Brightstar Resources Limited (ASX: BTR), Part 3 of 3

Contents

11 The Disclosure Record	15 Samso Concluding Comments
12 The Board, Management and Incentives	16 References and Sources
13 Where Brightstar Sits Against Its Peers	17 Disclaimer
14 The Risks Specific to Brightstar

11 The Disclosure Record

On 14 April 2026 Brightstar released a Clarification Statement covering its investor presentation of 18 March 2026. The company's own words are the clearest summary. "It has come to the Company's attention that certain statements made in the Presentation may constitute production targets."

Four things were withdrawn or retracted. The first was the Sandstone processing plant throughput range of 4 to 5 million tonnes a year. The second was Sandstone production shown in the group production growth chart. The third was an illustrative table of mill throughput against head grade. The fourth was a set of three growth targets. The first of those was a long-term Mineral Resource growth target of 3.0 to 4.0 million ounces. The second was a maiden Ore Reserve target of more than 1.0 million ounces supporting a 6 to 8 year mine life at the Pre-Feasibility Study. The third was an Ore Reserve of 1.5 to 2.5 million ounces supporting a mine life beyond 10 years at the Definitive Feasibility Study.

The company's reasoning is set out in the announcement.

"It has come to the Company's attention that given the amount of work undertaken on the Sandstone project, in particular, the anticipated completion of the PFS this year and the sizeable existing Mineral Resource estimate of 2.4Moz @ 1.5g/t Au, the statements in relation to targeted Mineral Resource and Ore Reserves growth are too specific and potentially constitute predictions or potential targets from Brightstar about probable future outcomes, as opposed to purely aspirational statements. Accordingly, Brightstar withdraws its disclosure of its targeted growth in Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves until such time as it has completed the relevant studies and has sufficient reasonable grounds to support forecast information in relation to production from Sandstone, and shareholders must not rely on this information." Brightstar Resources, "Clarification of production targets and aspirational statements", ASX announcement, 14 April 2026[R29]

The practical effect for an investor is narrow. From 14 April 2026 there is no company-sanctioned figure for Sandstone plant size, target Ore Reserve or target Mineral Resource.

What the company has kept, and re-released in its 16 July and 5 August 2026 presentations under a formal "Aspirational Statements" heading,[R30] is a set of dates and one group number. The company aspires to construct a Sandstone plant in the second half of calendar 2027 and to pour first gold there in the second half of calendar 2028. It aspires to complete a Definitive Feasibility Study and a final investment decision in late calendar 2027 or early 2028. The group aspiration is more than 200,000 ounces a year by 2029. Note that the presentation carries two construction dates for Sandstone. The aspirational statements disclaimer on page 2 says construction in the second half of calendar 2027.

The execution roadmap on slide 15 plots the start of construction in early calendar 2028, alongside the final investment decision, which is the ordinary sequence.[R9] The roadmap is the internally consistent one. The disclaimer date is carried forward from the April 2025 announcement it says it is based on. Both are stated here as released. Those are aspirations with a full disclaimer attached. They are not production targets and a reader should file them that way. The JORC Mineral Resource and the study timetable are the only parts with hard numbers behind them, and that is the position until the PFS lands.

Two further facts belong in the record.

Since April 2026 the managing director has also restated the withdrawn throughput range and mine life in public interviews[R34], including in the 16 July 2026 investor briefing webinar and again in a later podcast interview, when he said "we've kind of previously said that 4 to 5 million tons per annum feels like the right size given what we're seeing here" and "we think, we've previously put it out there, a 4 to 5 million ton per annum plant looks like it'll be the right size for this. So we're genuinely looking at something that could be 10 plus years of mine life."

A 1.0 million ounce Ore Reserve milestone also appears in the FY2026 remuneration report[R3] as a live long-term incentive vesting condition, weighted at 20 per cent. "Ore Reserves. Public announcement to the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX) of 1,000,000oz of gold Ore Reserves (as defined in the JORC Code) declared across the Company's projects."

Both are as published, and resolving them belongs to the company. For a reader the point is narrower. The 1.0 million ounce incentive milestone is not the same measure as the withdrawn target. The withdrawn target was a maiden Sandstone Ore Reserve at the pre-feasibility study. The incentive condition is 1,000,000 ounces "declared across the Company's projects", which includes the 351,000 ounces already booked at the Goldfields.[R3] The grant's performance period began on 1 July 2025, so it predates the April 2026 clarification rather than surviving it. A withdrawn figure that a managing director continues to state publicly is still a governance matter and not a filing curiosity. It does not change a single JORC number. It does change how much weight a reader should put on management's forward commentary.

Set against that, Brightstar's JORC-compliant disclosure is thorough, its cautionary statements are complete, and its exploration announcements publish the full assay tables underneath every headline. The two do not cancel out. They point to one practical instruction. An investor should weight the JORC tables over the presentations and the interviews.

12 The Board, Management and Incentives

The board has four members.[R3]

Richard Crookes is Non-Executive Chairman, appointed 31 May 2024. He is a geologist by training. He was Chief Geologist and Mining Manager at Ernest Henry Mining, an Executive Director in Macquarie Bank's Metals Energy Capital division, and an Investment Director at EMR Capital. He is now Managing Partner of Lionhead Resources.

Alex Rovira is Managing Director, appointed 12 January 2023. He holds science and commerce degrees from the University of Western Australia and spent nine years as a metals and mining investment banker at Canaccord, after a period as a professional rugby player with the Western Force and in Europe. He has said he was 32 when he took the role.

