Looking for Gold
Monument Mining Limited (MMY.V)
Monument Mining Limited (TSX-V: MMY)
Price C$0.78. Market capitalization C$270 million, or about US$190 million. All figures in US dollars unless noted.
Dear readers and fellow investors,
Monument Mining produces gold at the Selinsing mine in Pahang, Malaysia, at a run rate of about 46,000 ounces a year, and holds a second, currently idle processing plant in Western Australia. At March 31, 2026 it carried US$101.76 million in cash and term deposits against no debt beyond US$0.08 million of leases. The market values the whole company at US$190 million, so the enterprise value is roughly US$89 million. Over the twelve months ended March 31, 2026 the company earned US$74.1 million after tax.
You are paying 1.2 times trailing earnings for the business once cash is deducted, and the cash alone covers 54 percent of the market capitalization.
The market is pricing Selinsing as a mine about to run out of ore, because the last published reserve statement dates to 2019 and rests on drilling data from March 2018. The thesis is that this fear is stale rather than the reserves being exhausted: the mine has kept producing for eight years past that data date, a 13,045 metre drill program around the pits was completed this year with assay results the company describes as intersecting mineralization beyond the current pit shells, and every observable capital decision points to a mine being prepared for a longer life, not a closure.
The bet is that if the drilling converts into even five more years of mine life at gold prices well below today’s, the stock is worth roughly C$1.40 to C$2.20 within two to three years against C$0.78 today; if it does not convert, cash on hand plus two or three residual years of earnings roughly return the current price. My estimate of the downside in the failure case is a loss of zero to twenty percent, against upside of two to three times.
The business
Monument digs gold-bearing sulphide rock out of open pits at Selinsing, concentrates it through flotation and sells the concentrate to buyers. The 1.0 million tonne per annum plant sits in the middle of the company’s Malaysian ground, which also includes the adjacent Buffalo Reef, Felda and Famehub properties along the same gold trend.
The economics are those of a small, cheap-to-run mine in a very strong gold market. In the March 2026 quarter Monument sold 10,478 ounces at a realized price of US$5,166 per ounce, a non-IFRS measure that is net of smelter charges, against a cash cost of US$1,390 per ounce sold and an all-in sustaining cost of US$1,583 per ounce, both non-IFRS measures. For the nine months ended March 31, 2026 the mine produced 35,040 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of US$1,323 per ounce sold. The plant processed 243,367 tonnes in the quarter at a feed grade of 1.67 g/t and a recovery of 89.75 percent, its best throughput since the flotation circuit was commissioned, helped by a new filter press that removed a bottleneck.
The company reached this point the slow way. Selinsing operated for years as an oxide mine using carbon-in-leach processing, then spent a difficult stretch building and tuning a flotation plant as the oxides gave way to sulphide ore at depth. The transition completed in the third quarter of fiscal 2023, and the earnings followed: net income was US$6.44 million in fiscal 2024, US$37.54 million in fiscal 2025, and US$53.31 million in just the first nine months of fiscal 2026. Rising gold did much of that work, but volumes and recoveries improved in every period as well.
Why this opportunity exists
The most recent NI 43-101 technical report is dated January 31, 2019 and its reserves are depleted only to March 31, 2018: proven and probable reserves of 5.7 million tonnes at 1.45 g/t for 267,000 ounces, at a US$1,300 gold price assumption. The 2019 feasibility study built on those reserves described a mine life of about six years covering 223,000 recovered ounces. Fiscal 2024 through the first nine months of fiscal 2026 alone produced about 105,000 ounces.
On paper, the mine plan is finished. A generalist cannot underwrite the mine life from public documents, so most simply pass and the stock trades as if the last published plan were the whole truth.
The follwing does the rest.
