Yet Another Value Podcast - Old West's Brian Laks dives into metals, mining, and uranium

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

In this episode of the Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker welcomes back Brian Laks of Old West Management for his third appearance on the show. Brian shares deep insights into uranium, copper, gold, and the broader metals market. They revisit Old West’s early uranium thesis and how it has evolved, assess copper’s growing strategic importance, and examine gold’s unique demand drivers. The conversation covers supply-demand imbalances, government involvement in critical minerals, tariffs, and how AI’s energy demands tie back to metals. Brian also explains how Old West balances long-term macro views with valuation discipline and opportunistic trading within metals and mining.______________________________________________________________________[00:00:00] Andrew introduces guest Brian Laks.[00:03:08] Uranium thesis from early investments.[00:05:38] Riding valuation cycles in uranium.[00:09:05] Spot vs. long-term uranium prices.[00:12:43] Sentiment extremes create buying opportunities.[00:17:16] Market still underestimating uranium demand.[00:21:24] Uranium vs. other metal exposures.[00:26:20] Copper becomes major portfolio focus.[00:27:27] Gold’s demand harder to forecast.[00:32:54] Why metals hitting all-time highs.[00:36:56] Copper’s strategic demand and supply gap.[00:42:30] Prices needed for copper expansion.[00:44:44] Tariffs’ effect on copper valuations.[00:48:27] Government support for critical minerals.[00:53:44] Old West’s broader investment outlook.Links:Yet Another Value Blog: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

You're about to listen to the yet another value podcast with your host, me, Andrew Walker. Today's podcast has Brian Lotz from Old West Management on. He is a repeat guest. He's been on, I think this is a third time. We haven't had him on in a while. He came on a few times in 2021. Brian, in specific, and Old West in general, have deep, deep knowledge of particularly the metals and mining sectors. He was very early on the big uranium call that a lot of people just smash out of the park over the past few years.

and he was one of the first people onto that. We dive deep into all things metal mining's exploring. We start with uranium, then we go to gold, then we go to copper. We touch on a bunch of other different metals. Hopefully you're really going to enjoy it. It's a little bit different, but, you know, if you're looking for macro views, commodity views, everything, I think this is the podcast for you. So we'll get to that in one second, but first, a word from our sponsor.

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how their valuation compared to peers. So I could see, hey, was this a one-off? Or are they consistently talking about it in a way I think it's interesting. Anyway, I think it's completely changed the game for screening and for generating new ideas. If you're looking to up your screening game, you should check out portrait analytics at portraitanalytics.com. I'll include a link in the show notes. All right. Hello. Welcome to yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. With me today, I'm happy to have on. Brian, I think it's the second time, but it might be the third time from Old West. Brian, Lex. Brian, how's it going? Going well. It's good to see you again. I'm super excited for this. I've been meaning to do a

podcast on this sector for a while. Before we get into it, just quick disclaimer, remind everyone nothing on this podcast investing advice. You can see a full disclaimer at the end of the episode. Brian, Old West, look, I've read the letters. I've followed you guys for a while. You guys were what, like four years before everyone on the uranium trade. You guys specialize in all these stuff. I'd love to just walk through, I've got lots of questions on specific meddles and metals and outlooks and all that. I'd love to just walk through those. But why don't I start here in just high level?

Why don't you tell me where your and Old West kind of head is at on the metals and mining sector in the world in general these days? Sure, yeah. Again, thanks for having me. Yeah, I think the first time we talked was maybe four years ago was on uranium. And if you remember at the time, and it was kind of right in the middle of it, I guess it was late 2021. There was a flurry of activity.

You were starting to see the stocks really start to react. But you're right. I mean, we were certainly early to that one. I mean, when we were, you know, building positions in 2017, 2018, 2019, it was kind of a ghost town. There was, you know, not a lot of people involved. I mean, there were a few specialist funds, you know, a couple maniacs on Twitter. But aside from that, it was really just a combination of apathy and disgust, I guess you'd say. There's always maniacs on Twitter.

That's one thing my work is on me. But, yeah, I remember, like, when we were prepping to the pod, I saw y'all's articles of write-ups from around 2018. I was like, this is really early on the thesis. So please continue. Yeah, well, you know, I think some people say early is wrong. But I guess in that case, it wasn't. I mean, as long as you believe you're eventually going to hit your target,

you know, you don't want to wait forever, too. There's an opportunity cost. But we had a view that, I mean, it was a few years away. I think what we, what surprised us was, you know, we built the positions in the late teams. And then 2020, 2021, you really saw them start to play out in a big way. I mean, so much so. In fact, I think late 21, we started dialing them back because we, you know, we were always really grounded in valuation.

And I think what you saw there was, you know, as the uranium price went from 20 to 50 that year or even higher, a lot of these stocks started pricing in 80 or 90 or 100. And so, you know, we said, hey, this is great. We expected to be here for several years. But if the market wants to pay us in a much shorter time frame, we're happy to take it. And so we dialed back a lot of the, you know, I guess you call them lower quality positions, really focused around more of a selective basket, which we continue to hold to this day. In fact, you know, just earlier this year, we actually saw the flip side. We saw sentiment get so bad that, you know, even though the fundamentals were strong and, you know,

a lot of these projects are several years closer to development. We actually started dialing the uranium weights back up. Perfect. That's perfect. So, look, I guess we can just start there. The thing I know you guys most for is uranium. You know, as we're talking, look, you guys smashed out of the park and I was just kind of looking at the uranium chart. And I remember you were telling me, I think when we were talking in 2021,

uranium was in the 30s, I want to say. Yeah, I could be something. It's funny because I specifically remember the day we talked because I think the spot price had a huge jump that day or within a few days of when we were talking. And so it was kind of playing out as, you know, right at that moment. And, you know, really over the following few months, I mean, it got to the point where, you know, some companies were doubling and tripling in a matter of weeks. And so, you know, we're here for the value. I think one of the criticisms we might have of ourselves is that we don't stay at the party the full time where, you know, a lot of times you underwrite these things based on.

valuation, but, you know, there's times where you get to a full valuation, or at least under a conservative framework, and then the market might have its own idea, and you get all these retail traders or froth, and you get these, this huge multiple expansion that happens, and that can be a big part of the overall return, or at least from, you know, from trough to peak. And so I think, you know, we've tried to balance that out with maintaining a little bit of exposure, even when we think something's fully valued, because there is always that extra bit you know, if you think something's worth 30, 20 or 30 times earnings, and it goes to 100 times earnings, I mean, that's a, you know, three to five X on top of what you've already

underwritten and it can make a spectacular return look even better. The problem is, is it's hard to justify holding it for that extra bit when you're really just counting on, you know, investor psychology sentiment for the extra little bit of juice in the orange there. It's really hard because for every story where you buy a socket 20 and you sell it at 40 and then it rips to 80, 120, 160 in your face, right? There's a story of you buy the stock of 20. It goes to 40, and I'm just using 40 saying that was your fair value.