Andrew Rich is Executive Director, Operations, appointed 31 May 2024. He is a mining engineer with more than 15 years in gold and nickel and was previously Managing Director of Linden Gold. The annual report records that he "successfully led the delivery of three underground mining projects through construction into production at Westgold Resources Ltd, Ramelius Resources Ltd and Linden".

Jonathan Downes is Non-Executive Director, appointed 26 May 2023, a geologist with more than 25 years in the industry. He chairs both the Audit and Risk Committee and the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.

Ashley Fraser resigned as a Non-Executive Director on 2 December 2025 to pursue other business interests. Board and committee attendance for FY2026 was full for every director.

The operating experience on this board is real and it is the right kind. Andrew Rich has taken three underground projects through construction into production. Brightstar needs exactly that skill over the next twelve months, and it sits on the board instead of being hired in.

Three governance points

These are matters of fact and each is disclosed by the company. Not one is a breach.

Andrew Rich is the Competent Person for the Ore Reserve, an Executive Director, a shareholder with 1,704,899 shares, and the holder of 3,552,500 performance rights, which are shares that vest to him free of charge if set targets are met. Two of his incentive schemes are tied to reserve outcomes. The FY2026 short-term incentive carried a "Reserve Growth" measure at a 15 per cent weighting, scored at 100 per cent on the basis that "Ore Reserves increased by approximately 50% between 1 July 2025 to [sic] 30 June 2026". The long-term incentive carries the 1.0 million ounce Ore Reserve milestone at 20 per cent. JORC permits an in-house Competent Person and the interest is disclosed exactly as the Code requires. A reader should simply know that the person certifying the reserve has remuneration that moves with it.

After Mr Fraser's resignation, the Audit and Risk Committee and the Remuneration and Nomination Committee each comprise three directors "including the Managing Director and two Non-Executive Directors". Neither committee is now wholly non-executive. On a four-person board that follows from the size of the board rather than from a choice, and it is disclosed.

The annual report discloses in one place that Jonathan Downes has been a director of Cazaly Resources since November 2021. It discloses separately, under Earn-In Arrangements, that Cazaly has been earning into Brightstar's Goongarrie Gold Project, and reached a 51 per cent interest on 27 August 2026 for A$2 million of expenditure. Note 29 states the Group "did not enter into any further related party transactions". One transaction is disclosed and it is worth naming. Blue Cap Mining Pty Ltd, controlled by then Non-Executive Director Ashley Fraser, supplied earthworks, mobile equipment hire, personnel and production services to Brightstar. The company paid it A$304,000 in FY2026 up to Mr Fraser's resignation on 2 December 2025, and A$1,652,000 in FY2025, and states the rates were arm's length and market tested.[R3] It is disclosed and it is not a breach. A reader should simply know the contract existed. The two disclosures are made independently and are not cross-referenced.

The register

As at 1 September 2026 Brightstar had 14,343 shareholders[R3] and no substantial shareholders at all, meaning no holder with a relevant interest of 5 per cent or more. The top 20 hold 50.88 per cent, and the largest lines are nominee and custodian accounts. Citicorp Nominees holds 13.74 per cent, the two HSBC Custody lines together hold 9.12 per cent and J P Morgan Nominees holds 6.93 per cent. All three sit above the 5 per cent substantial holder threshold, and none is a substantial holder, because each aggregates many beneficial owners rather than representing one party.[R3]

Named holders in the top 20 include Lion Selection Group at 2.48 per cent and Genesis Minerals at 0.76 per cent. Rovira describes the register as about 50 per cent institutionally held. For a company of this size that is a reasonable position, and it follows directly from the February 2026 placement to institutional funds.

Directors hold 6,355,806 shares between them, 0.58 per cent of issued capital, on the directors' interests table in the FY2026 annual report. Mr Rovira holds 4,175,047 shares, Mr Rich 1,704,899 and Mr Downes 475,860. Note that the remuneration report's own shareholdings reconciliation, struck at 30 June 2026 rather than at the date of the report, gives Mr Rovira 4,049,777 and Mr Rich 1,604,899, for a directors' total of 6,130,536. Both are in the same document and we state both. The Non-Executive Chairman held no ordinary shares at the date of the FY2026 report, only 2,000,000 options at strikes of A$0.75 and A$1.00.

Remuneration

The Managing Director's total FY2026 remuneration was A$885,487, against A$534,790 in FY2025, an increase of 65.6 per cent. Fixed remuneration was A$505,000. The short-term incentive scorecard was assessed at 70 per cent overall. Three of the seven measures were missed. Two were rescued by board discretion rather than by formula. Gold production fell short of its target of 110 per cent of budget and was awarded 75 per cent. Cost ran above its A$3,800 an ounce threshold and was awarded 25 per cent. The board recorded its reason on the cost measure.

"Amendments to the mine plans and production strategy, driven by corporate strategic decisions during the period, resulted in FY26 average costs being above the threshold." Brightstar Resources FY2026 Annual Report, remuneration report, 4 September 2026[R3]

The board's own summary is that "while certain production and cost performance metrics were below target, the Board exercised discretion to award partial outcomes". Discretion on a missed measure runs in the executive's favour, and it ran that way on both. The one missed measure not rescued by discretion, absolute total shareholder return, being the share price move plus any dividends, missed its threshold and scored zero. The share price fell from 45.6 cents to 29.5 cents across FY2026 while total remuneration rose 65.6 per cent, and a shareholder is entitled to weigh those facts together. The remuneration report received more than 99 per cent support at the 2025 annual general meeting.

13 Where Brightstar Sits Against Its Peers

Peer comparison in this sector is rough work. It is a sense check rather than a valuation. Resource statements carry different dates, reserves are struck at different gold prices, and enterprise values move daily. Every figure below carries its source and its date.