Monument is a TSX Venture listing. Malaco Mining Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian mining group whose executive chairman sits on Monument’s five-person board, bought its way to 55 million shares, 16.9 percent of the company at the January 2020 purchase and about 15.9 percent of today’s 346.2 million shares. A holder that size with a board seat, in a Malaysian asset, on a venture exchange, keeps most institutions out regardless of the numbers. And the shareholders who lived through the sulphide transition years, when the company earned almost nothing, have been sellers into the re-rating: the stock made the 2026 TSX Venture 50 list precisely because so much of the move happened in one year and single-year doublings in venture-listed micro caps get sold by tired hands almost mechanically.
So the opportunity exists because the one document that would let outsiders underwrite the future is seven years stale and the shareholder base is structurally unable or unwilling to hold through the proof.
We will not focus on sentiment around Gold, but that is another reason.
The thesis
The first fact is that the mine, as currently operated, converts gold into cash at a rate the price ignores. Trailing twelve-month revenue to March 31, 2026 was US$168.3 million and trailing net income US$74.1 million, taxed at an effective rate of about 25 percent in the most recent nine months. Operating cash flow for those nine months was US$68.4 million while spending on plant, development and exploration together was US$7.6 million. Free cash flow of roughly US$61 million in nine months is what carried cash and deposits from US$45.9 million at June 30, 2025 to US$101.76 million at March 31, 2026 and that is after paying a special dividend of two Canadian cents per share, US$5.04 million, in January 2026.
The second fact is the price. At C$0.78 and 346M shares outstanding as of May 25, 2026, the market capitalization is C$270 million, about US$190 million. Subtract the US$101.76 million of cash and deposits and add the US$0.08 million of leases and the enterprise value is roughly US$89 million. That is 1.2 times trailing earnings. Remaining dilution is trivial: 1.72 million options at C$0.145 are the only instruments left after 15.97 million restricted share units were redeemed in July 2025, an event that grew the share count about five percent and is now behind the company. I would rather the RSU program had never existed, but the overhang is gone.
Skeptics will answer that trailing earnings borrow from a US$5,166 realized price. Strip it out. At US$3,000 gold, 28 percent below the July 3, 2026 spot price of about US$4,180, current volumes of 46,000 ounces and an all-in cost near US$1,550 would leave about US$67 million of pre-tax operating margin; after roughly US$4 million of corporate costs and 25 percent tax, that is on the order of US$47 million a year of earnings, my calculation. The enterprise value is under two times that stress-tested number. I guess the market is pricing the ore running out.
The third fact is that the exhaustion assumption sits badly with both the resource data and the company’s behavior. The same 2019 report that shows 267,000 ounces of reserves shows measured and indicated resources of 530,000 ounces and inferred resources of a further 350,000 ounces at a US$2,400 shell, all on 2018 drilling, all at cut-off assumptions set when gold traded at a third of today’s price. The mine has produced continuously since, which is only possible if conversion of resources into minable ore has been happening in practice ahead of the paperwork. Through the first three quarters of fiscal 2026 the company drilled 13,045 metres around Buffalo Reef and Felda, with 58 holes in the March quarter alone, and released assay results in December 2025, February 2026 and May 2026 that it describes as intersecting multiple mineralized zones beyond the current pit shells. Phases one and two of the program are complete with final assays pending. Meanwhile management is buying filter presses, extending the concentrate warehouse and relocating site infrastructure to allow pit pushbacks. Nobody spends this way on a mine with three years to live.
The fourth fact is that everything outside Selinsing perimeter comes free at this price. The Murchison project in Western Australia includes the Burnakura processing plant on care and maintenance, an indicated resource of 293,000 ounces at 2.3 g/t from a 2018 SRK estimate, the Gabanintha deposit with historical resources being brought up to NI 43-101 standard, and a 20 percent free-carried interest in the Tuckanarra joint venture with Odyssey Gold. SRK is preparing a conceptual economic assessment for a production restart and management has engaged engineering firms for capital and operating cost estimates. Exploration and evaluation assets stand at US$53.6 million on the March 2026 balance sheet. I assign this portfolio no value in the base case, and note only that an idle, permitted plant in a US$4,000 gold world is the kind of asset that tends to find a use.