And then it goes to 45 and you're like, I think this is going to squeeze. And then it comes back to 40 or even worse. They report disastrous numbers and it goes back to 20 and you say, oh, I had a fair value of 40. I held it. And then they reported this terrible quarter. Everything's gone wrong and my fair value's lower. And now it's kind of back to where I round tripped it.

You know, so it's always tough because I don't think people think about the, I don't know if people think about the counterfactual of you held for that mania and everything went wrong, you know, a cycle turned in metals of mining or something. But neither here nor there. Go ahead. We've had a few of those where, you know, like end phase, we were buying it at a dollar. And I mean, it ended up going to 300. But how do you justify that last, you know, when it gets to 20 or 50, you're like,

wow, this has been, you know, one of the best investments of my career. And yet, hey, the valuation's a little stretched. They're continuing to execute. do we want to hold it? You know, and so you're kind of scaling out of this thing. And then, yeah, I mean, that's another, whatever it is, right? Two, three, five X on top of that. So it's difficult.

I don't know. That's a great problem to have if people are criticizing you for, hey, it should have been 100x and you only made 20. I feel like that problem all day. There's some bigger problems in the universe. Well, let's start here. As we're talking again, when we talked in 2021, actually, I think Spot might have been in the 20s and then kind of jump to 30 the day.

We're talking, as you said, right now, spots in 70s. And if I remember correctly, a big piece of the thesis was, hey, the global supply demand curve, the global supply curve, like, it kind of supplies out into 60s to 70s. So I'd love to just talk, you know, as we talk today with the spot in 70s, it's much different than 30. Obviously, the world has evolved a lot since then. What is your outlook for uranium, how are you guys thinking about that these days? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few pieces of that question.

One is, you know, you have to, you have to separate. what spot price is doing, which has its own mechanics versus the long-term price, which is around 80 today, which is where contracts get signed. And then, you know, they don't get signed at a fixed price. They'll get kind of a blend of fixed in market with ceilings and floors. And so there's a lot that kind of goes into that. I think what you've seen in the last five years is a lot of inflation on, you know, the KAPX side, potential OPEC side, where, you know, we used to think 2017, 2018, hey, if you get from 20 to 50 on the uranium price, that's great. And a lot of these things look good in that environment. I think the last few years, you've seen that sort of break-even price

creep up, 60-70. Maybe it's even higher now. You know, you see some of these producers that are turning back on just, you know, still struggling to make decent money even at today's price. And so look, I think all things equal, we would expect the uranium price to probably continue higher. I think you look back at the past peak was maybe 130. That's not out of the question, just given the environment we're in today, especially all this ground swell of support for nuclear power now, you know, whether it's with just reactor life extensions, new builds, the whole SMR thing with these small modular reactors. I mean, look, uranium's a great way to generate electricity. I mean, that was the core of the thesis, you know, almost a decade ago. That's still true today,

especially now with all these additional demands for electricity, I mean, especially for AI, the data centers. That's really what kind of gave it that sense. second leg after, you know, the initial 2021 peak, a lot of these stocks retrenched pretty dramatically, you know, 50% over the next year or so. And then it really took until early 2024 where they exceeded their old highs. And it took uranium spot price getting above $100 to really, you know, reignite enthusiasm in the sector. You know, and then it pulled back and a lot of that hot money went away. And that's, you know, kind of what I alluded to earlier is earlier this year, you know, spot dropped from 100 to 60 over that 12 month period. And sentiment was

washed out. A lot of people said, this is horrible. Why would I ever want to participate here? And that's exactly what we look for, these extremes and sentiment, because that'll let us know, you know, look, we have the fundamental knowledge of what these things should be worth, what our normalized price range environment is. And then nothing moves in a straight line. So it'll overshoot in one direction. It'll overshoot in the other direction. And we can take this core position and either augment it or shrink it and, you know, kind of zigging when the market is zagging. I think that's how we've been able to really do the best, you know, with the whole opportunity set because, yeah, we had a lot of uranium in 2019, 20 when these things were trading

at 10 cents on the dollar. But yeah, you're right. It's a different mindset buying Cameco at 70 than is buying it at seven, right? And so you have to really think about, hey, what is the outlook from today? And then how does that compare with all the other opportunities I have in my, in my opportunity set, my watch list, whatever it is? And that's why we said, well, hey, this might be a good time, you know, going back a few years, a lot of the things where the rising tide lifted all the boats, well, maybe some of the leakier boats, we can kind of trade out for some of the things that was on our watch list. And then, you know, the really solid ones will continue to hold it. And sure enough, I mean, I think Camaco is a great example of one that, you know, when a lot of

the companies were selling off kind of in, you know, 2022 time frame into 2023, that one just kept chugging along. And so, you know, I think it really does highlight that when valuations change, you have to be a little bit more selective. And, you know, we've talked about this a lot in our letters and the interviews we've done. Two quick questions. Number one, so let's go back to spot price. And I do want to drill down on something you said, but let's just go back to spot price for a quick. Spots at 70 and long-term contracts in 80, it's probably right around what the like marginal producer is producing uranium at right now.

Am I thinking about that correctly? Yeah, well, I mean, look, it's going to vary project to project. But I think at this price, especially a lot of the high quality stuff, should be getting the green light. Now it's just a matter of how long does it take, right? You got to have your permits. You've got to construct the stuff. And so that was always our view was price alone is not enough. I mean, that's the signal that this thing has to happen.