The table was rebuilt from scratch on 18 September 2026. Rather than re-price the old one, each company's shares on issue, cash, borrowings, Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve were taken again from its own most recent ASX filing. That matters, because two of the seven had moved in ways a price update alone would have missed. Minerals 260 declared a maiden Ore Reserve of 2.5 million ounces on 8 July 2026, which the previous version of this table recorded as none. Meeka Metals restated both its resource and its reserve on 16 September 2026, the reserve downwards. Minerals 260 also announced a A$250 million placement, a A$30 million share purchase plan and a A$170 million royalty sale in the week to 16 September, almost none of which had settled by the date of this table.

Brightstar's own position, calculated from the last traded price of A$0.570 on 18 September 2026[R31] and 1,104,179,941 shares, is a market capitalisation of about A$629 million. The share count is taken from the ASX company register on 18 September 2026. The most recent figure in a Brightstar filing is 1,103,667,198 at 1 September 2026, a difference of 0.05 per cent.[R3] Adding the bond at A$168.7 million, being US$120 million at an exchange rate of 0.7114, and deducting total cash and restricted cash of A$282.9 million gives an enterprise value of roughly A$515 million. On the 4.459 million ounce resource that is about A$116 an ounce. On the 351,000 ounce reserve it is about A$1,468 an ounce.

Two readings come out of that table and they point in opposite directions.

On resource ounces Brightstar is the cheapest company in the set, at about A$116 an ounce, and that figure rests on a cash basis no other company in the table shares. A$160.9 million of Brightstar's A$282.9 million is escrowed bond money it cannot draw until conditions precedent and a cost-to-complete test are satisfied. Counting only the A$122.0 million it can spend, its enterprise value is about A$676 million, which is A$152 a resource ounce and puts it second rather than first. It is cheapest on the wide basis and second cheapest on the narrow one, and a reader should hold both. The next cheapest is Astral at A$134, which has no mine, no mill and no investment decision. Pantoro is producing at A$183, Meeka at A$236, Black Cat at A$267 and Ora Banda at A$725.

On reserve ounces Brightstar's position reverses. Brightstar at about A$1,468 sits mid-pack, above Astral, Minerals 260, Pantoro and Meeka, and below Black Cat and Ora Banda.

Figure 10. On a whole-company basis Brightstar is the cheapest in this set per Mineral Resource ounce and has converted the least of that resource into Ore Reserve. The vertical axis is measured across every ounce each company owns. Brightstar's reserve covers only the seven Laverton and Menzies deposits the feasibility study assessed, and measured against that ground alone, 1.35 million ounces from DFS 2.0's own Table 4, its conversion is 26 per cent rather than 7.9, which would place it third in this group instead of last. The paragraphs below explain why both figures matter. Enterprise values and per-ounce figures are Samso's calculations from published statements. Reserve gold prices differ widely between these companies, from A$2,300/oz at Black Cat to A$4,500/oz at Brightstar, so the vertical axis is not strictly like for like. Sources: ASX last traded prices at 18 September 2026[R31][R32], and each company's most recent Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve statement, ranging in date from September 2025 to September 2026.

The gap between the two readings is the valuation question, and Section 5 sets out what sits behind it. Before going further, two measures need explaining, because both of them are easy to get wrong.

Reserve conversion. A Mineral Resource is gold a company believes is in the ground. An Ore Reserve is the part of it that a feasibility study has shown can be dug up and sold at a profit. Dividing the reserve by the resource gives a rough score for how much of a company's gold has been proven up. It is worth watching because unproven ounces are worth less than proven ones, and because proving them up costs money and takes years.

Brightstar's answer depends entirely on which resource you divide into, and the two answers are very different. Its 351,000 ounce reserve comes from one place, four deposits inside the seven that the feasibility study assessed at Laverton and Menzies, and that studied ground is 1.35 million of the hub's 1.59 million ounces. Sandstone has never had a feasibility study, and without one it cannot have a reserve at all.

Divide the reserve by everything the company owns, 4.46 million ounces, and conversion is 7.9 per cent, the lowest in this group by a wide margin. Divide it by the 1.35 million ounces the study actually covers, which DFS 2.0 publishes in its own Table 4[R1], and conversion is 26 per cent, which is third of the seven. Astral at 52 per cent and Minerals 260 at 40 per cent are ahead. Meeka at 24 per cent, Pantoro at 19, Ora Banda at 17 and Black Cat at 13 are all behind. That third place is indicative only. Every peer figure in the column is struck on the whole company, and none of them has been recut to its own studied ground. Give any of them the same treatment and its number rises too. The comparison that is strictly like for like is the 7.9 per cent.

Both figures are true and they answer different questions. The 7.9 per cent says most of Brightstar's gold is still unproven, which is correct and matters. The 26 per cent says that where the company has done the work, it has converted about as well as anyone in the group. A reader who sees only the first number will conclude Brightstar is bad at converting resource into reserve, and that is not what the evidence shows.

The Inferred share. Inferred is the lowest of the three confidence categories in the JORC Code, meaning the company has drilled enough to have an idea of what is there but not enough to rely on it. Inferred ounces cannot be counted in an Ore Reserve.

The same split applies. Across the whole company Brightstar's resource is 56.8 per cent Inferred, calculated in Table 9 from its own 15 July 2026 statement, which is the highest in this group. Across the studied ground alone it is 50.3 per cent, and across the whole Goldfields Hub 50.7 per cent. That is level with Ora Banda at 50.7 per cent and Pantoro at 50.6, and above Black Cat at 47.5 and Meeka at 46.8. Only Astral at 33.7 per cent and Minerals 260 at 27.4 per cent sit well below all of them.

