing is the fight didn’t get underway until 1am eastern. There’s no next generation of boxing fans coming after me. The involvement of the UFC and Saudi oil money doesn’t change that.

---

Ricky Hatton was found dead at his home this weekend. He was only 46 years old. Here’s his career-making win against Kostya Tszyu, one of the greatest fights in British boxing history. For some of you, this will be the first time seeing a Ricky Hatton ring entrance.

Hatton, then an undefeated rising star from Manchester, challenged the reigning IBF 140-pound champion Tszyu, widely regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world at the time. Hatton fought Tszyu ferociously on the inside, taking away the space required for Tszyu’s dangerous right hand. Tszyu’s corner stopped the fight after 11 brutal rounds in what turned out to be his last fight.

Hatton’s win would set him up for mega-fights with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. The limits of Hatton’s jab and pressure-fighting style would be exposed against the two all-time greats as he was knocked out in both fights.