But now it just starts the clock. Then there's some of the marginal guys that, you know, yeah, maybe they can squeak it out here. But, you know, that's – and there are people that participate in the sector just looking for that really – you know, the high torque stuff, high cost. Yeah. It's going to be the ones that fly the most. You know, like I said, I think the last time we talked was we would never, you know, have estimated or predicted ahead of time which specific name would do the best because

there's a path dependency there. And, you know, how does it, you know, is it spot price moving it? Is it a steep route? Is it an easy gradual move? And so that's why we built this basket. Because if you remember at the time, I mean, what a different environment. There was one uranium ETF and they puked all their stocks at the bottom in 2018 because they were all a liquid microcaps and they changed the, I mean, it was a total bottom signal. Now you've got, you know, half a dozen of these things.

Everybody's, you know, loves uranium. It's just night and day, the environment that we're in. And so, you know, kind of a rambling way to say, yeah, today the price is good for a lot of those high quality projects and we think they'll get moved forward. But I don't think, I mean, the bigger issue is, are they enough? Because, you know, is this gap of unfulfilled utility requirements? Can that be supplied with some of these projects, especially as you get out into the 2030s? I don't think so. I think you'll see continued higher prices.

And so really it's, you know, what is your time frame for saying, should this thing go higher, how high should it go? You know, we're always trying to look kind of one to three years out because I think that's long enough where you can find situations. where there is a big difference in price and value, but also not so long that you're kind of waiting and your investors like, hey, are you right? I mean, there's this tradeoff of we want to, you know, we want to find this big upside potential, but we don't want to have to wait forever for it because, one, we might be wrong. And two, there's a big opportunity

cost of things playing out in the meantime. So we've kind of, you know, found that little sweet spot where, you know, we can build positions in an area, you know, a few years later it starts to work. In that intervening time period, we're looking at some of these other things that have a, you know, and you kind of stack a few of these things. So there's always something in your portfolio working, you know, even though they're all on this kind of rolling one to three year horizon. So, yeah, I don't know. Can uranium go to 200 or 500? Maybe. I mean, especially if there's this lag between when the price signal gets there and what the supply response is. And we've always liked mining in general because that supply response does have a big lag. It's not easy to flip a switch,

and say, oh, let's say uranium went to $150 tomorrow, okay, you know, you can't speed up the construction of a mine and maybe you can fast track a permit, but there's still this this real time lag. And I think that's how you get this scarcity pricing that occurs in a lot of commodities where, you know, once the price starts to move, it's probably too late to start making those decisions. And that's why even, you know, you go back a few years, 2022, 2023, when commodities were all washed out, that was our, the content.

thing we would say to our investors was, look, the longer the prices stay down here because of some cyclical demand concerns, the less likely it is that these investments that have a long leap time are going to be made, which makes the eventual problem that much worse, because eventually the cyclical demand returns, but the supply problems are structural because they take a lot longer to change. And so that's how you get these big price movements. We're not in it for a spike. I mean, I think that's great if it happens. But really, we're just trying to think, hey, what should the marginal price be? Who makes money there? Who doesn't? If it goes above that because of all these different factors, hey, that's great. That's a

bonus. But again, it goes back to what we're talking about earlier, which is how do you stay long enough at the party when things start getting really volatile? I want to ask you about a few points you hit there in one second, but I just want to ask one more thing on your name. I guess the point I was trying to drive it was when we talked three years, or not drive it, but I was trying to build to was when we talked three or four years ago, it was, hey, this is below the cost of supply, right? Today, like, it's gotten pretty normalized. But when I look at the market, I look at everything that everyone on this podcast

listens to or the stuff you alluded to earlier, you know, just like Constellation restarting three mile, I'm like the huge rush for nuclear demand, all the Tallinn just supplying all of their nuclear demand to Amazon, governments around the world seeming to reverse course and like try outside of Germany, trying to keep their nukes open and everything, right? When I look at that, I say, okay, cool. The uranium thesis, it's kind of on track with what Brian laid out four years ago and what some other people laid out four years ago. But actually, it seems to be on a much more bullish track, right?

You mentioned SMRs, all this. It seems much more bullish. And yes, the prices work. But are we in a scenario where the market hasn't kind of caught up to, oh, my gosh, three years from now, the demand is so much higher than we were thinking, you know, than we were thinking three years ago, the demand's going to be so much higher where prices are just going to continue to spike. you've kind of got shortages. You need a much bigger price signal to sell people, hey, forget the best

projects. We need to bring on even more marginal products to meet this continued demand. We're putting a nuke on the freaking moon, apparently. So, you know, we got to send uranium up to I don't think there's uranium on the moon. We've got to send uranium up to the outer space. Just want to ask that question. No, I think you're exactly right. And that's why I say, if you, you know, if we had it to choose, yeah, the uranium price is going to go higher over time. You know, I think where, but you nailed it. Where we are today, some of the high quality projects can be made. Now it's just a matter of timing, right?

And, you know, I just, you look at some of these things. I mean, they're still waiting on permits. And then there's a multi-year construction timeline. And so, you know, I think those will certainly go ahead. But you're right. Will it be enough? Probably not. I mean, especially given this new renewed interest in nuclear power and all the demand that comes from that.

And so we probably will need a lot of marginal projects. But you've kind of seen that, right? I mean, five, ten years ago, there was a dozen companies, two dozen companies in the space. And now, I mean, I don't even recognize somebody. I mean, it's like, you know, everyone's changing their name to uranium. I mean, it's really kind of a classic cyclical mentality. I mean, remember in the last peak, there were hundreds of companies, you know, everybody and their brother was, you know, put uranium and going to strike it rich.

So, you know, there's two ways to read that. One, you're right. We're going to need a lot of these projects. I mean, but then there'll be a limiting factor, right? Because if you think that all of a sudden uranium prices spike, well, then people might take a step back and be like, well, wait a minute, should we be burning more natural gas? Should we be burning more coal? I mean, there's a balance in all this stuff. But I think on aggregate, yes, nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity given all these, you know, different criteria that people have. You know, cleanliness, scott scale, 24-7 reliability. I mean, that was the reason that we got interested in this, you know, seven, eight years ago. So that's still true today.