So a resource that is about half Inferred is normal in this group, and on the studied ground Brightstar is normal with it. What makes the whole-company figure stand out is Sandstone, which is 2.87 million ounces that have been drilled hard but not yet studied, and barely drilled at all in places. That is one fact producing two readings, not two separate problems.

The cheap resource multiple is the market declining, for now, to pay full price for 2.5 million ounces of Inferred material that has not yet been drilled to Indicated, let alone reserved. On the corrected peer figures the discount looks less like a judgement on Inferred ounces in general, which this whole group carries, and more like one on how little of Brightstar's resource has been converted so far. Whether that discount is too harsh will be tested by the Sandstone Pre-Feasibility Study, due in the December 2026 quarter.

Spot gold against the DFS 2.0 base case

Spot gold on 18 September 2026 was about US$4,358 an ounce, with the Australian dollar buying 0.7114 US dollars on 17 September.[R33] On those inputs the Australian dollar gold price is roughly A$6,126 an ounce. The US dollar gold price is lower than it was on 9 September, and the Australian dollar gold price is higher, because the Australian dollar fell further than gold did. An Australian producer's revenue line follows the second number, not the first.

That is worth stating carefully, because it is often described loosely. Spot is about 2 per cent above the DFS 2.0 base case of A$6,000 an ounce. The A$606 million NPV and 74 per cent IRR are a spot-price outcome rather than a conservative one. Gold in Australian dollars is still below its January 2026 peak, and at its July 2026 low it sat below the study's base case.

Where the genuine conservatism sits is the A$4,500 an ounce Reserve price. Spot is about 36 per cent above that, and the headroom that creates is not a modelling assumption. It applies to the 351,000 ounce Ore Reserve.

Analyst coverage

Coverage is thin, at two to three houses, and only one of them is publicly named. Canaccord Genuity, which was sole lead manager on the February 2026 placement[R26], has a reaffirmed Buy with a price target of A$2.65, reported by Mining News. Data aggregators reported a three-analyst consensus target of A$1.75 with a range of A$0.80 to A$2.20 as at 9 September 2026, and a two-analyst downgrade to A$1.80 in March 2026. Samso could not identify the second and third houses, so those consensus figures come from aggregators rather than from named research.

Those are third-party estimates, attributed to the houses and dates shown, and Samso holds none of them. Samso publishes no price targets. Note that the published targets run from A$0.80 at the bottom of the aggregated range to A$2.65 at Canaccord, a spread of more than three times across a handful of analysts. There is no consensus among them on what this company is worth.

14 The Risks Specific to Brightstar

Every company carries a long list of generic risks and the annual report sets them out. These are the ones specific to Brightstar that would change the outcome. Each is set out in full below the table. The first of them, the gold price, sits behind most of the others, and Section 4 works through its arithmetic.

The gold price. This is the dominant risk and it is not specific to Brightstar, but the degree of it is. Because the study holds the cash cost flat at every gold price, the margin is geared about twice the price move and the net present value about three times it. A head grade of 1.7 grams of gold per tonne, and ore trucked from seven deposits with the three Menzies ones 223 kilometres out, are what make the margin thin enough for that gearing to matter. Section 4 sets out the arithmetic. The 60,000 ounces of put options do not begin settling until FY2028, so the commissioning year is unhedged.

Commissioning and ramp-up. Brightstar has never built or operated a processing plant. The lump-sum fixed-price EPC contract transfers the construction cost risk to GR Engineering. It does not transfer the ramp-up risk, which is where new mills usually disappoint. Rovira names this himself, and his framing is the honest one. "Looking at Goldfields, I think the reality is you're being priced as if something goes wrong, be it schedule blowout, capex blowout, commissioning, whatever it might be. The reality is the WA gold sector hasn't been a great custodian of new builds in the last decade. So, what makes us different? You know, we're not smarter than anyone else."

Grade reconciliation in the first year. 30.5 per cent of the contained ounces in the production target are Inferred, and the Inferred proportion peaks at 41 per cent of ore mined in FY2030. If the Inferred material reconciles below model when it is mined, the plan gets shorter or the grade gets lower. This is the most likely way the project would underperform without anyone having done anything wrong.

Dilution on top of the Inferred question. DFS 2.0 applies 10 per cent mining dilution at all three open pits[R1], with 5 per cent ore loss at Lady Shenton and 10 per cent at Cork Tree Well and Lord Byron, and 14 per cent development dilution underground. Dilution and model error push head grade the same way, and this plan is already thin on Measured material.

The A$2,998 all-in sustaining cost is unproven. No achieved AISC has ever been published by this company. The first two quarters of production will be the first real test of the study's cost assumptions, and at A$6,000 gold the margin at A$2,998 is comfortable enough to absorb a reasonable overrun. At A$5,000 gold it is not. The question is what size of overrun counts as reasonable, and the state's recent record is the only guide anyone has.

Three things in that table are worth separating.

The size of the gap is real and it is large. Meeka is the closest analogue Brightstar has. It is a Western Australian gold company that built a mill and ramped it in this same period. Its first production year came in 52 per cent above a study published seven months before it poured first gold. Ora Banda's 2020 study forecast FY2025 specifically, at A$1,719 an ounce on 1.2 million tonnes for 86,000 ounces, which makes it a year-against-same-year test rather than an average. The company milled about the same tonnage for about the same ounces and came in at A$2,693, which is 57 per cent higher. The ore came from two underground mines that are not in the 2020 study, so the tonnes and ounces match better than the mine plan does.

