8020Invest

$AIX.ax My way into the Claude IPO. The trust holds about 12.5% in Anthropic, bought below its US$965b May round. It’s trading below its NAV. I looked at all 6 holdings & who each one is up against. The good & the bad. 8020invest.substack.com/p/ai…

Noosa ❤️

My SMSF portfolio

So excited to win a prize tonight! What a fun night! 🙏

$VAL.ax youtu.be/WJg-9DPJ0sU

Register here for @ReadCorporate RRS Melbourne bigmarker.com/series/summer-…

After writing up what I learned about gold hedge books, I put together a checklist for myself. It’s what I’ll be working through from now on before I buy a gold producer or developer. It’s 4 pages & covers: The hedge book: ounces hedged, weeks of production, average hedge price against the gold price & against costs, & whether deliveries are on schedule. Hedging’s cousins: prepayments, streams, royalties & gold loans. Costs & margin, including fuel & the Australian dollar. The business: mine life, guidance track record, debt, dilution & spending plans. Management & track record. Gold versus the gold miner. Has it actually beaten the gold price? A funding checklist for developers. Red flags. Questions for management, handy for the coffee breaks. A worksheet to compare 3 hedge books side by side. A “my decision” box: buy, watch or pass, & what would change my mind. I’m taking it to the Australian Gold Conference this week. If you think I’ve missed something, please tell me. I’m still learning. Not financial advice.

I’ve been investing in gold stocks for a long time, but I haven’t paid enough attention to hedge books. This week I’m heading to the Australian Gold Conference in Sydney. Before a conference I like to read up on the speakers so I have good questions for the coffee breaks. One of the speakers is Sean Russo of Noah’s Rule. I’ve heard Sean speak many times & always learn something. He has more than 40 years in gold & financial markets, & he’s always been generous with his time. So I did my homework & wrote it up in 2 posts. Part 1: what I’ve learned from Sean about hedging: 8020invest.substack.com/p/go… A few things that stood out to me: In the June quarter, Westgold sold its gold for A$6,391 an ounce. Bellevue sold its gold for A$4,180. Same market. The main difference was the hedge book. Sean’s key question for any hedged miner: what’s it for? Supporting debt, avoiding dilution & creating certainty can all be good reasons. If a company doesn’t deliver into its hedges & keeps pushing them out, Sean says it stops being a hedge & becomes debt. Debt measured in gold, which grows as the gold price rises. Look at the doughnut, not the hole. Sean says this a lot. Atlantic Gold’s hedge book was out of the money for its whole life, but avoiding dilution helped shareholders make about 11 times their money, by Sean’s account. Calidus is the other side of the story. Its hedge price was below its cost of production. It went into administration in 2024 & was removed from the ASX in January 2025. In May 2024, Sean suggested miners think about floor prices, not fixed prices. The A$ gold price then went on to a high of A$7,693 in January 2026. Floors meant miners kept the upside. Several ASX producers now use them. I also share a confession. I bought Newmont shares at a lunch in 2024 while its CEO was speaking. It did well, but I never checked its hedge book. Luck isn’t a process. The post also covers where to find a hedge book, how to read it, who’s hedged now among the bigger ASX producers, & a checklist I’ll be using from now on. Part 2: what I’m thinking about before the conference: 8020invest.substack.com/p/go… Gold’s pullback from its January high. Gold Fields’ A$38.7b approach for Northern Star, which was rejected. According to Noah’s Rule, Northern Star holds over 80% of the Australian hedge book. Why put options have become popular. Catalyst locking in a fixed price above A$6,000. The questions I’d like to ask Sean & the companies at the coffee breaks. I’m not an expert on hedging & I’m still learning. If you’re going to the conference, or just want to understand gold stocks a bit better, I hope these help. If I’ve got anything wrong, please let me know. Disclosure: I hold Alkane (ALK). I previously held Newmont (NEM). Not financial advice.

