r/SmallCap_MiningStocks

The Bullish Edge

Hey r/CanadaStocks

Quick intro: I run **The Bullish Edge**, a high-conviction investment research service focused on TSX/TSX-V stocks.

Every day we scan for unusual volume and analyze to separate real opportunities from noise.

Here’s a real example from today’s scan:

**MIVO.V – Miivo (now Miivo Ai)**
Micro-cap AI software play.

**The story behind the 74x volume spike:** A name change to ride the AI theme + newly announced investor relations and marketing deals (plus an earlier Dubai acquisition). No drill result, no big contract, no earnings.

Price moved only +3.9%. Classic churn, not conviction.

**We passed**. This is exactly the kind of promoted noise our process is designed to filter out.

**Key takeaway:** Volume can be a flashlight, but it’s not the full verdict. We look for real conviction, not hype.

Full daily analysis available at https://thebullishedge.com not financial advice – always do your own DD).

What are your thoughts on these kinds of volume spikes? Have you seen similar pumps lately?

TL;DR: IperionX makes titanium metal and powder from recycled scrap at a fraction of the legacy cost, backed by roughly $60m of obligated U.S. government funding, with independent U.S. Army test validation of its parts and a production ramp targeting about 28x growth by mid-2027. The catch is that it is still pre-revenue with no firm, multi-year production contract yet, and it had an accounting restatement earlier this year. I'm long, small and speculative. Not financial advice.

The setup

The U.S. produced zero titanium sponge in 2025 and imported an estimated 44,000 tonnes, leaving it 100% reliant on imports, mostly from Japan, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. The last domestic sponge plant shut in 2020. In early 2026, titanium became the sixteenth critical mineral the country fully depends on imports for, and it was the single addition that pushed that count up. Washington has decided this is a national-security problem and is spending money to fix it, with executive orders, a Section 232 investigation, possible tariffs, and $7.5bn earmarked for the Pentagon to spend on critical minerals.

What the company does

IperionX is not a miner. It produces titanium metal and near-finished parts using a patented process called HAMR, which turns titanium oxide and 100% recycled scrap straight into powder and skips the expensive chlorination and vacuum-distillation steps of the 80-year-old Kroll method. The company guides costs to about $55/kg once its first line runs at full rate, falling to roughly $29/kg at larger scale, against about $200 for powder made the conventional way. Running on scrap is something the incumbents cannot do, and scrap is plentiful in the U.S.

What is actually proven

This is the part that moved me from "interesting story" to "live idea." In June, independent testing by the U.S. Army's DEVCOM and Westmoreland Mechanical Testing measured its titanium fasteners at 563 to 615 ft-lbf of yield torque, against 480 to 502 for premium Grade-8 steel, so roughly 20% stronger. Production is ramping on schedule: about 4.2 tonnes in March, round-the-clock operation, a new 300-tonne press being commissioned, and a path to roughly 200 tonnes by end-2026 and about 1,400 by mid-2027. Government backing includes a $12.7m DPA award, a $47.1m IBAS award funding the ramp, roughly 290 tonnes of free feedstock, an EXIM loan, and a sole-source ordering vehicle up to $99m.

The bear case, honestly

Short-seller Spruce Point published a Strong Sell in October 2025 arguing 70% to 95% downside. Their points: no firm multi-year contract after years of partnership announcements, a titanium-powder market they say is already oversupplied, extreme valuation multiples, and some governance flags. Then the company handed them a second chapter, correcting a "typographical error" in its accounts where a right-of-use asset that should have been about $21.4m had been booked at $3.8m. The shares fell hard, roughly $400m of value came off, the ASX issued a please-explain, and shareholder-rights firms opened investigations. The whole thesis turns on converting the Army validation and that $99m ceiling into a signed, fixed-price contract, and that has not happened yet.

Valuation

Prices are the NASDAQ ADR, where one ADR is ten ordinary Australian shares. The market pays roughly $1.2bn today for funded leadership. I see a funded floor around $14 to $17 per ADR, built from cash, obligated government money, the plant, and a permitted feedstock project with an $813m feasibility NPV. The upside, if the first firm contract lands, is a re-rate to about $52 to $68, which lines up with the sell-side range of $52 to $75. For context, government-backed critical-materials names like MP Materials, USA Rare Earth and NioCorp re-rated three to six times once they turned policy into product, though all of them had explicit federal equity stakes or price floors that IPX does not have yet, and all have since pulled back from their peaks.

Why I'm in

Funded downside, a genuine macro tailwind that does not depend on interest rates, and independent proof the product works, at a price that does not yet pay for proven demand. The one thing I am watching is the moment advancing sales talks become a named, firm contract, ideally a Pentagon-style equity or offtake deal. Until then it is a wait-for-the-catalyst hold, and I do not expect a straight line.

Position: long $IPX, small and speculative sizing. This is my opinion, not financial advice, and you should do your own DD. I write fuller research write-ups at Sterling Signals, link is in my bio if you want the detailed version.