Changing locations definitely can have an impact on your outlook and mood. Remember how relaxed you feel when you’re on holiday in a tropical location with perfect weather?
With a week of perfect weather, the Noosa Mining Conference provided a stark contrast to the wet and gloom of the southern and western states.
68 resources companies and over 900 delegates enjoyed three days of sunshine, positive stories and lots of market opportunities.
There was a wide range of commodities on show, from early stage explorers like Clara Resources (market cap $6M) through to producers like Ramelius Resources (Market cap $1.8B), all trying to win over investors and stand out from the pack.
With critical minerals featuring prominently, it was a welcome presentation from Exploration industry expert Rob Murdoch from Austex on Day 1 that highlighted the significant demand that will keep the focus on explorers and developers. These companies hope to be the future suppliers producing the lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, vanadium etc that are all going to be required over the coming decades.
While it has been apparent to anyone in the sector that the small end is doing it tough at the moment, Rob highlighted a number of small caps that had defied the odds over the past 6 months with +100% share price gains, with quite a few on the back of James Bay lithium acquisitions.
Of particular interest was the slide that showed exploration spend hovering around the $800-1000m per quarter for ASX-listed companies, well above the $300-400m levels of pre-Covid. This amount of exploration offers opportunities for plenty of discoveries and winners amongst those out looking for the next big thing.
Noosa attracts a wide range of investors, particularly compared to some of the major city conferences. Despite starting out with a retiree retail investor focus, a number of brokers and fund managers seem to have added it to their annual conference calendar. As noted, there were over 900 that turned up for the event, with another 1500 tuning in online.
Morgans, as conference sponsor, had a delegation of 30 in town wining and dining investors over the whole week, with Perth, Sydney and Melbourne broking houses sending a few along to keep track of the sentiment.
General feedback from companies presenting at the conference was extremely positive, with MDs losing their voices from being pinned down by investors for most of the day. Some are also sporting a new injury or two, with their early morning surfing ability not matching up to the bravado.
Many of the same companies and brokers will be backing it up in a fortnight at the Diggers & Dealers Forum in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, probably as far away from Noosa (on every measure) as you could possibly get.
White Noise communications is provided a fee for service working with companies which may have exposure to commodities or securities mentioned in these articles. All articles are the opinion of the author and are not endorsed by, or written in collaboration with, our clients.