1 buy out of 2,200: Macmahon (ASX: MAH) My screening plan ran across about 2,200 ASX stocks last night & flagged just 1 buy for today. It’s Macmahon Holdings (MAH). It’s not a small cap. It’s a $2.5b mining contractor that has been around since 1963. I don’t know it as well as some of the companies I write about, so I did some homework on why it’s going up. Here’s what I found, good & bad. What Macmahon does Macmahon digs for other companies. It runs surface & underground mining, plus civil works, across Australia, New Zealand & Southeast Asia. Revenue was $2.62b last financial year. It also runs the Macmahon Foundation, which funds community programs near its sites, like family workshops in Mackay. Why it’s going up The share price closed at $1.145 on Thursday. That’s a new 52-week high. It was under 50c a year ago. Thursday was also a down day for the market. The ASX 200 fell 0.77% & Macmahon rose 2.7%. There’s been steady news flow behind it: 5 Oct: Vault Minerals extended Macmahon’s underground contract at the Daisy Milano gold mine near Kalgoorlie. The 2-year extension is worth about $98m & runs to October 2028. 18 Sep: Macmahon agreed to buy Aspect Engineering Solutions, a Perth engineering firm, for $75m. 24 Aug: Greatland Resources extended Macmahon’s contract at the Telfer gold mine in WA. The 3.5-year extension is worth $485m. Macmahon has worked there since 2015. August: Macmahon won a 5-year, $406m underground contract at the Snowy River gold mine in New Zealand. It’s due to start this month. The Aspect deal Aspect made about $75m in revenue last year. It made about $15m in profit before interest & tax. Macmahon is paying about 5 times that profit. Only $30m is paid upfront. Then $6m a year for 5 years to keep the key people. Then a further $15m to $30m if Aspect hits its targets. Macmahon can pay those later amounts in shares instead of cash. Macmahon expects the deal to lift earnings per share by about 6% from the start. Aspect does the engineering & design work before a mine is built. It also adds minerals processing. That gets Macmahon involved earlier with clients. The competition Mining contracting is a crowded field. Macmahon competes with other listed contractors like Perenti, which owns the underground miner Barminco, & NRW Holdings. It also competes with large private players like Thiess & Byrnecut, the biggest name in underground mining. Contracts are won through tenders, often against those same names, & they come up for renewal every few years. Winning an extension, like Daisy Milano or Telfer, is a sign the client is happy. But nothing is locked in forever. The other competitor is the miners themselves. Some choose to bring the work in-house once a mine is up & running. Vault Minerals will do this with the open-pit work at its King of the Hills mine from January 2027, when Macmahon’s current contract ends. That will take some revenue away from Macmahon. What the brokers say Canaccord has a Buy & raised its target after the Aspect deal. Ord Minnett has a Hold & raised its target to $1.10, which is below Thursday’s close. Is it expensive? It trades at more than 20 times last year’s earnings. It’s no longer the cheap stock it was a year ago. The risks Much of the good news may already be in the price. The share price can swing hard. It fell about 10% in one day last week with no news. Some of its work is coal mining. Its long-term Byerwen coal project in Queensland has a workforce of about 400. A few large contracts make up a big share of the work. Labour costs & finding workers remain a pressure across the sector. If the later Aspect payments are made in shares, existing holders get diluted a little. Why I bought My plan flagged it as the only buy out of about 2,200 stocks. I like the steady contract wins & the Aspect deal looks sensible. But the share price has already done a lot of the work, & I could easily be buying near a short-term high. I’ve kept the position size modest. Disclosure: I bought MAH shares on Friday 9 October 2026 & hold them at the time of writing. I also hold shares in NRW Holdings (NWH), one of Macmahon’s competitors. This is not financial advice. I’m not a licensed financial adviser & this is general information only. It doesn’t take into account your own situation. I’m sharing what I found so you can do your own research.

Firmus has shelved its A$7b IPO. It would have been the 2nd largest float in Australian history, behind only Telstra in 1997. The price was A$11 a share, valuing it at A$43.7b. A year ago it was valued at A$1.85b. In my new Substack post 8020invest.substack.com/p/fi… I look at: Why the IPO didn’t work. Only around 5% of the capacity Firmus has sold is built & running. It forecast a US$77m loss for the first half of FY27. Whether this breaks the AI trade, or was about Firmus itself What it means for $NVDA. Jensen Huang has named Firmus on stage more than once. Why I might buy more $CRWV. It has a US$104b backlog & Nvidia as its 2nd largest shareholder. The risks, & there are plenty. CoreWeave had about US$33.8b of debt at 30 June & lost US$626m in Q2. I also cover the flow-on to small caps. $DXN fell to 41c today with no company news. Firmus cuts both ways for CoreWeave. It may thin out new competition. Or it may be an early sign the money for AI infrastructure is drying up. I hold Nvidia, CoreWeave & DXN. Not financial advice.

Really looking forward to this next week!! @GoldEventsAU

US signals tonight: $VLO, $DELL & $MU VLO: refining margins at records on the Iran war. 2nd signal since Aug DELL: $95b AI server backlog. FY guide up $25b to $192b. Also a repeat MU: Q4 revenue $54.2b vs $11.3b a year ago All large caps, no 10-baggers. I hold MU. Not advice

My question sheet for Stocks on Location lunch today if you are attending.

Really interesting to hear the Overwatch story ahead of the IPO Thanks @StocksOnLoc @LelSmits

Top ASX micro-cap movers today, Wed 7 Oct, & why: Dalaroo (ASX: DAL) +107%. First drilling in Côte d'Ivoire hit 18m at 7.31 g/t gold. Only 2 of 24 holes reported so far. BOA Resources (ASX: BOA) +23%. Copper in 20 of 23 holes at Ricci Lee. Shareholders vote on 12 Oct to take Neds Creek to 100%. Eden Innovations (ASX: EDE) +20%. US revenue up 152% in the Sept quarter, off a small base. SEA Forest (ASX: SEA) +18%. No news found. Kalamazoo (ASX: KZR) +16%. $10m placement at 18c, a 29% premium. Still trading below that price. Atomic Eagle (ASX: AEU) +12.5%. Uranium day. Stakk (ASX: SKK) +8%. Deal with Step, the MrBeast-owned fintech. Alligator (ASX: AGE) +8%. Uranium. Elevate Uranium (ASX: EL8) +7%. Uranium. Fortifai (ASX: FTI) +8%. No news found. The uranium bounce came after Google signed a 20-year nuclear power deal with Constellation. Most uranium names faded from their highs. Most of these are early-stage, so moves like this can reverse just as fast. I hold DAL & BOA. I previously held SKK. Not financial advice. I'm not a licensed adviser.