This junior gold and copper stock has re-rating written all over it

The potential for junior mining stocks to deliver exponential returns is well-founded, whether from new discoveries, mines reaching production, or market enthusiasm surrounding target commodities.

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That being said, every truth is conditional. As with any investment thesis, you’ll need to identify a handful of fundamentals that tilt the probabilities in your favour:

1. Commodities likely to benefit from rising long-term demand.
2. Mineral projects in mining-friendly jurisdictions on track to demonstrate their value over time through exploration, development and hopefully production milestones.
3. Leadership teams with the right capital allocation, negotiation and management skills to usher projects across the mining lifecycle, striking a strategic balance between growth and profitability.

Then, even if these elements converge within your chosen company, it will still have to traverse the multitude of obstacles, both micro and macroeconomic, that any mining venture may face as it steps into the unknowable future on the road to value creation, from the fickleness of short-term market sentiment, to weather-related development delays, to high demand at the assay lab pushing drilling results a week or two down the line.

This is why a diversified approach, spread across junior mining stocks with clear and credible growth plans, is the only way to prudently participate in the space, managing risk without closing the door to potentially transformational returns.

Introducing MinRex Resources

A junior miner squarely aligned with our aforementioned fundamentals is Perth-based MinRex Resources (ASX:MRR), market cap AU$38.56 million, a gold and copper explorer advancing a portfolio replete with untapped upside in Serbia and Australia, two of the world’s most mining-friendly jurisdictions, thanks to their combination of robust infrastructure, investment and geological endowment.

MinRex’s Serbian projects, acquired through a merger with Electrum Discovery in April, are strategically located in the Western Tethyan Belt, one of the world’s most prolific porphyry-epithermal belts. They include the high-grade Tlamino gold project, whose certified resources and established economics make it the main focus of an ongoing fully-funded 2026 drilling program, and the Timok East copper-gold project, which offers district-scale discovery potential across several prospective targets.

These projects are complemented by MinRex’s existing land holdings in Australia, including a core inferred gold resource at the Sofala project and a satellite pipeline of gold and base metal exploration assets in New South Wales’ prolific Lachlan Fold Belt, home to numerous major gold, copper and silver deposits, as well as major miners – among them Newmont, Evolution Mining, China Molybdenum, Alkane Resources and Silver Mines – granting MinRex blue-sky upside to harvest into shareholder value.

Let’s dig a little deeper into MinRex’s portfolio to properly lay out why ongoing exploration positions the company for a potentially significant re-rating over the next 12 months, highlighting its current stock price, range-bound between AU$0.01 and AU$0.02 since 2023, as a deep-value opportunity.

The Tlamino gold project

As gold holds strong above US$4,500 per ounce, having appreciated by 40 per cent year-over-year and by 143 per cent since 2021 thanks to a combination of high inflation and escalating geopolitical tension, MinRex’s more than 400-square-kilmetre Tlamino project presents itself as a robust asset for investors to capitalize on the precious metal’s moment in the spotlight, which could continue into 2030 and beyond, according to WisdomTree, a top asset manager, with the price per ounce feasibly surpassing the US$7,000 mark over the next few years.

From a bird’s eye view, Tlamino is surrounded by a handful of major gold and copper deposits, including:

• Zijin’s Bor Complex (10 million ounces (Moz) of gold, 6.4 million tons (Mt) of copper), Madjanpek deposit (9.6 Moz gold, 6 Mt copper) and Cukaru Peki deposit (11.3 Moz gold, 15.6 Mt copper), as well as DPM Metals’ Coka Rakita (1.4 Moz gold), all four in Serbia.
• Strickland’s Rogozna (8.6 Moz gold equivalent) in Kosovo.
• Dundee Precious Metals’ Chelopech (3 Moz gold) in Bulgaria.
• Genesis Resources’ Plavica (2.4 Moz gold) in North Macedonia.

