JUNE ISSUE - The Copper Developer Ready for a Mining Giant Move

Here's the brand new addition to the Founders+ model portfolio detailing the copper developer that's still early, underfollowed and tied to the copper supply problem.

In our May Founders+ semi-annual update, we closed our position in Arizona Sonoran Copper (ASCU) with an impressive 137% gain after Hudbay agreed to buy the company at a 30% premium. At the time, we shared that another copper name would follow.

The company we are adding this month is an under-the-radar Yukon copper-gold junior that’s still pre-resource and largely outside the broader market’s view. That makes it riskier than Arizona Sonoran was at the point of acquisition, but it also explains why the valuation remains a fraction of what major copper mining conglomerates have already bought. By “majors,” we mean the large global mining companies such as BHP(BHP), Rio Tinto (RIO), Glencore (GLEN), and Vale (VALE), that can buy future supply when they cannot find or drill it fast enough.

The current timing matters. Copper is trading around $6.42 a pound, just off a record near $6.70, even though the official scorekeepers still call the market oversupplied. The International Copper Study Group still projects a small surplus for the year, while exchange stocks across London, New York, and Shanghai have topped 1.1 million tons, the highest since 2003.

But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that their conclusion misses the real supply distortion. The temporary surplus is shaped by tariffs, inventory displacement and trade distortion. There has been a 50% U.S. duty on semi-finished copper since last August, while refined metal, the form American industry runs on, has stayed exempt from it. The downstream gap attracted metal into the U.S. and Chinese refined imports fell 40% over the quarter.

For strategically-minded investors that mismatch spells opportunity.