And in fact, to your point, it's probably even more bullish, just given all the news. And I think really with the tech, the big tech companies and the whole AI data center thing has just really shine the spotlight on what we've been talking about the whole time. This is a great way to generate a lot of electricity in a very small footprint. And the tech companies realize it. And so they're going to throw a bunch of money at it. It's great. I think it's great for the world.

We're going to need a lot more electricity for a lot of things. it's probably not going to be one or the other. I think you're going to have the whole portfolio approach. You're going to need more gas. You'll probably still be burning coal, maybe put some carbon capture on it. But we're going to need a lot of electricity. I think uranium is going to be a big part of that.

We're going to need all we can get. You know, I think a couple hundred dollars a pound, you can start doing some of the funky, you know, sea water stuff and all, you know, what the bears used to talk about. Great, we'll need that too, right? I think that's really going to be, you know, the next five, ten years is, hey, how do we generate as much electricity as possible? We're going to need to throw everything we can at it.

I look forward to that day. Okay, so maybe a nice way to transition from uranium to mining. You mentioned, hey, when you were talking about how you build these, but you do uranium and then you have to wait against every other opportunity out there. So I just want to ask, like, there are lots of metals, lots of other things out there. There are lots of things that aren't metals. Where is uranium just in general uranium stocks, whatever? Where are they kind of grading out on your just overall landscape versus gold?

miners versus silver miners versus directs? Where are they kind of grading out? Yeah, I mean, if you talked to us five years ago, it was by far our biggest metals and mining exposure, just because it was so asymmetric. I mean, a lot of these things, even if you ran $50 a pound, they were trading a 10 or 20 cents on the dollar. And so we didn't even need 70, 80 higher to really justify a very good multi-year return. and sure enough, it played out like that.

I think now if you look at our portfolio, it's a lot more balanced. We still have uranium in there. I mean, you know, the joke we used to make was if you own one uranium stock, you're overweight because I don't think it's in any index. I don't know, maybe Camaco or something now. But, you know, we still have a pretty substantial part of the portfolio in uranium, but it's definitely broadened down. And I think that's been the real big shift that we've made, you know,

over the last few years. I mean, especially in 2022, when you had all these commodities get washed out because of, you know, China demand concerns and the whole COVID-Zero thing they did. And then the Fed was raising interest rates. And you just saw a lot of these things just get puked. I mean, especially right after early 22 when, you know, the whole Russia-Ukraine thing happened and commodity prices were hitting multi-year highs and then just a complete 180, you know, all that got washed away. But for us, you know, with this kind of, you know, multi-year time horizon, we're like, well, now, wait a minute. the same fundamental setup that occurred in uranium, we see it in other places, whether it's copper. We talked about tin a couple years ago, a whole variety of metals.

I think it's really kind of a bigger picture of, you know, we've let China dominate the periodic table for the last 30, 40 years. We've been happy to outsource to get the lower labor, let them deal with the environmental concerns, and we just import it all back in. I think now you're starting to see that some problems arise with that where, hey, if we're going to have these trade barriers, protectionism, tariffs, all this stuff, we're going to have export bans. We don't want them to have, you know, AI chips. Well, they can retaliate just as well with some of these metals that we're totally relying on. There's been efforts the last four or five years to try and rebuild these supply chains in the West. But again, it's slow. And do we even have, do we even have the materials to do that? I don't know. I mean, go case by case. But

you know, I think one of the big areas that we've really focused on after uranium, you know, aside from 10, which is kind of niche. And we can talk about that, obviously, because that's what we talked about last time. But copper is probably the biggest area that we're in. Can I pause you? Can I put, so copper is your biggest, is kind of the biggest focus right now? You know, I'd have to, I'd have to double check it. I'm, I'd probably, that's probably an accurate statement. Just, there's a lot of, it's a lot easier to invest in copper. There's a lot more options. is some of these niche metal, you know, 10, you've got like two producers you can buy. You know, some of these more, these smaller metals, you know, maybe there's one or two and, you know, they got hair on them.

And so I think copper is probably the one where we said, look, this is a very similar setup. Demand is growing from all these, you know, new technologies that are being rolled out. Supply is challenged across the board. You know, they're not making new discoveries. Existing mines are depleting. Costs are rising. I mean, it's kind of a laundry list, perfect storm of support. supply challenges, right when demand is growing. Now, look, the bears, you know, last few years

have said, well, the traditional uses of copper still dominate, you know, construction, that kind of thing. In China, you got to watch their property market. But, you know, over time, you'll see these new uses grow in importance. And I think, you know, yeah, if the market is giving us the opportunity when everyone's concerned about China demand to build some long-term positions in high-quality copper producers and developers, we'll take it. That's a lot. great because, you know, that that's exactly what I was talking about earlier is finding this long-term view that's positive and being able to build positions when the short-term sentiment is negative or you got some temporary headwinds. Yeah, maybe the next three to six months

are bad, but let's look at the next three to six years. That sort of framework has let us identify some of these things very similar to uranium. I mean, at the heart, these are very simple investment thesis. It's just a supply demand mismatch, whether it's today or forecasted, you know, a couple years out. And the supply is not that easily fixed. And so, yeah, you can have a scenario where demand is temporarily depressed for cyclical reasons, but that's a great time to buy into a longer-term bull thesis. I want to come back to copper in a second, but if I just zoomed out high level at metals, right, I read your Q2 letter or if I just flipped through them, gold approaching, gold all-time highs, silver, all-time highs, copper, not all-time high,

but not brushing too far from the kind of 2021 highs of most other metals, I would say, brushing up against all-time highs. And I just honestly, when I look and I see every metal across the board, you know, gold bug's dream coming true. I think gold has now outperformed the S&B 500 over the past 20 years or something. When I look and see metals across the board hitting highs, I guess I would have two questions for someone more knowledgeable to me. A, why? And B, why is this a good time to invest? Because, you know, I would kind of, the contrary me would kind of say, oh, 2015 when gold was not all-time lows, because you'd have to probably go back to when Jesus was alive or something's at the all-time lows. But, you know, gold is

