AIA Newsletter August 2026 — How to play the re-emergence of the Venezuelan oil industry

Venezuela sits on one of the largest oil reserve bases on earth, but decades of nationalization and neglect let the wells and equipment fall apart, so production collapsed. After the US operation that removed Maduro in January, the replacement government rolled back the Chávez-era rules that kept foreign companies out. New Stratus is a tiny Toronto-Venture-listed company trying to be first through the door — it already had a signed deal on specific Venezuelan fields before the invasion, and now intends to reacquire them.

The plan is deliberately unglamorous: no drilling into unknown rock, no exploration gamble. Hire proper oilfield-service crews, go back to wells that already exist and have simply been sitting idle, and get them pumping again. Whatever cash those wells produce pays to restart the next batch — a compounding loop rather than a single big bet. Polomny has run this play twice before and made large returns both times: Bankers Petroleum, which revived an old field in Albania and was bought by a Chinese company, and Hurricane Hydrocarbons, which revived a Soviet-era field in Kazakhstan.

What makes him think this management can get the deal: the CEO is Venezuelan and worked in the country's oil industry in the 1980s and 90s, and a former head of the state oil company and of OPEC sat on the board until 2023 — "they are people who know people." Insiders own roughly 40% of the shares and just put more money in through a $6.5 million placement, so they lose with you if it fails. The honest risk: this is a microcap in a country that has expropriated foreign oil assets before, and "still very speculative" is his own label. It is sized as a lottery ticket with real odds, not a core holding.

Abacus started by buying life-insurance policies from people who no longer wanted them, which means its core skill is estimating how long individuals will actually live. Its pitch now is that this skill is the real product: "we are the market maker of time." Every financial plan — when to retire, how much to withdraw, what to leave behind — silently assumes a lifespan, and today the industry uses population averages for everyone.

The example management gave: a 79-year-old with $8 million was withdrawing 2% a year (~$160,000) to be safe. Once his actual health-based lifespan was estimated at about nine years, the "safe" number was wrong in the other direction — he could have taken $317,000 a year and still grown the portfolio. Abacus wants to sell that estimate into policy valuation, asset management and financial advice, aimed at the $124 trillion that Baby Boomers will hand down over the next 30 years.

Polomny listened to the investor day and came away impressed with the roadmap — but he keeps the condition attached: "lots of potential if they can pull it off." This is an execution story, not a proven one.

Ivanhoe runs Kamoa-Kakula in the Congo, one of the biggest and highest-grade copper mines in the world. It had been recovering from an underground flood; this quarter production stabilized and is set to climb toward 500,000 tonnes of copper a year by 2028.

The interesting wrinkle is a by-product. Smelting copper produces sulphuric acid, which most miners have to buy rather than sell. The Gulf war knocked out a chunk of world supply, prices soared, and Ivanhoe's on-site smelter is now selling the stuff — which shows up as lower net cost per pound of copper. Alongside that, its Kipushi zinc mine is running flat out and the Platreef platinum project keeps advancing. "I remain bullish."

Utilities do not buy uranium at the daily spot price; they sign multi-year supply contracts at a negotiated "term" price. That term price just hit $97 a pound — a record — which is the clearest evidence of real, contracted demand. Meanwhile the shares of uranium miners have fallen hard.

Polomny reads that gap as the opportunity rather than a warning: the fundamentals set the term price, and sentiment is lagging. This ETF holds a basket of uranium miners, so it captures the sector's leverage without betting on any single mine's execution — his standing rule after watching junior names collapse on one bad drill result. "The price of uranium has a lot higher to go in my view."

This trust does one thing: buy physical uranium and store it. Owning units is close to owning the metal, so there is no mine to flood, no permit to lose, no management to disappoint. He calls it "a safe way to participate in uranium" — the conservative version of the same call — and notes it is currently trading below the value of the uranium it holds, so buyers get the metal at a discount.

Paladin is an operating uranium producer, and this quarter it did what it said it would: hit guidance, produce more, and sell at a higher price. That matters because most of the sector runs late and over budget.

The stock is nonetheless out of favor while the contract price of uranium makes new highs — the same disconnect as the ETF. His condition is explicit and unromantic: "as long as management executes, they should do well." Delivery, not the commodity, is the risk here.

PetroTal produces oil in the Peruvian Amazon. Right now it is doing maintenance — replacing pumps and tubing on four or five wells at its Bretana field, which is budgeted work that should lift how much the existing wells can deliver.

The bigger event is October, when the drilling rig goes back to work on new wells; management calls that the key catalyst going into 2027. Polomny acknowledges "management has had some slips recently," so this is a get-back-on-track story: fix the wells, restart drilling, and let a higher oil price do the rest.

Saipem builds the underwater infrastructure that offshore oil and gas fields need — the engineering-and-construction contractor, not the oil owner. Its half-year results showed order intake for 2026 running above 2025, which is the number that matters for a contractor: today's orders are the next few years' revenue.

It has also sold its shallow-water business to concentrate on deep water, which is where offshore production is actually growing. "Everything is going the way I thought it would" — this is his preferred way to own energy: the service layer, paid off multi-year backlogs, rather than the oil price itself.