The cause is mostly not what the word inflation suggests. Meeka has never attributed a cost or capital variance to inflation, to diesel or to contractor rates. It names contractor productivity, weather and access to high-grade ore. In its first quarter of production it reported "project to date all-in mining costs in line with plan" and processing unit costs "19% lower than the FS plan". Neither statement survived the year. Open pit mining cost went from A$84 a tonne of ore in that first quarter to A$93 in the fourth, and Meeka ended open pit mining altogether in July 2026 over contractor productivity.

Pantoro was explicit when it revised FY2025 costs upwards, saying the change was "a direct function of lower anticipated production ounces for the full year, while fixed costs at Norseman remain largely unchanged". Ora Banda is the one that does name input prices, citing rising diesel and "industry wide inflation" in its FY2026 annual report. Its AISC went from A$2,693 an ounce in FY2025 to A$3,496 in FY2026, and the largest single driver of that increase was third-party milling, which the company reports at A$78.9 million for the year and A$561 an ounce. Underground mining remained its largest cost line.

So the transmission runs through ounces, not through dollars a tonne, and that makes it more relevant to Brightstar rather than less. A company whose costs rise because contractor rates rise has a problem it shares with everyone. A company whose costs per ounce rise because it cannot get to the grade it planned has a problem that lands hardest where the grade is lowest and the plan leans most on material that has not been drilled out. Brightstar mills ore at 1.7 grams of gold per tonne, and 30 per cent of the contained ounces in its plan are Inferred. Section 4 puts a number on it in Table 8.

A 10 per cent shortfall in recovered ounces takes 19 per cent of the operating margin and about 30 per cent of the net present value. That is the same damage as the gold price falling from A$6,000 to A$5,400 an ounce.

Two things cut the other way and should be said. The biggest single driver of Ora Banda's cost increase was paying somebody else to treat its ore, and Brightstar will own its mill, so that particular A$561 an ounce is a cost it structurally does not have. And on the largest capital item in this project, the A$110.9 million the study prints for the plant is GR Engineering's own lump-sum price, and the contract executed four months later came in at A$110 million. As Section 9 sets out, that is one contractor's price quoted twice rather than independent corroboration. What it does show is that the plant line was priced by tender and then survived four months and a binding contract without moving.

Contractor capacity. GR Engineering is scaling revenue by roughly 70 per cent in FY2027[R19] and Brightstar's contract is fifth in its book by value. Delivery depends on a contractor that is stretched across the whole state.

The Sandstone PFS. It is due in the December 2026 quarter. It has to produce a maiden Ore Reserve, a plant size, a mine life and a capital cost[R11], and it will do so with no published metallurgy on Two Mile Hill or Bull Oak. A weak PFS removes the main reason to hold this company for more than six years.

Currency and refinancing. The bond is unhedged US dollar debt against Australian dollar revenue, and a A$5.678 million unrealised foreign exchange loss was already booked in three and a half months[R3]. Amortisation begins 18 months from March 2026, which is late 2027, and the deferred put premium of A$37.0 million falls due across FY2028 to FY2029 alongside the steepest amortisation. The refinancing Rovira intends is therefore not optional if gold weakens.

Takeover. This one runs both ways and Rovira treats it as a real possibility rather than a talking point. Asked in August 2026 whether he expects the phone call, he answered[R34] "yeah, look I think that's a real risk for us to be completely honest. I think the opportunity and what we're building here is very unique ... it's arguably it's only time until that does happen." For a shareholder buying at these levels a takeover is not obviously a bad outcome. For the company's stated ambition of building a mid-tier producer, it is the end of the plan.

15 Samso Concluding Comments

Our call on Brightstar Resources is that it is time to look at taking a position.

Brightstar has crossed the line that most companies at this size never cross. It has its plant and tailings approvals, and mining approvals for Lord Byron and Lady Shenton, the first two pits in the schedule, which between them carry 200,000 of the 351,000 ounces of Ore Reserve. Mining approvals for Cork Tree Well and Yunndaga are not disclosed anywhere in the record, so two approvals are still to close. The money is raised, and A$160.9 million of it sits in escrow against a cost-to-complete test. A fixed-price contract sits with GR Engineering, whose current contract book is set out in Section 9, and there is concrete in the ground.

The first gold date has not moved across nine statements over seven months, four of them since construction commenced. Most ASX gold developers of this size are still at study stage and still raising construction capital. Brightstar has raised what it needs.

What the company has already done

The financing is better than it looks at first glance. A 12.5 per cent coupon reads as expensive, and against a bank facility it is. There are no warrants, no royalties, no streams and no mandatory hedging, so every dollar of gold price upside stays with shareholders. Brightstar paid a high coupon, and a coupon can be refinanced once a mill is running, at the cost of the make-whole payments and call premiums Section 10 sets out. A royalty or a stream cannot be refinanced at any price. Section 14 also notes that the refinancing is not optional if gold weakens.

The funded plan is only part of the story. Six years at 75,000 ounces a year pays for the business. The case for holding it beyond that sits elsewhere. The mill is engineered for expansion to 2.5 million tonnes a year, and the company has 4.46 million ounces of resource against a plan that consumes about a tenth of it. Rovira's answer on the six-year life was "absolutely not", and on the resource, "we're mining about a third of the global resource in the Goldfields". His denominator there is the Goldfields Hub resource of roughly 1.6 million ounces, not the group 4.46 million ounces.