When we zoom in a little closer, we see that the project backs up its strategic location with strong fundamentals, including:

• A high-grade, near-surface NI 43-101 inferred resource of 670,000 ounces of gold equivalent at 2.9 g/t gold (7.1 Mt at 2.5 g/t for 570,000 ounces of gold and 38 g/t for 8.8 Moz silver) valued at more than US$3 billion in the ground at the current spot price on ADVFN, or more than 75 times higher than MinRex’s current market capitalization.
• A 2021 preliminary economic assessment (PEA) detailing a post-tax net present value (NPV) of US$86 million, assuming US$1,500/oz gold and US$16.50/oz silver, with spot prices having tripled and almost quintupled, respectively, since initial publication.

These milestones, in turn, point to a substantial development runway MinRex is in the midst of exploring through an ongoing 7,000-m drilling program centred on Tlamino’s main Barje deposit, which features two gold and base metal outcroppings anchored by a hydrothermal breccia up to 20 m thick – yielding highlight intercepts of 30 m at 5.45 g/t gold from 74 m depth and 38.2 m at 3.98 g/t gold from 19.8 m depth – with leadership focused on expanding the resource and upgrading it from inferred to the indicated category. The program will be carried out in four phases:

• Phase 1 will involve ~3,200 m of infill drilling in pursuit of resource expansion and upgrading, plus ~1,000 m of step-out drilling at Barje East and West to test deposit extensions, with eyes on substantiating an updated resource estimate in 2026 to leverage higher gold and silver prices and better delineate Tlamino’s district-scale potential. Investors can expect initial infill drilling assays to hit the wire in Q3.
• Phase 2 will undertake another ~3,000 m of drilling focused on what leadership infers to be a large, zoned epithermal system between Barje and the Liska lead and zinc deposit 1.5 km to the south, with evidence for the presence of numerous Barje replicas, each with the potential to add 500,000 ounces of gold to the Tlamino resource.
• In phase 3, MinRex will evaluate how best to develop the project through processing flowsheet, throughput and pit optimisation studies, setting the stage for an updated PEA and initial steps towards a pre-feasibility study, including metallurgical test work to validate recovery rates and concentrate marketability.
• Phase 4 will be dedicated to drill testing for district-scale discoveries, homing in on numerous prospective regional targets, including Karamanica, a 3 km x 3 km gold, silver and copper soil anomaly that has yielded rock chip samples up to 11.1 g/t gold, 745 g/t silver and 5.74 per cent copper.

Enhanced by multiple monetisation pathways, including in-house development, joint venture development, or a strategic exit, MinRex is primed to scale Tlamino into the Tier-1 status shared by major neighbouring deposits, offering the market a progressively clearer picture of why the project’s overall value and correspondence to the gold price is far from fully priced into the company’s stock.

The Timok East project

Copper is one of the most important components across industry and technology, forming part of everything from electric wiring to circuit boards, to the pipes in your plumbing, to the batteries in your electric vehicle, boasting a US$350 billion market expected to cross the US$573 billion mark by 2035.

Despite the critical metal’s momentous decade ahead, the EU is suffering from a pronounced shortage due to lack of domestic production, mirroring a global shortfall expected to worsen through 2050, positioning MinRex to step up to the plate with a maiden exploration program at its Timok East project, whose district-scale, 300-square-kilometre land package along the eastern margin of the Timok Magmatic Complex is highly-prospective for porphyry-epithermal and skarn copper-gold style mineralisation.

The project, located only 5km east of Zijin’s Bor Complex, deserves high conviction to garner an increasing share in copper’s multi-billion-dollar market thanks to a robust set of geophysical and geochemical anomalies. These include:

• The Bambino Trend, a magnetic anomaly characterised by high-grade copper-in-soil and anomalous gold, copper and silver rock chips.
• The Limestone Contact, a 4-km magnetic target identified in a setting suggestive of skarn and carbonate-replacement-style mineralisation.
• The Western Mag, whose geological setting is analogous to major porphyry copper deposits within the Bor Trend, which also includes Zijin’s 1.9-Mt Veliki Krivelj copper mine located only 3 km to the east.

