The Noosa Mining Investor Conference is witnessing its best year yet, with well over 1,000 registrations on the books and explorers starting to feel the ripples of investor optimism.
Equity Events Business Development Manager Amy Dickinson tells Mining.com.au on day one of the event that the Peppers Noosa Resort is “basically bursting at the seams”.
“It’s definitely helped the tourism of Noosa more broadly as well,” she says.
“We see a lot of the surrounding towns and resorts filling up. Hastings Street is bustling with people and it’s just been an amazing turnout.”
New companies on the agenda this year include Carnaby Resources (ASX:CNB), Minerals 260 (ASX:MI6), and Zeotech (ASX:ZEO).
Kincora Copper (ASX:KCC) CEO Sam Spring says attendees appear more upbeat than they have been previously.
“I’d say cautious optimism and a really good turnout.”
Kincora Copper recently attracted interest from prominent North American investors including Rick Rule and Jeff Phillips as key cornerstone investors taking part in a C$4 million ($4.5 million) private placement.
Rule, a 50-year veteran investor and speculator, focused on resources companies with a sub-US$1 billion ($1.5 billion) market capitalisation.
Lion Selection Group (ASX:LSX) Managing Director Hedley Widdup says the number of people in attendance at the Noosa Mining Conference is diagnostic of the interest in the resources sector right now.
“I can’t see it in share prices across the board at the moment but we can see it in some of the intensity of IPO data,” he tells Mining.com.au.
“There’s been a couple of very successful IPOs in terms of dollars raised and aftermarket performance in the last couple of weeks. So I think that just says there’s something going on at the moment more and more people are sitting up.”
Widdup has been tracking the performance of around 600 companies for the past few years and has noticed more recently that despite a high gold price environment, the producers that were favoured by investors previously have started to level out.
“Some of the IPOs have been gold focused, probably with most of the raisings that happened being somewhere between development and exploration, gold-focused,” Widdup notes.
“I think we’re starting to see curiosity spread from there though and what I have noticed in the last probably six weeks is that the gold producers have kind of levelled off in performance, despite a very robust gold price.
“They’re making heaps of money, they’re trading on a multiple of earnings. Gold companies are cheap but the gold names which have persevered and continued to perform while the producers leveled off have been the multi-million-ounce developer names.”
Widdup points to companies like Saturn Metals (ASX:STN), Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY), Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR) and Astral Resources (ASX:AAR).
Since the start of 2025 Saturn Metals’ share price has rallied over 107% to $0.44.
Antipa’s market value, meanwhile, spiked over 205% to hit a new 52-week high of $0.825 in June. While it has come back to $0.59, it is still more than double what it was at the start of the year.
Astral’s share price is nearly 35% higher since the start of the year at $0.175 and Brightstar marked a new 52-week high of $0.745 in May, which was a 42% jump from where it was trading at the start of 2025.
“They’ve kind of had this robustness, whether it is ticking up or really starting to run away,” Widdup says.
“I speculate, but perhaps that’s profits from trading in producers starting to make their way into the next subset.
“I suppose the question that investors are asking is how close are those companies to being able to take advantage of the gold price? Probably a long-term answer. So the next question is: which one of you is going to get taken over next?
“That is where speculation is growing as well, because if you have 2 million ounces of gold on the books, you’re probably a target.”
Mining.com.au is an official media partner of this year’s Noosa Mining Investor Conference.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au