just no one likes it, completely low, brushing up against $1,000. No one cares. Why is now the time to invest in all these? So I threw two thoughts at you. I'd love to get turned out. I see where you're going with that. And look, gold, let's use gold as an example, because that's a great one. Because we've owned gold in our portfolios, I mean, since I joined the firm almost 10 years ago, that's really been kind of the cornerstone of our commodity exposure. And it's served as, you know, there's a lot of reasons to like gold. It's kind of a hedge in the portfolio. My problem with gold has always been, it's hard to, it's hard to predict the demand

because a lot of the demand is subjective. It's what are central banks doing? Are they selling? a lot of investor psychology involved, you know, unlike some of these other metals that are consumed, gold gets, you know, Doug, that's the joke, right? It gets moved from one hole and they put into a vault, it's into another hole, and then someone watches it. Yeah, you can kind of make an estimate on what it should be worth. I think with a lot of the other commodities that are consumed, you can do that sort of marginal cost analysis and say, here's the level

of supply we need, you know, look at the cost curve, who's, who can, who can produce up to that level. What should the price be? That's a pretty simple analysis. With gold, what should the price be? You know, you see some of these really, oh, well, you compare it to the money supply or you use like the gold silver ratio and it's 10,000. It's not gold, but my current favorite one is the argument for Bitcoin where it's like, hey, Bitcoin's got a market cap of $2 trillion. Gold has a market cap of $20 trillion. Like, why shouldn't Bitcoin's market cap be gold's market cap? And I love it because it's very similar to how you price gold, right? It's It's very vibes based on the man's base.

And when somebody says, I'm like, it really makes me think every time. Sorry to interrupt, but it's my favorite facing. That's great because that's really the thing we grapple with with gold is, okay, if someone says, where do you think the price should go, my natural response will probably higher, but I don't know how, do I, how much faith do I want to put in some of these, you know, wonky relationships, formulas and try and estimate, oh, should it be 5,000, 10,000, 20,000? I don't know. So we've owned it in the past.

And one of the challenges with the gold, it's actually been one of our best performers this year. I mean, it was a standout performer in Q1. The strength has continued the last quarter and now into this quarter. But that's the real challenge is it's hard to predict a price. And so really, you kind of look at it the other way. Okay, here's the price level. Who's making good money at this?

And how are they valued compared to that? Because remember, for the longest time, the gold miners underperform the gold price because their costs were rising. They couldn't keep up production. And so they weren't capturing that rise in the gold price. And there was a lot of frustration among the gold bugs, especially the ones that played it through the miners of like, why aren't we making money here, even though the price is going up. Hey, the last 12 months or so, maybe longer, the gold price has gone up so fast. It's like they haven't, you know, even the guys that couldn't keep their cost under control are still making money because, you know, their costs aren't even going up

that fast. But, you know, we've actually, we've owned it for so long. And like you said, in 2015, 2016, you couldn't give this stuff away, right? No one cared. No one wanted to hear it. But again, that's an interesting time if you have a bullish view long term. Because it's, yeah, if there's a more subjective valuation framework, well, then you think, okay, on the margin, do I think governments are going to print more money or less money, right? Do I think, you know, the money supply is going to go up? What, what is actually driving the, the price of this thing, is it uncertainty? I mean, this year, it's been great, right? A lot of political uncertainty, the whole tariff thing, people looking for a safe haven, that should get

bid there. And especially now with the price level where it's at, a lot of these companies are making pretty good money. They look good just from, you know, strip out the business. They're making great margins and free cash flow. And a lot of the things that people look for just in any investment, let alone a mining company. But to be fair, I mean, we've dialed back some of our gold exposure on this enthusiasm. And I don't know, maybe it's still a big part of our portfolio. But, yeah, I guess that's one of the problems with being contrarian is when people start to like the stuff that you're in, you get a little bit worried.

Like, oh, my gosh, you know, everybody's talking about gold. You got, you know, the uncle calling you, the grandma, hey, should I be buying some gold coins? I mean, you know, there's a bit of a contrarian signal there. I think gold still has a long way to go. And we still want a lot of it. But again, because of all those. issues, there's other things that we like where, hey, we can actually justify a price target

for these types of things based on how much is consumed, how much can be produced, what the projects look like, what the cost curve looks like, and get a lot more confidence than just being like, hey, you know, gold should be going up because the world's in chaos. That was gold, but just if I even stepped away from gold, which I agree with you, different than the other metals, you know, silver, all-time high, as like copper, copper touching pretty high. I think platinum was hitting all-time highs. You've just got a lot of metals hitting all-time highs. So we've talked about the investing right there. I just want to, why? Because if you told me it was 2012 and, you know, inflation's 10%, and these things already

know, it would make sense. But it's 2025. And inflation isn't zero, but it's not, it's really not 10% anymore. And all, like, across the board you're seeing all of them. So just like kind of what's driving that across the board? I mean, I think it's a combination of things. I think, one, people are realizing that, look, the focus has been on technology for so long, you know, 10 years. That's what's been driving the market. That's what gets all the attention. You turn on CNBC. It's, you know, Nvidia, Apple, all that stuff, data centers. And so the demand is certainly a big part of that. People realizing that the raw materials that need to feed into that, and there is this, in this, you know, market increase in demand. Two, you have the supply problems.

it's getting more expensive to produce these things. Costs are going up. Grades are going down. There's not as many discoveries. And the people that do produce it, all of a sudden, there's friction in the supply chains because of protectionist trade barriers. And so there is some real reasons why the metal prices are increasing. But to your question about, hey, all these things at all time highs,

is it a good time to buy or it's not? I think you really have to go case by case, metal by metal, because each of them have their own unique supply demand. characteristics. And you can make an argument that, hey, some of them are at all-time highs because of a price squeeze or temporary factors. You know, some of these niche metals, maybe they had export bans out of China and have, you know, gone up five or 10x. That's different than something that's like, hey, demand is through the roof and continuing to grow. And there is real no supply constraints, just the normal mining environment, but we're not producing enough. And that's why you're seeing

these price signals, just because something is at an all-time high doesn't mean it can't go higher. And that's why I think it's, it's not enough to just look at the overall environment and say, hey, metals are finally working. It's time to, you know, move somewhere else. It's, okay, well, how much should they work, right? How high should they go? And I don't think you can make a blanket statement about all of them. I think that's why we take this approach. And, you know, the people that we work with, they like that we're not just a basket of every metal, right? I mean, you can go buy that easily, but you're going to get the good with the bad, you know, or you get some commodity guy manager who's, hey, I own commodities, rain or shine, I don't care what they look like.