What is not in the funded plan

Then there is Sandstone. Sandstone holds nearly 2.9 million ounces of gold[R2] in a greenstone belt that has produced over a million ounces historically and was never explored as one system, because it was split between separate owners. Brightstar put it back together and has drilled over 146,000 metres into it[R2]. The 2026 results at Two Mile Hill and Bull Oak are the longest Brightstar has published, including 305 metres at 1.8 grams of gold per tonne.[R13][R14] The model the company is following is felsic intrusive-hosted gold, a tonalite at Two Mile Hill and a granodiorite at Bull Oak. The same broad model hosts Thunderbox, Gruyere, Kanowna Belle and King of the Hills elsewhere in the Yilgarn.

The comparison is the company's, not Samso's, and it is a statement about deposit style rather than about size. All four of those sit in the Eastern Goldfields. Sandstone sits in the Southern Cross domain, on the other side of the craton. The intercepts are downhole lengths in a rock the company's own geometry says these holes ran along rather than across. In four of them a single sample of a metre or less carries between 33 and 90 per cent of the metal.

Where the risk sits

Ounces are not the only question. Samso's other concern is margin. Section 4 sets out the arithmetic. Brightstar is building a mill that will treat 1.7 gram rock trucked in from seven deposits, the nearest 60 kilometres away and the three Menzies ones 223. A tonne of that rock carries about a twentieth of a recoverable ounce, so every per-tonne cost is divided by a small number and every per-tonne cost overrun is a large number per ounce. On the company's own figures the cash cost does not move with the gold price, which means the margin is geared about two times the gold price and the net present value about three times it.

At A$5,000 an ounce the study's own table gives a 41 per cent rate of return and a 32-month payback rather than the headline 74 per cent and 17 months. That is not a remote price. Brightstar's own DFS 1.0, released on 30 June 2025, opens its sensitivity work with the words "the current spot gold price is approximately A$5,000/oz"[R4]. Below A$5,000 DFS 2.0 publishes nothing, and the Ore Reserve is struck at A$4,500. Those two prices do different jobs and Section 13 reads the second of them as headroom, which it is. The point here is narrower. Between A$4,500 and A$5,000 the current study publishes no economics at all. The only figures the company has ever published at the reserve price sit in the superseded DFS 1.0. Its Table 37 gives a pre-tax net present value of A$203 million and a 48 per cent rate of return at A$4,500 an ounce, on the smaller 6.4 million tonne plan rather than the one being built.[R4]

The gold price is therefore the variable that moves this company's margin fastest, and it is worth watching alongside the two dates below rather than instead of them. A high gold price covers a multitude of things, including a long haul, a modest grade and a first-time operator. A lower one exposes all three at once. The put options over 60,000 ounces help, and they do not begin settling until FY2028, so the commissioning year carries the full exposure.

Two things stop that concern becoming a different call. At A$5,000 an ounce, the bottom of what the study publishes, the study's peak funding requirement rises from A$188 million to A$205 million. That figure is struck on the study's own pre-tax and ungeared basis and covers the Goldfields development only.[R1] The A$282.9 million of cash and restricted cash also has to carry the 12.5 per cent coupon on the bond, the A$37.0 million deferred put premium, corporate costs and the Sandstone programme the company says it is funding in parallel. Exploration and studies spending across the group ran at A$11.7 million in the June quarter, with corporate expenditure of a further A$4.1 million. The company publishes no Sandstone-only figure.[R25] The coupon runs at 12.5 per cent on US$120 million, which is about A$21 million a year at the company's own exchange rate.

That conversion is Samso's. Note also that the two figures do not cover the same period. The A$205 million is the project's peak funding across the whole build, part of which had already been spent by 30 June 2026. The A$282.9 million is a balance on that date. The build is funded on the company's stated basis. The headroom over the project figure is not free cash. And the Ore Reserve is struck at A$4,500, which spot is about 36 per cent above, so the reserve itself is not marginal at today's price. The margin compresses well before either of those breaks.

The Ore Reserve is 351,000 ounces. That is 8 per cent of everything the company owns and 26 per cent of the ground the feasibility study actually covers. And 30.5 per cent of the contained ounces in the funded plan are Inferred. At the one gold price both feasibility studies publish, DFS 2.0 returns a slightly lower net present value and a materially lower rate of return than DFS 1.0. Spot gold is about 2 per cent above the study's base case, which is not the same as a margin of safety. The company has never reported an achieved all-in sustaining cost. Table 22 sets out four Western Australian cases where a study was followed by an operating mine.

In the three that publish an achieved cost it came in above the study, by between 52 and 147 per cent, on studies struck one to five years before the year measured. The fourth has published nothing to test. The one blended parcel in which Fish ore was a large share recovered nineteen points below the recovery the funded plan assumes for Fish. The Ore Reserve was prepared in-house by a director whose short-term and long-term incentives both pay on reserve growth, and no audit or review of it has been completed. There is no gold revenue until the middle of 2027. And the ASX record shows the company withdrawing its Sandstone targets once, in April 2026, with the managing director having since restated them in recorded public interviews.

Why we land where we do

None of that is disqualifying, and most of it is normal for a company at exactly this point in its life. It is the reason to take this position knowing what is unproven. The company itself sets out the four conditions in its own going concern note[R3], quoted in full in Section 10. Release of the escrowed bond proceeds, commissioning on time and on budget, ramp-up at budgeted costs and sales at forecast prices. Those four things are what an investor is underwriting. Nothing in this workup should be read as saying they are assured.

