Q&A with Joe Mazumdar, Editor and Analyst, Exploration Insights™
Capital is flowing in 2026, but it’s increasingly concentrated. In this discussion, Exploration Insights™ Editor Joe Mazumdar outlines why technically strong management teams are attracting the majority of new funding, how permitting certainty is a key factor in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and why geopolitical shifts are reshaping where juniors can raise capital and advance projects.
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Do you want to give us a quick introduction to yourself and your work?
I’m the editor and analyst for Exploration Insights™, a weekly publication focused on what I am buying and selling in equities, predominantly in the exploration and development space of the mining sector. We sometimes look at producers, too, but we mostly focus on higher-risk, higher-reward, non-cash-flowing smaller-cap companies.
In terms of commodity exposure, we are primarily in precious metals, with a healthy exposure to critical minerals such as copper, nickel, and rare earths.
Geographically, we’re all over the place. As a geologist in the field and working in corporate offices, I worked in Canada, but most of my time was in South America, Australia, and the US, so we do a lot in those regions as well. Geopolitically, we try to keep it lower-risk because we’re taking enough company- and project-specific risk with the drill bit.
With Exploration Insights™, we tell our subscribers what we’re doing before we do it.
How do you assess risk when making these investment decisions?
At the start of 2026, I outlined a scenario of what I think will happen in the markets over the next several years, which aligns with our investment timeline. I then review how those dynamics are likely to impact commodities, and which commodities we want exposure to, either maintaining what we already hold or adding something new.
On the geopolitical side, we look at regions we believe are better suited to our strategy, whether that’s exploration, development, or production. We assess questions like: Is there creeping resource nationalism? Are there emerging security issues?
Ultimately, a company will either build and produce the asset or be acquired — and reducing risk to make an asset easier to build or acquire is critical.
Some red flags are visible early and help us avoid problematic jurisdictions. Others come down to management capability, which is why we place such emphasis on thoroughly vetting management.
Looking at investment in the exploration space, what are the key drivers pushing investors into projects today?
Up to the end of May 2026, more money has been raised this year than last year, and most of that’s been in critical minerals and less so in gold, and if you look at the total number of transactions, they’ve actually gone down too.
So more money is going to fewer companies. That has a little to do with management, access to capital, and the people who are following particular investors and management teams. The ‘herd mentality’ tends to create a ripple effect, with some companies able to raise money while others still cannot, even in this environment.
I tend to look at management teams, but not just those with access to capital. I’m equally interested in how technically strong they are. Are they genuinely filtering assets well?
From there, I assess what I’m actually getting in terms of development potential. Is there a maiden resource or major technical report coming? Is the land package large enough to matter? Who might ultimately want to acquire it? Those are the questions that shape my view.
One shift in the market is that investors have traditionally focused almost entirely on scale. The problem with looking for something that a major mining company, such as Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) or BHP Group (ASX:BHP), may be interested in is that they tend to move slowly.
So more of the M&A action is actually happening in the intermediates, and they’re looking at smaller deals that are still material to them. Those types of assets are easier to assess because there are more of them, but I can still filter by permitting risk, technical risk, and other factors.
Larger projects have bigger footprints and pose their own risks, including tailings, power and water requirements. These projects take a long time to develop, whereas smaller projects tend to be developed more quickly.
There’s a lot of talk about looming supply gaps in critical minerals and the lack of financing to ensure exploration can proceed. Are you seeing any major financing gaps at the moment?
With the majors and even the intermediates, they’re doing less exploration. Relatively speaking, they’re making more money, and if you take the percentage of revenue and exploration, they’re spending about the same or less on a percentage basis. But on an absolute basis, they may be spending a bit more because they’re making so much more money than the juniors. But note, due to their internal protocols, majors tend to be less efficient at exploration than juniors.
Recently, I have noticed that several companies in my portfolio with access to capital and have good projects in good jurisdictions, who I thought were fully funded to reach their next technical report, have returned to the capital markets to raise another big quantum of capital. Not necessarily because they need it, but most juniors that are non-cash generating know that when the money’s there, they need to go for it.
These transactions take money out of the market, so other companies looking for $2–3 million aren’t getting it because those with access to capital are raising $50–100 million.
In terms of development, there are probably more funding gaps, but there are also fewer funding gaps if you’re linked to broader themes like generating a domestic supply of critical minerals in the US or Europe.
So, for some companies, the capital is not the issue. It’s the permitting or other regulatory issues.
Right now in the US, there’s less permitting risk federally than before. At the state level, if the state doesn’t want it, there’s still a problem. And that’s globally.
At the federal level, Argentina has improved, but the dynamics remain uneven. The strongest provinces have become even more attractive, while the weakest haven’t really moved at all — largely because, in Argentina, the provinces control the resources. What the federal government can do is make the national tax, royalty, and duty settings more competitive, which ultimately benefits projects in the provinces that are already positioned to advance.
So, access to capital depends on where you are in the world.
We’ve seen Canada, the US, and others talk about streamlining permitting to make things easier. Has this come to fruition?
Under the Trump administration, the US has definitely made inroads into taking the speculation about the process out, but not necessarily shrinking permitting.
The US administration introduced FAST‑41, and once a project is accepted onto the framework, a dedicated federal coordinator is assigned through the program’s portal. Their job is to oversee every agency involved and ensure timelines are met.
Under FAST‑41, the record of decision date becomes fixed, and once you have that certainty, it’s much easier to raise capital, and it’s much easier to get acquired, even without a permit. An acquirer can look at the schedule and say, “There’s no permitting risk here because the date is set.”
This is not the case everywhere in Canada. Ontario, Québec, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are relatively strong jurisdictions, but British Columbia has gone backward. British Columbia has always been problematic, but it has become more so with the incorporation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), without a full understanding of its operational impacts. It has made the system even more complex. Everyone is now paying the price, not only in exploration but also in development.
There are projects permitted in British Columbia, but few are new development projects.
Where do you see the most interesting opportunities or key trends for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027? What will be the main industry drivers and emerging opportunities?
With commodity prices rising or stabilising at elevated levels, companies are generating more revenue, and governments are taking note of how much more money they’re making.
As you look at geopolitics and where you want to invest, you will see some governments trying to take advantage of this through creeping nationalism, such as in West Africa. But they also have security issues, and so if you have a company in some of these regions, the ability to get taken out, like with an M&A, is harder.
Companies operating in these jurisdictions generate cash flow and pay strong dividends to attract investors, but what you see in South America, an area I’ve been focused on, is that governments swing from left to right quite frequently.
A few years ago, a rare earth project in southern Chile that was preparing to submit its permit application encountered an issue with a rare tree species. They started growing new trees and did a lot of additional work to satisfy the then-left-wing government. That administration is now gone, and suddenly the permits have been granted.
A similar shift is well underway in Argentina, with the right-leaning federal government improving the investment regime for junior companies seeking to develop projects. Previously, the repatriation of funds made it onerous for a company to obtain external financing; no one would lend to a non-cash-flowing junior company seeking to develop an asset in Argentina. As a result, most development was carried out by companies with existing cash, like major miners, Chinese state-owned enterprises, and others. Now, with the updated investment framework for projects over US$200 million ($291.2 million), that’s changing.
Overall, in my opinion, South America is starting to look more favourable from a permitting standpoint as several left-leaning governments have shifted or are shifting out of power.
Write to Amy Rotman at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au