I mean, we're here today because that's where we see value. Five years from now, if that changes, we're not going to continue to be here. We always tell people, look, the best thing that could happen is five years from now, we own none of this stuff because that means we did extremely well. And there's other things that have a better go forward risk return. And so, you know, I can't speak to the whole environment. Hey, it's nice to finally see some of this stuff working because go back a few years, right? No one wanted any of this stuff, right?

And so we've been telling the same story. We've been owning the same stuff. All that's changed is the environment. And it's as we viewed, you know, the market kind of came to us. We had this view that a lot of these technologies were going to drive, increase demand for these metals. Supply was going to be challenged. It was a slow motion train wreck.

You needed higher prices because we look at all the projects that are out there that can fill these supply gaps. They need higher prices. And so here it is. It's happening now. And then you ask yourself, okay well the price like the uranium thing okay the price is adjusted is it enough how much now can be built what's the timeline for those things to get built uh do we still have views that there's

going to be you know higher prices needed all those questions get asked i think you have to go metal by metal to say hey do i think that this is a great place to be and then again we're not playing the metal prices themselves we're looking at the equities of the producers and so it's it's not enough to say, hey, I think the price of commodity X is going higher. It's what does the producer or project developer, what are they baking into their valuation and how does that compare? Because there are times where you might say, hey, I think the uranium price is going higher and other commodities going higher, but I think the company's already priced that

in. And so I'm actually rather on something else. That's the decision that we came to in 2021, you know, and I think now we're at a place with a lot of these different metals where we think, hey, even though the price is on up a lot. Copper is a great one. We still think you're probably going to need higher prices over the next few years, especially as, you know, all the supply just gets gobbled up by these new demand centers. I'm glad you mentioned copper. So I'd love to just talk about what's kind of your outlook for copper. You know, I think demand, you look at it, there's, well, I don't

want to take the guests down away from them. So I'd love to just talk about what are you seeing on the copper demand side and what are you seen on the copper supply side? And then I saw your letter. So maybe we can talk about one or the two of the copper plays. in there. Yeah. So, I mean, copper is really one where, you know, I guess for a lot of generalists looking at the space, or advisor, we work with a lot of advisors now. Gold is typically the first kind of come on. Gold or maybe oil, right, is the first thing they get involved with. They say, okay, I can understand it, what it's used for. It's a big market. Copper is usually kind of the second one that gets the interest because it's big. There's liquid instruments. You know,

you go buy free court or something. There's ETFs. People follow the price. I think now people realizing the importance of it because of electricity. I mean, it is the arteries of electricity around the world. And so people realizing, especially with all this news about data centers and EVs and renewable energies, I mean, there's a lot of discussion about how are we going to generate and transmit enough electricity to satisfy the world. And it's not going to be easy. Well, let me just get this plug right here. And so, you know, our view has always been, well, you're going to need more copper.

Okay, what are the projects that are out there that are going to be able to supply that? And, you know, a lot of them need higher prices. We've done really well owning some of these companies that either have very high-grade deposits, you know, low-cost producers. It's kind of a combination of all that. I think that's really, and that's kind of across the board for all these commodities. not just copper. We're always looking for these situations where a certain metal is going to be in high demand, the supply is unable to catch up, who's got the big source of it?

Who's got the low cost? Because if you're, yeah, I guess some people can say, I'm going to, I want to play these real high costs, you know, torque plays. And then when the price squeezes, I want to make a ton of money, but I might go bankrupt. We're just looking at it from a holistic perspective and saying, we need a lot of copper. Who's going to be the one to supply that? Who's got the projects, the current production? And so, you know, I mean, that's really the way we look at it.

It's not a, it's not like rocket science or anything. I mean, it's a simple supply demand mismatch. And copper is an easy one for people to get their head around because they can understand that, hey, we need more electricity. We need to generate it. We need to move it. We need to use it. Copper's involved in all of that.

And so, you know, it's easy to understand. And at the same time, you look at just the trends from demand, the trends on the supply side. It really is this widening deficit that's approaching. So, you know, it's not that hard for us to get our head around. I mean, I think when we talk to the different investors that we interact with, they understand it. And so, you know, we're always kind of going one step beyond, hey, here's the reason why we're here.

And then it's, okay, what is the best way to express this view that we have? Because, you know, it all ties back to valuation. We have this view that in, you know, a few years from now, play out all these technologies, all this demand, we're going to need a high price to incentivize new mines, new supply. Who's going to be the one that benefits the most from that? And it's not always just the low-cost supply because the valuation really comes into effect there. And so, you know, I mean, yeah, talking about some of the different areas we're playing it,

we really like what the Lundine Group is doing in South America. And so it's been a big part of our portfolio ever since, you know, Philo had their big discovery several years ago. it got acquired, you know, and so that whole complex, because, you know, as we've talked about in a lot of our letters, it's not enough to have just a good asset. I think the mining industry is littered with charlatan, snake oil salesmen, you know, all these guys have got a pile of moose pasture and they're trying to raise some money. I think if you can combine a great asset with a management team that has a track record of success, that's a pretty good formula, especially if that if they have

access to their own capital or a good network of investors because that's really kind of the difficult thing about the junior mining sector or companies that are developing projects is access to capital. Who has it? How dilutive do they have to be raising this money? If you have people that can write a check to fund a whole thing or they have great partners or you know, you don't have to do these really draconian terms to attract money, you're going to be, you know, well above the rest of your peer set there who's, you know, doing these really dilutive financing, offering warrants, all this sort of stuff. And so, you know, I think copper is one where it's easy to get your head around. It's a similar story to uranium in that or any of these things

where it's just a supply demand mismatch. Look at where supply is going the next few years. Look at where demand is going. There's a problem. We need more. And you look at the projects that can fill that gap. Most of them need higher prices or a long time to build. And so, So, you know, I think there's, there's not much more to it than that. What, what price? I mean, you said most of the projects need higher prices, the man, all this or stuff. What prices would you say, as you and I are talking, copper is $10,000? I guess it's a ton.