The asymmetry tips the balance for us, and it survives the margin point above rather than ignoring it. The downside is reasonably well bounded, though less so than the funding position alone suggests. The project is funded through to first gold. The plant is a conventional CIL circuit built by people who build them for a living. The debt carries light covenants and no production-linked claim on the ore. And 60,000 ounces of put options sit across the first two years of production, covering roughly 60 per cent of the first full year and 20 per cent of the second[R3]. That bound has limits and they should be stated. The puts settle across FY2028 to FY2029, so they do not cover the commissioning year.

The study gives capital and operating cost at plus and minus 10 per cent in Figure 13, but runs nothing on recovery or grade, which are the two variables Section 4 shows the margin is most exposed to. So the bound is part calculation and part argument. The upside is less constrained, because the market is not yet paying full price for Sandstone's Inferred ounces and the drilled footprint keeps getting bigger. It is not unbounded either. A bid ends the plan, as Section 14 sets out, and the second plant has still to be funded.

One smaller piece of optionality is the first evidence that the mill is worth something to the district and not only to Brightstar. On 15 September 2026 the company signed a non-binding heads of agreement with Panther Metals over Panther's Burtville East deposit, about 25 kilometres away. Brightstar would fund, mine, haul and treat the ore, and the two would split the net proceeds equally once Brightstar has recovered its costs[R35]. Panther's own 2025 scoping study put Burtville East at 112,000 tonnes at 2.46 grams of gold per tonne for production of about 8,900 ounces over roughly six months, at a net present value of A$26.6 million. Brightstar's announcement prints the same figure as about 9,000 ounces in its highlights.[R35] Both are as published, and Brightstar states it has not independently verified the study. That is a small number against a 1.5 million tonne a year plant, and the agreement is non-binding, subject to definitive documents and regulatory approvals.

It is better read as a template than as a contribution. A mill with spare capacity in a district full of stranded deposits is a different asset from a mill that only treats its owner's ore, and this is the first transaction that tests whether that is true here.

At an enterprise value of roughly A$116 per resource ounce Brightstar is the cheapest in its peer group, and at A$152 an ounce, counting only the cash it can spend, the second cheapest behind Astral at A$134. Section 13 shows both. The market is not paying for the Inferred ounces, and that is a rational thing for the market to do until those ounces are drilled out. It is also exactly the discount that closes when they are.

What to watch next

Two dates decide the next twelve months. The Sandstone Pre-Feasibility Study and maiden Ore Reserve, due in the December 2026 quarter[R3], having already been targeted first for mid-2026 and then for the September 2026 quarter. And first gold at Laverton, targeted for the June 2027 quarter. Both are checkable events with dates on them, and an investor will know within twelve months whether they landed. They sit inside a longer sequence that is worth having in one place.

We are not putting a price on it, because Samso does not publish price targets or valuations. The work has been done and the money is in the bank. The concrete is poured and the company is in the execution phase. That is the point at which a position becomes worth considering, and it is why we have made the call we have.

This is a construction story, and the quarterly reports are where the evidence will appear. Do your own work on them.

16 References and Sources

Every source used in this workup is listed below with its date. Each entry carries an identifier, and the same identifier appears in the body at the point that source is used, so any number, quotation or finding here can be traced back to the document behind it in one step.

[R1] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Updated Goldfields Feasibility Study", ASX announcement, 29 January 2026.

[R2] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Sandstone Mineral Resource Grows to 2.9Moz", ASX announcement, 15 July 2026.

[R3] Brightstar Resources Limited, Annual Report to Shareholders for the year ended 30 June 2026, ASX announcement, 4 September 2026.

[R4] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Menzies and Laverton Gold Projects Feasibility Study", ASX announcement, 30 June 2025.

[R5] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Strategic Acquisition of Aurumin Consolidates Sandstone", ASX announcement, 21 July 2025.

[R6] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Aurumin Scheme Approved - Group MRE Grows to 3.9Moz Au", ASX announcement, 20 November 2025.

[R7] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Group Resource Update Underpins Future Mining", ASX announcement, 19 May 2025.

[R8] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Menzies Mineral Resource increases 22% to 0.7Moz @ 1.5g/t", ASX announcement, 11 December 2025.

[R9] Brightstar Resources Limited, Diggers and Dealers Presentation, ASX announcement, 5 August 2026.

[R10] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Maiden Underground Ore Reserves Underpins FY26 Production", ASX announcement, 26 June 2025.

[R11] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Sandstone Strategic Plan to Deliver Long-Life Production Hub", ASX announcement, 27 January 2026.

[R12] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Lord Byron RC Drilling Results and Mineral Resource Upgrade", ASX announcement, 12 January 2026.

[R13] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Spectacular 305m @ 1.8g/t Au in Sandstone extension drilling", ASX announcement, 3 August 2026.

[R14] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Wide, high-grade intercepts from Two Mile Hill drilling", ASX announcement, 27 August 2026.

[R15] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Significant visible gold in 500m mineralised intersection", ASX announcement, 25 August 2026.

[R16] Brightstar Resources Limited, "High Grade Exploration Success Continues at Sandstone", ASX announcement, 7 September 2026.

[R17] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Sandstone Drilling Reinforces District-Scale Opportunity", ASX announcement, 8 July 2026.

[R18] Brightstar Resources Limited, "EPC Contractor Engaged for Goldfields Project", ASX announcement, 17 February 2026.

[R19] GR Engineering Services Limited, "FY26 Results, Guidance and Equity Raising", ASX announcement, 24 August 2026.

[R20] Brightstar Resources Limited, "BTR Approves Final Investment Decision at Goldfields Project", ASX announcement, 26 May 2026.

[R21] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Laverton Mill Construction Advancing on Schedule", ASX announcement, 9 September 2026.

[R22] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Goldfields Project Development Update", ASX announcement, 2 July 2026.

