In short: Muddy Waters owns "just shy of 20%" after a proxy battle two years ago; new management (CEO Drew, a proven mine builder; a CFO from a major), a "relatively straightforward" project "with manageable capex," Oaktree and family offices on the register. "An incredibly asymmetric investment… totally dislocated from the market" — timing unknown. His own fund's controlled position.
Mayfair Gold is a small Canadian company trying to turn a gold deposit in Ontario's Timmins mining camp into a working mine. It is not producing anything yet, so the share price depends on how likely investors think the mine is to get permitted, financed and built. Muddy Waters owns just under 20% of it, and two years ago it won a proxy fight (a shareholder vote to replace the board), then brought in a new CEO who has built mines before and a finance chief from a large miner.
Brick's case is that the risk has fallen while the price has not: a fairly simple project with manageable building costs, a stronger team, and sophisticated new shareholders (a hedge fund from Oaktree wrote a cheque). He calls it "incredibly asymmetric" — a lot more upside than downside — but openly says he doesn't know when the market will notice, and that these things usually take three to five years. Keep in mind this is his own fund's largest public holding and it effectively controls the board, so this is a pitch from an owner.
56:03I'll give you an example. At the moment, this is all public, we own just shy of 20% of an asset called Mayfair Gold. We ran a proxy battle on that two years ago now. We've brought in an entire new management team that we're really, really happy with. Drew, the CEO, is a proven mine builder; brought in a CFO from a major who has done significantly more complex things than probably his day-to-day at Mayfair.
In short: Still unranked: "I'm trying to bring myself up to the point where I do a ranking… the resource statement around that deposit is different than the reserve statement. And I'm having trouble in my own mind getting a million minable ounces there. And if I can't get a million minable ounces, I'm not going to rank it."
Mayfair remains unranked, and the reason is a good illustration of Rick's size filter. He notes that the company's resource statement (gold that is probably there) differs from its reserve statement (gold that is economically minable), and that he cannot get to a million minable ounces in his own head.
"If I can't get a million minable ounces, I'm not going to rank it." A million ounces is roughly his floor for a gold project worth the risk of building — below it, everything that can go wrong with a big mine can still go wrong, but the payoff can't cover it.
52:09And I'm having trouble in my own mind getting a million minable ounces there. And if I can't get a million minable ounces, I'm not going to rank it. I haven't been able to do it yet. Okay. Tier one deposits.
52:34Or strong tier two. I'm not that picky, but it's got to be — I've got to see a million in-situ recoverable reserves. Okay. Helen wants to know, do we have a book list for oil and gas? A booklet? I don't know what that means. Oh, a book list. Like a book. No, I don't. I'm working in a different part of my life on an oil and gas boot camp. And probably because we haven't talked about oil and gas around my constituency for 20 years, we're going to have to provide a reading list to people before the boot camp.
In short: Studying it, no rating yet — likes the people and the Abitibi optionality: even sub-feasibility, ~1M oz could be consolidated by a neighbor with an existing mill.
Mayfair is a gold developer in Canada's Abitibi region that Rule is still studying (no grade yet). He likes the management team. What he likes structurally is the "fallback": even if Mayfair's roughly one million ounces aren't quite enough to justify building its own mill, decades of mining infrastructure in the Abitibi mean a neighbor with a spare mill within about 50 km could simply buy and absorb the deposit. So there's a built-in floor under the value even if the standalone plan doesn't pencil out.
10:22I'm assuming that gold's going to sell for $5,500 6,000. So, I can afford to be more generous. What I sort of like about Mayfair is even if they don't upgrade all of that inferred uh to measured and indicated uh and even if the million ounces that they have doesn't ultimately justify the construction of a standalone mill uh a million ounces uh with some more to add uh is the sort of thing that could easily cause it to be consolidated taken over by a neighbor.
Nothing matches this filter.
Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.