I don't know what this Bloomberg copper metric is, but what, what prices is needed to kind of spur the new demand, new investment in supply? Well, it's, it's very similar to our conversation about uranium. I mean, you could. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Right. Okay, well, there are probably companies that can make a bucket for $4 a pound, $5 a pound, maybe some need six. You know, the real question is what's your time frame? You know, how long does it take to build these things? Because I think with all these things, I believe we'll be surprised to the upside because of the lag it takes to build. So I don't know. I mean, it's really project by project and then pick your demand level at what point in time. But yeah, I think there's some projects that are like, great. Hey, copper is now $4.50. We can. we can start to build. We have a great MPV. The problem is it's mining, right? These things always take longer than you expect. There's always cost overruns. And so what might have looked good at

$450 or $5, all of a sudden you end up building it three years later, you're like, oh, we're losing money. And so maybe now we need six. And that's why you see some of these, you know, prognosticators come out and say, oh, copper's 10,000 a ton. We need 15,000. We need even higher. I mean, especially if you're looking out five years, 10 years, 15 years. And so that's really the, the tradeoff there is, yeah, maybe this price is appropriate for today, but what point in the future are you trying to match supply and demand? Because it's likely going to be a higher price, especially when you have this inflationary backdrop and all these supply constraints, trade barriers, all that sort of thing. Yeah, I actually had a different question, but I just want to pick up on

something yet. Trade periods. There's been, unless you've had the news turned off for the past five months, maybe you should have tariffs left and right. I know a lot of people, I think you guys mentioned one particular in your letter, but I know a lot of people who've been talking about companies, whether it's metal or something else where not just on a supply demand basis, but on a, hey, this is a local miner base. You think of something like MP materials, which the government invested in to get rare earths in the United States. How are you guys just generally thinking about, hey, we don't just need to think about the supply demand here. We need to be thinking about maybe a little bit locality. Because you can imagine buying a copper mine in the United

States and then having 15,000 percent tariffs slapped on everything coming in from outside the United States. You're like, cool, I've got the real winner here. So how do you kind of think about tariffs in your framework? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And there's been a lot of volatility. Copper's been a great one, right? I mean, you saw, you know, especially when the idea of tariffs were floated a few months ago, you saw a big disconnect between the U.S. copper price and the world copper price, which people use the LME, that's the 10,000 figure. And so, you know, I think we don't trade physical spreads like that. I mean, I'm sure there's people that do that sort of thing. But we're just looking at, okay, which companies are going to

benefit from a variety of environments? And even when there was the idea floated of 50% tariffs, you saw the U.S. copper price get, you know, 30% above the world price. I think people were kind of discounting, one, what is the likelihood that this happens, two, what is the magnitude if it does happen? And you can see the market was pricing in sort of short of that 50% level, but still something. Obviously, when Trump came out and excluded, you know, rock hopper from the tariffs and focus more on just finished products or semi-finished products, that spread collapse. And so I'm sure people got carded out that were playing those different types of spreads.

We've always been just focused on what is the world price, what is needed. Yeah, some of these kind of different location fluctuations are a bit of a curiosity. But, and hey, they may be relevant because it spurs interest or it does highlight the strategic importance of location for these things. And we have some things where we think, you know, will benefit from that sort of strategic strategic premium. But I don't think you can bake that into your only investment case because, you know, like you say, you'll get whipped around by something that you have no control over, which is, you know, some proclamation about, you know, what we want to do here. And that's

why if you can ground yourself in something that works, it's kind of like the uranium, hey, if it works at 80, I'll be happy when it's at 200. Same thing here. If your project works great at the world price and it's in the U.S., well, that's pretty nice. If you're a, that's pretty nice. you get this bonus on top of it with this extra premium, well, that's all great. And so you don't want to bake it into the core of your thesis, but at the same time, you say, hey, there is some real value here. And we actually thought the fact that the excluded raw copper from the tariffs was kind of an implicit admission that, hey, well, we don't have enough to produce, right? It would take a long time. We own, you know, we own a couple of these projects that are in the U.S. that we think

should do well regardless of tariffs. I think the fact that just the whole idea of tariffs shining a light on the importance of copper. For us, that was always the big thing. Whether they came through or didn't come through or what the level was, how high, how low, just the fact that the U.S. government is talking about, we need to address this industry because of the importance to national security

running the whole trade investigation, Section 232, that was enough for us. Like, hey, guys, look, this stuff is important. Yeah, you want to slap whatever tariff on top. Okay, it's worth even more than that, but it works without it. And so I think more so people, more generally realizing that, hey, copper is a very interesting industry right now. China produces a

lot of it. There's, you know, the West doesn't have enough. It's just a, it's a very tricky situation. I think a lot of that got lost. People didn't care or didn't look at it because so much of the investment community is just focused on technology stocks and large cap tech and the fangs, the Mac 7, whatever it is. It's like, there's a lot of stuff going on outside of that. Most people don't need to pay attention to it because they're fine, just, you know, buying the cues and going to sleep, I think now you're starting to see people realize that some of this other stuff is very important. And, you know, you can tell from the price movements that maybe the market's starting to wake up to that. Let me, one more question on government. You mentioned government

acknowledging this as a supportive source of national security. In your view, a lot of these prices are going higher. The supply demand picture doesn't look great. Do you see, do governments step in and start probably not seizing a la Argentina or Venezuela seizing the resources, but more like what the government did with MP material saying, hey, we are desperately short copper and we've got this huge buildout coming out. We need to encourage production and probably domestic production

because if you got into a real geopolitical conflict and your copper got turned off, cool, and now your economy basically can't grow. Do you think, and you can take it from copper to any other material if you want, you can even imagine it with your name. Do you think we start seeing the government get involved in saying, hey, let's write $100 million checks into these projects to kind of lock up