[R23] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Record Processing Campaign Delivers 7,900oz Au Production", ASX announcement, 20 April 2026.

[R24] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Quarterly Activities Report and Appendix 5B" for the quarter ended 31 December 2025, ASX announcement, 30 January 2026.

[R25] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Quarterly Activities Report and Appendix 5B" for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, ASX announcement, 30 July 2026.

[R26] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Strategic $180M capital raising funds Goldfields development", ASX announcement, 2 February 2026.

[R27] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Brightstar Secures US$120M Bond to Fund Goldfields Project", ASX announcement, 4 March 2026.

[R28] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Funding Package Completed - Fully Funded for Production", ASX announcement, 20 March 2026.

[R29] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Clarification of production targets and aspirational statements", ASX announcement, 14 April 2026.

[R30] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Building Mines and Growing Resources Presentation", ASX announcement, 16 July 2026, and Diggers and Dealers Presentation, 5 August 2026, being the two presentations carrying the Aspirational Statements section.

[R31] Australian Securities Exchange, last traded price, 52-week range and issued capital for Brightstar Resources Limited (BTR), 18 September 2026. The share count is cross-checked against the two Appendix 2A forms Brightstar lodged on 16 September 2026.

[R32] Peer market data, 18 September 2026. Last traded prices from the Australian Securities Exchange for Astral Resources (AAR), Pantoro Gold (PNR), Black Cat Syndicate (BC8), Minerals 260 (MI6), Meeka Metals (MEK) and Ora Banda Mining (OBM). Shares on issue, cash, borrowings, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves taken from each company's own most recent ASX filing, each dated in the table. Market capitalisation is shares on issue multiplied by the last traded price, calculated by Samso, because several data vendors carry stale share counts.

[R33] gold-api.com for the US dollar gold price and Frankfurter and er-api.com for the AUD/USD exchange rate, all as at 17 to 18 September 2026. The two exchange rate sources agree to three decimal places.

[R34] Interviews and conference presentations given by Alex Rovira, Managing Director of Brightstar Resources Limited, published on YouTube between September 2024 and August 2026. Quotations are taken from the published recordings and every company, project and place name inside a quotation has been confirmed against a primary ASX document. Repeated words and verbal fillers have been removed from the machine-generated captions without ellipses, which is this publication's convention for spoken-word sources.

[R35] Brightstar Resources Limited, "Acquisition of Laverton Tenements Enables Expansion Optionality for Laverton Processing Hub", ASX announcement, 15 September 2026.

[R36] Panther Metals Limited, "Panther Advances Laverton Gold Development Pathway", ASX announcement, 15 September 2026.

[R37] Peer cost track record, Table 22. Study forecasts are taken from six announcements. Meeka Metals, "Expanded Murchison Gold Project Feasibility Study", 12 December 2024. Ora Banda Mining, "Ora Banda Completes Davyhurst DFS", 30 June 2020. Pantoro, "DFS Confirms Attractive Economics and Mine Life for Phase One Norseman Restart", 12 October 2020. Black Cat Syndicate, "Kal East to Generate Strong Returns", 9 May 2024. Astral Resources, "Mandilla Project Pre-Feasibility Study", 25 June 2025. Minerals 260, "PFS confirms Bullabulling's potential to be a High-Margin, Large-Scale, Long-Life Gold Mine", 8 July 2026. Achieved costs are taken from each company's own quarterly activities reports. Those are Meeka 23 October 2025 and 22 July 2026, Ora Banda 29 July 2025 and 16 July 2026, and Pantoro 22 January 2025, 27 October 2025, 22 January 2026, 28 April 2026 and 30 July 2026. Ora Banda's attribution of cost pressure to diesel and industry wide inflation is taken from its FY2026 Annual Report. Black Cat states in its quarterlies of 24 July 2025, 29 January 2026 and 30 July 2026 that it does not calculate an all-in sustaining cost. Its quarterly of 23 April 2026 says the opposite, that guidance including an all-in sustaining cost is expected for FY2027.

17 Disclaimer

The information contained on this website is the writer's personal opinion and is provided to you for information only and is not intended to or nor will it create/induce the creation of any binding legal relations. There may be a conflict of interest present with commercial arrangements with companies and/or stock held. Samso or an associate may receive a commission for funds raised. The information or opinions provided herein do not constitute investment advice, an offer or solicitation to subscribe for, purchase or sell the investment product(s) mentioned herein. It does not take into consideration, nor have any regard to your specific investment objectives, financial situation, risk profile, tax position and particular, or unique needs and constraints. Accordingly, no warranty whatsoever is given, and no liability whatsoever is accepted for any loss arising, whether directly or indirectly as a result of this information. Investments are subject to investment risks, including possible loss of the principal amount invested. The value of the product and the income from them may fall as well as rise. You may wish to seek advice from an independent financial adviser before committing to purchase or invest in the investment product(s) mentioned herein. If you choose not to do so, you should consider whether the investment product(s) mentioned herein are suitable for you. The writer will not, in any event, be liable to you for any direct/indirect or any other damages of any kind arising from or in connection with your reliance on any information in and/or materials appended herein. The information and/or materials are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. In particular, no warranty regarding accuracy or fitness for a purpose is given in connection with such information and materials.

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This Samso Research Workup is independent research commentary for general information only. Nothing in this document is financial product advice, and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. Figures are drawn from public sources believed reliable at the stated dates but are not guaranteed; market-sensitive numbers change daily. Samso or associated parties may hold positions in, or have commercial arrangements with, companies mentioned. Seek professional advice before making investment decisions.

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