Yeah - there certainly is an interesting divergence story on the Copper metal price and in copper concentrate prices and toll treatment charges - mostly explicable by US hoarding/consumption being brought forward due to tariff concerns. The other interesting story is the Chinese smelter over-capacity, but the hints in the article about sulfuric acid and gold being part of the story could be telling us something.
Although I am reluctant to beleive any statistics coming out of China, for obvious reasons, the reluctance of China to switch off its "excess smelter capacity" could have something to do with stockpiling copper because of future tariff/trade wars or indeed an actual shooting war in the future, and/or a story about obtaining gold and sulfuric acid, simple preservation of jobs within China for domestic political purposes, and/or market manipulation is to be expected from China and should be viewed through the lens of strategic long-term vertical integration and driving any non-chinese sources and non-chinese intermediate suppliers out of business. Thats the pattern of behaviour regardless of the metal, and no reason why the same forces can't operate in the copper market, even if the copper market becomes bifrucated or it returns to "normal". In some ways the traditional laws of economics and supply and demand don't explain everything that happens in inefficient or distorted markets.
Anyway - back to A1M and I agree with some other posters that M&A is probably on the backburner due to the horrendous track record of management and value destruction in the other juniors in the Cloncurry area, their marginal deposits, and by A1M having the option to continue Jericho through development and simply fill the mill that they have and improve the economics of Eloise by filling the mill. As others have said - if the share price of A1M runs away because of metals prices and/or successful execution of their own growth plans, then using overpriced scrip opportunistically might be an option down the line, if something worthy of pursuing becomes available.
If they execute perfectly in a rising metals price environment and the share price behaves the same ways it has so far, then the bigger concern is that A1M becomes the opportunistic target of someone else, so defence strategies should be back of mind in the future.
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