Hey Hopper,I recently set up a separate (Chess sponsored)...

Hey Hopper,

I recently set up a separate (Chess sponsored) brokerage account just to hold a few companies like this -- a) holding Tier 1 size deposits; b) located in Australia (not a previously-unheard-of country in Africa!); c) in the final stages of deliberations before mine construction; and d) commodities which are widely expected to be in significant shortage in the mid-late 2020s due to decarbonisation. I am ashamed to say one of these companies was a rare earths stock with its Hot Copper forum being updated every few minutes and predictions of 'going to the moon'. It's up 25% for me, but I'm not happy about it. RXM is more my speed. Less hype and speculation, less day-trading, less shorters. More fundamentals.

My thesis is they will either thrive, be taken over by the likes of Sandfire, Glencore, S32, etc. or flounder and go broke! With all the permits in place, a recognised major deposit, and close to port (eg. not in the middle of nowhere) worst-case scenario, I figure someone would want to buy Hillside for more than the enterprise value of the company. Unlike, say, a tech company, the copper in the ground isn't going to become obsolete. It's a very value asset and Rex owns 100% of it; which means WE own 100% of it . All the pre-construction work has been completed. I see Rex's Hillside project as a calculated, leveraged play on an increased copper price.

I spent a lot of time looking at Caraval. It's part of the Lowell Junior Resources Listed Investment Trust's portfolio, and I enjoy listening to John Forewood their CFO's interviews. I might have heard Richard Hemming from Under the Radar Report mention Caraval on their YouTube channel in research I've been doing.

I still am open-mined about buying CVV but I see Rex as more de-risked, plus we have the gold deposit in Arizona whereas they only have that one deposit in WA. They certainly have a big proven reserve and I am keeping them at the top of my watchlist.

CVV has a huge proven deposit (as does Rex) with sealed roads to a port and access to grid power (as we do) and their PPT presentations are very professional and make a good case. Our grade, from memory is about 0.50% whereas theirs is low -- about 0.25%, I think. They seemed further behind our process of approvals and FID and seem to be moving quickly -- quicker than us. I think it was only discovered in 2016. I think I read from their presentation that their low grades were only profitable because of the huge scale planned for their operation and cheap recovery costs. Yeah, I really don't know about Caraval.... It looked more speculative to me and dependent upon a higher copper price to go ahead; and their time to production seemed ambitious. Although I am no resources expert.

Given a choice, I am very happy to be in Rex. Our project has dragged on for a long time, but one gets the feeling we've done the hard yards already, and every study known to man, have all the approvals in place, the backing of the SA government, are close to Port Adelaide, and have roads and power in place. It feels like all the time-consuming work has been done already and we have a very clear pathway to mine construction and production. CVV seems further behind us and with lower grades. I also like our board's experience. Their CVs come across as lifelong mining people; in particular the strong Newcrest connection. My feeling is either company could 10x, but there's a far greater chance that Hillside goes ahead due to us being futher along in the planning and development stages.

Good luck with both investments, mate (especially the Rex one )