Looking across Timok East’s broader land package, MinRex leadership interprets the presence of a much larger hydrothermal system backed by deep penetrating geophysics, as well as previous drilling and trenching, within an underexplored belt adjacent to major copper-gold porphyry and high-sulfidation epithermal deposits, namely Madjanpek, Coka Rakita, Bor and Cukaru Peki.

Additionally, 3D resistivity inversion modelling of Timok East’s latest audio-magnetotellurics highlights two areas of high conductivity near the Western Mag with the potential to host intrusive units and mineralisation associated with the Timok Magmatic Complex.

According to MinRex’s May 2026 investor deck, the company intends to break ground at Timok East in Q3, assessing multiple avenues for exploration upside as Tlomino’s near-term development potential is brought further into the light.

The Sofala gold project

MinRex will end 2026 and spend the early part of 2027 evaluating numerous value-creation opportunities in and around its three project areas in the prolific Lachlan Fold Belt, which hosts several major gold, copper-gold and silver deposits in New South Wales, a top mining region recognized by the Fraser Institute in 2025.

First on MinRex’s list is its 350,000-ounce inferred gold resource at its Sofala project, where untested strike between the historic Sofala and Queenslander gold mines points towards clear expansion potential.

This core resource is complemented by a pipeline of gold and base metal exploration assets, highlighted by historical resources at the company’s Surface Hill (28,300 oz gold) and Spring Gully projects (323,900 oz gold), which benefit from low discovery costs thanks to expansive drilling and past production.

With several high-profile mining companies active on multi-million-ounce gold and silver deposits in the region, MinRex has a wealth of data on its side to close the gap between them and its prospective Australian portfolio.

A bespoke leadership team built to deliver on near-term growth plans

MinRex ties its value proposition together with a leadership team whose optimal mix of project management, geology, capital markets and legal experience, with concentrations in the Australian and Serbian natural resource markets, equips it well to align value creation with operational efficiency.

The company is captained by Chief Executive Officer, Max Piirto, who brings more than 17 years of international mining and engineering experience, including senior leadership roles overseeing project delivery, mining operations and industrial services for global engineering and construction firms.

MinRex will keep its eye on value-added developments thanks to Technical Director, Ian Shackleton, a mineral exploration and mining geologist whose expertise spans multiple commodities across the mining lifecycle, including gold, base metals, lithium, diamonds, manganese, mineral sands and iron ore.

The company will benefit from a leg up in Serbia thanks to Director, Dr Elena Clarici, co-founder of Electrum Discovery, whose more than a quarter-century in the mining industry includes senior management roles with junior explorers, mineral developers, as well as metals and mining financial institutions in London.

MinRex completes its executive team with Non-Executive Chair, Glenn Whiddon, and Non-Executive Director, James Pearse, whose extensive Australian capital markets and legal experience, respectively, grant the company a well-rounded depth that should make even the most meticulous investor sleep well at night.

MinRex Resources’ best is yet to come

While MinRex stock has held steady at under AU$0.02 for the past two years, firmly planting it within the micro-cap category, the company is in a strong position to outgrow it over the near-term, bolstering market sentiment propelled by a combination of hot commodities, proven jurisdictions and high-quality assets whose past exploration and strategic locations suggest that they’ve only begun to scale.

As drilling at Tlamino kicks into high gear and the company improves its understanding of Timok East’s mineralisation, look for initial assays in Q3 to put this growth into motion, beginning a continuous stream of likely positive news flow over the next year that makes MinRex’s high-conviction case for a long-term investment progressively more apparent.

It’s not often that a junior miner can draw such a clear path to improving portfolio value, touching on district-scale upside, as well as resource expansion, re-classification and development, meaning that readers are probably looking at a small window of opportunity before the broader market catches on to what it’s been missing.

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Disclaimer: This article is disseminated in partnership with MinRex Resources Ltd. It is intended to inform investors and should not be taken as a recommendation or financial advice.

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