Seabridge owns undeveloped gold and copper deposits — most importantly KSM in British Columbia, one of the largest in the world — rather than operating mines. It has no production revenue, so it must raise money to keep the project advancing. This month it arranged a US$100 million short-term loan from a strategic investor, drawn in $10 million pieces at 7% interest, maturing at the end of 2026, to pay for the summer field programs (roads, drilling, engineering data).

The whole thesis still hangs on one event: a joint-venture partner big enough to fund construction. He wonders aloud whether the recent fall in the gold price has slowed a pending deal, but is unmoved on the outcome — "I think a deal happens eventually, as this is one of the largest gold and copper land banks in the world." Note the reversal: he sold this out of the portfolio in July over the Valor spin-out, and it is back in this month's AIA Portfolio update list.

Amerigo does not mine. It processes the waste rock ("tailings") already dug up by a giant Chilean copper mine, which is why its costs are low, its capital spending is small, and it carries no debt. Last quarter it pulled 16.9 million pounds of copper out of those tailings with the plant running 99% of the time, and paid a record extra dividend of C$0.18.

The arithmetic on his own position explains the stance: bought at $2.00 in October 2025, he has since received $0.51 per share in dividends — a 25% return per year on the original price, purely in cash. He is candid that production can't grow much from here, so the stock isn't a multibagger; it is income. "This is currently a cash machine, and I will hold as I am bullish on copper."

Odfjell owns offshore drilling rigs built for the harsh weather of the North Sea. Aker BP just extended the contract on one of them, the Deepsea Nordkapp, by a full year — its guaranteed work now runs to the end of 2028, with options beyond that.

The point isn't the single contract; it's what it says about the customer. "Offshore operators in Norway have not slowed down on their work through all the price volatility" — the long-cycle offshore spending that pays Odfjell doesn't get switched off by a few months of weak oil prices.

This ETF is a simple basket of Chilean listed companies — a way to bet on the country rather than a single stock. Chile's economy has been shrinking (Q1 GDP −0.5%) with unemployment at 9.4%, the worst since 2021, and the new conservative president campaigned on fixing that.

His overhaul just cleared Congress: the corporate tax rate drops from 27% to 23%, newly built homes are exempted from sales tax, and companies can claim compensation when environmental disputes stall projects. In short, cheaper to run a business and faster to build things — which is exactly what a copper-heavy economy needs. "A step in the right direction and as we expected."

Hawaii's utility asked the market for bids to build renewable generation and battery storage on three islands, aiming to replace expensive oil-fired power. Polomny doesn't take a view on the filing itself — "interesting to see what happens here."

What caught his eye was buried in the announcement: Oʻahu consumes over 70% of the state's electricity, and demand there is "growing at its fastest pace in two decades" as cars and industry switch to electricity. For a regulated utility, growing demand is the ingredient that justifies building more assets — which is how a utility grows earnings. He's watching, not adding.

This fund holds high-dividend emerging-market stocks and was bought for its income. Prices have risen, and since a dividend yield is the payout divided by the price, a rising price mechanically shrinks the yield. The reason the position existed is fading, so it's under review: "I am evaluating whether to continue to hold this or not."

This is a sale on valuation, not on the company. Bought in 2021 when subsea energy equipment was hated and the business was just turning up, it returned over 700% across five years. Nothing has broken — he simply doesn't see another large move from here, and the portfolio's mandate is 3x–10x candidates.

He uses the exit to teach his own method: "a great example of buying something that was out of favor as it was inflecting. We held it for five years, which shows that for my style to work, one needs patience for positions to mature." Buy at the inflection, wait years, and sell when the remaining upside — not the past return — no longer justifies the slot.

Tidewater runs the world's largest fleet of supply vessels serving offshore rigs, and it made money for the portfolio in the past. But operations have gone sideways — "it has not done much on the operation side and has stagnated." Capital tied up in a name that isn't advancing is capital not working, so he's recycling it into ideas with more upside. Note he stays constructive on offshore generally (he keeps Saipem and Odfjell); this is a company-level decision.

A commodity fund tracking farm goods — corn, soybeans, sugar, coffee and the like. He is still bullish on agriculture; he just admits this position never belonged in this portfolio: a broad commodity basket can't plausibly triple, and the AIA Portfolio exists to hunt names that can. "It is not likely to be a candidate for a multibagger. Therefore, it will be sold and removed." A mandate decision, not a market call.

A basket of lithium miners bought on the expectation that the lithium price cycle was about to turn back up. It didn't. "I may have been early in forecasting a re-emergence of a lithium bull market" — and being early, in a portfolio built around 3–5-year holds, still costs capital that could work elsewhere. He removes it rather than wait indefinitely to be proven right.

One of Brazil's large private banks, held as a cheap emerging-market financial. The thesis never converted: "Bradesco really hasn't played out as I thought. I am selling and removing the stock from the portfolio." No accusation against the bank — just an idea that failed to produce the move he bought it for, cleared out in the same housekeeping sweep.

No new view this month — instead he passes holders an IMF technical paper on Uzbekistan's state-owned enterprises and the case for privatizing them. That's relevant rather than incidental: this fund's upside case largely depends on state assets being sold into a public market, so the mechanics and obstacles of that privatization are the thesis itself. "Could be useful for those invested in the Uzbek fund."