Valuation
Work in scenarios, all my own calculations, all starting from the US$89 million enterprise value and US$101.76 million of cash at March 31, 2026.
The bear case assumes the drilling fails to extend the mine plan: gold at US$2,600, production drifting to 40,000 ounces a year, all-in costs at US$1,600 with royalties falling alongside price, and only three years of remaining ore. That produces about US$27 million a year after corporate costs and tax, or roughly US$81 million over the remaining life, on top of the existing US$102 million of cash. Undiscounted, that is US$183 million against today’s US$190 million market capitalization, before assigning anything to Murchison, the plant, or 32,000 acres of exploration ground. Discounting and imperfect capital allocation turn this into a modest loss rather than a wash, which is why I frame the downside as zero to twenty percent.
The base case assumes conversion succeeds at ordinary rates: five years of production at 46,000 ounces, gold averaging US$3,500 against a spot price above US$4,100, all-in costs of US$1,550. That yields around US$64 million a year after tax, worth about US$243 million discounted at ten percent, plus cash of US$102 million, or roughly US$345 million of value, about C$1.41. That is 80 percent above today’s price while using a gold price 15 percent below spot and giving Murchison nothing.
The bull case lets the expanded pit shells support eight years at 46,000 ounces with gold holding near US$4,100 and adds only the existing cash: about US$443 million of discounted earnings plus US$102 million of cash is US$545 million before Murchison, around C$2.20 per share.
I decided to not modeled a Murchison restart, antimony credits from the concentrate, or further resource growth, all of which are real possibilities that cost nothing at this price.
Across the three scenarios the failure case is broadly covered by liquid assets and residual production, while the ordinary-success case nearly doubles the investment.
Risks
The reserve may hide depletion rather than lagging paperwork. Feed grade slipped from 1.76 g/t to 1.67 g/t year over year in the March quarter and the strip ratio stands at 9.6 to 1, which is a lot of waste rock per tonne of ore. If the new drilling converts poorly, the production plateau ends and the earnings stream with it. My response is that this is exactly the uncertainty being paid for, the assays published so far have been supportive, and the entry price requires only three further years to defend the downside.
The cost structure rises with the gold price. Cash costs jumped from US$874 to US$1,390 per ounce year over year in the March quarter mostly because Malaysian royalties and government fees scale with the realized price, and a new sales and service tax now touches mining services. Margins are therefore less levered to gold than they appear, in both directions, and a government that already taxes revenue can choose to take more. Malaysia has been a stable operator’s jurisdiction for this company for nearly two decades, but concentration in one country, one mine and one plant is the weakness of the whole thesis, and no diversification argument can remove it.
The cash itself is a risk. Management’s stated strategy includes pursuing corporate opportunities and a hundred million dollars in the hands of a venture-listed board with a dominant strategic shareholder can disappear into an acquisition far faster than it accumulated. The January 2026 special dividend and the absence of equity issuance are encouraging precedents.
Catalysts
Final assays from the completed Phase I and II expansion drilling are pending as of the May 29, 2026 release, and the logical product of a completed 13,000 metre program is an updated resource estimate and mine plan, the single document that would force the market to underwrite the mine life again.
Fiscal 2026 annual results, due around October 2026 on last year’s timetable, should show a record year with over US$100 million of cash. Conceptual economic assessment for a Murchison restart is in progress. A repeat of the special dividend would confirm the capital return precedent.
The thesis is also available on the Sifter Research website, where all previous reports and thesis are also archived. If this work is useful to you, sharing it with one person who thinks seriously about investing is the best thing you can do for this project.
With respect and dedication,
Alessandro Montalbano
Disclosure: The author may hold a position in the securities discussed. This report represents the author’s opinions only and does not constitute investment advice. Readers should conduct their own due diligence before making any investment decision.