the supply and encourage production domestically? I think we already have. I mean, I think you pointed out the MP deal is a perfect example of that. It's almost the opposite of a tariff, right? It's a price floor. That's above the current price. And now they're even taking equity stakes. Look, this has been ongoing for several years now. I mean, it's been kind of these niche news articles about it. So most people probably miss it. But real discussions about should the government start stockpiling these things. I mean, just going beyond, going beyond taking equity stakes or trying to encourage production by fast tracking permitting, which is also going on. But I mean, the MP thing was a real game changer. Like, hey, we need this material. You guys can produce it. Here's a bunch of

money. We're an equity stake. Here's some contracts. I think you'll start seeing that more broadly. In fact, I think just yesterday there was an article in the journal about the United Nations talking about should we create a global minerals fund, different companies in or countries in Europe talking about should we be stockpiling this stuff? I mean, we really put ourselves behind the eight ball, you know, outsourcing a lot of this in the era of globalization. China controls the entire periodic table now. And, you know, if we're not going to be very friendly with them, they have a lot of power, right? And so it's like, how do we get ourselves out of this bind? The crazy thing is that, I mean, these governments are essentially using printed money to buy this stuff.

And so, hey, you want to talk about a crazy price scenario when you get all these different, you know, entities around the world starting to stockpile this stuff because they realize they can't produce enough of it. I mean, that's the real blue sky scenario. But we don't even need to see that. I think just on the margin, you should see these prices trend higher because of the fact that there's not enough supply where it's needed. And either you're going to see deployment of these technologies being strong. slow down or some sort of workaround like that for the West to get access to these materials. Because look, it's not enough to say, hey, great, you know, MP or some of their company, here's 500 million, go to town. Well, we still run in the same problem of, okay, we got to

build the mine or like an MP's case. They got to build all the downstream refining. They can, you know, because they produce the rare earths, but then they were sending it to China for the refining because they, you know, they owned all the processing. And so, yeah, it's a big problem. And that's why I say we're always kind of looking a few years out because we saw this a few years ago and we're like, hey, there's going to be a big issue here with a lot of these different metals. They're going to have to solve it one way or the other. You're going to see the price start to creep up as people realize it. But there's been so much tunnel vision. People looking just at tech stocks and what Google and Apple are doing, no one's

really paying attention. You've had to kind of dig into some of these obscure news sources to see what's going on. But it's happening. I mean, there's a real big issue around where are we going to get all these critical minerals. I mean, I would just tell your viewers, Google critical minerals, you know, do it once a week and see what articles come up because there's a lot of news about it. We were talking about it, you know, four or five years ago just during our work on uranium because we were listening to these, you know, House Energy Committee topics and it was all about mining, right? Where 20 years ago it was about, you know, how much oil or 25 years, how much oil we're getting from the Middle East. Now you listen to Congress talk about energy and it's mining, it's

permitting. It's, you know, cobalt. It's all this kind of, you know, niche stuff that this is what the energy system is transitioning to. If you really believe in this global energy transition, which is, you know, seeing trillions of dollars being spent on it, the real choke point are these materials. And what's crazy is the valuations on these things are some of the cheapest of any area of the market. I mean, we're generalists. We look across the market and we see this and we're like, this is a very unique combination of extremely strong fundamental outlook and low cheap valuation. Usually you have to pick one or the other. I mean, that's why it's such a big part of our portfolio today because you get both.

That's great. Brent, I actually have multiple other questions I want to follow up with, but I also have, this is rare for me after podcast, a hard stop because my wife is out of town and the baby needs picking up at some point. But let me just ask here, I think we've done a nice job going through a couple different sectors. We hit uranium, we hit gold, we hit copper. Unfortunately, there are 100 other metals we can't. But I just want to ask you, you know, is there anything we didn't hit that we should have hit or anything like the kind of last thoughts on your mind? I actually almost wanted to end with your, the last quote you just said on the low, low price earnings and fundamentals accelerating because that's such a great clip.

But anything else do you think you just kind of want to leave listeners with or on your mind? You know, I think we kind of did a good job touching on the main metals. You can really, I mean, it's funny. It's almost, I don't like to say this, but you can really take that same kind of overall thesis. and apply it to some of these other metals. And you get a really similar case. It's growing demand, supply that can't keep up. It's really dependent a lot on these technologies.

I think maybe that's what I'll leave you with because believe it or not, we're spending a lot of time now on areas outside of mining. I think we've really got a good understanding of which areas within metals and mining are going to have these supply constraints going forward. One of the things we're looking at now is, You know, everyone's talking about AI, kind of the proliferation of it.

It's growing at breakneck speed. What are all these industries that are going to be disrupted by it? I mean, that's a big topic of conversation now. We flip that. We think what are the areas that are going to be made more stronger? What are things more valuable now that AI is basically the brain? And the way we look at it is like, you know, all this work into AI is creating this brain in a box, right? that's really great at thinking and we're able to do all this stuff with it.

But what are its limitations? What does it still need once it's running, you know, in everything? And we come back to energy and materials. I mean, you still need to feed it, right? You need to run it with all this electricity. You're seeing it in real time with all these data centers constraints. We're very interested in, okay, you have this brain that you've built, but you need to figure out a way for it to interact with the physical environment.

And so it's, you know, sensors, equipment. How do you interact with the world on like the atomic scale? We're very excited to see when this, when it gets, you know, this technology gets applied to the hard sciences, pushing the forefront of technology, whether it's energy science, material science, what is the equipment that's going to be needed to basically serve as the eyes and the ears and the hands of this brain? Because those things are going to continue to be in high demand. But eventually it all comes down to energy and materials. I really think those are the two areas that you can't escape.

And AI will just be used to say, hey, how can humans best use the physical environment around them? And then what are the tools that will enable AI to interact with the real world? So that's where we're doing a lot of work now. Maybe a teaser for a picture. The podcast hosting me once so badly to say, what are the hands and tools? but it'll just have to be a to-be-continued because we can just talk about the podcast and talk things. So Brian West from, Brian Lox from Old West Management,

it's been great. It's been great to catch up. Great to get an overview of the sector. We'll talk to you about followers. Thank you so much. I'm including to the Old West website and the show notes. If anybody wants to go check it out, and we'll go from there. All right.

Thanks, Andrew. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered an investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. please do your own work and consult a financial advisor. Thanks.