The Capital Brief | NIC, AXL and DSM

We are pleased to share The Capital Network’s take on some key stock-specific events occurring over the past fortnight.

The impact of the ‘reliability of commodity supply’ thematic on trading across the all-important Materials and Energy sectors has faded a bit of late, as hopes rose that the heat might soon go out of the current Middle east conflict. However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the latter thematic’s death have been greatly exaggerated. 

This ‘reliability of commodity supply’ thematic is, of course, not just conflict-related, with financial market-focussed news services regularly running stories about key exporters of critical commodities turning off the proverbial tap.

Then there are other factors that come into play when investors are contemplating potential investment opportunities in the Materials and Energy space. These include whether a company’s mining operations and/or exploration projects are located in in mining-friendly jurisdictions or have superior cost efficiencies.

The stock-specific content in this fortnight’s TCN Newsletter cuts across these themes. It highlights recent news flow from three Materials sector companies: Nickel Industries, Axel REE and Desert Minerals.

These three companies are at varying stages of their development journeys and focussed on different metals. However, they all have a couple of things in common – their metals are at least in part leveraged to the decarbonisation thematic and their projects are located in mining-friendly jurisdictions.

Nickel Industries Limited (ASX:NIC)

Nickel Industries (ASX:NIC) owns a portfolio of Indonesia-based mining and low-cost downstream nickel processing assets.

On 24 June 2026, the company unveiled another two transactions that will see the company add to its existing high-pressure acid leach (HPAL) operations.

Both deals show the company is continuing to execute on its growth strategy in a capital efficient manner, in the process strengthening its position in the electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain that continues to go from strength to strength - EV sales have recently been given a kicker by the ongoing disruptions to the supply of fossil fuels, which has rattled the broader transportation sector across the globe.

In the first transaction, Nickel Industries acquired a material stake in PT Chengsheng New Energy (CNE), which owns a HPAL project.

The consideration for this transaction is a portion of Nickel Industries’ existing stake in the now being explored Sempala Project, which recently issued an updated JORC Mineral Resource of 1,095 million wet metric tonnes at 1.24% Ni and 0.09% Co.

Despite this partial monetisation of Nickel Industries’ existing large stake in Sempala, the company will still own 42% of this exciting resource project post completion of the CNE transaction.

In another positive coming out of the deal, Nickel Industries’ Sampala Project has been identified as the exclusive ore supplier to CNE, meaning the company will be both an equity investor and upstream supplier to the CNE HPAL project.

From a financials angle, with this deal being a share-for-share transaction, Nickel Industries will not be required to contribute any cash consideration for its 36% stake in CNE.

In the second transaction, Nickel Industries announced plans to acquire a 17.5% interest in the capital efficient PT Teluk Metal Industry HPAL project (TMI), an expansion to the company’s Excelsior Nickel Cobalt (ENC), for US$169 million.

Nickel Industries’ partners in the latter asset include a Korean-Japanese consortium.

Looking ahead, Nickel Industries’ Sampala Project has also been identified as the exclusive ore supplier to TMI.

The acquisition comes in the wake of the Indonesian Government’s decision to place a moratorium on new HPAL projects.

Axel REE Limited (ASX:AXL)

Axel REE Limited (ASX:AXL), a critical minerals exploration company focused on advancing its Caladão REE-Gallium and Caldas REE projects in Brazil, released a positive technical update on 22 June 2026 for its Woolrich deposit at the Caladão Project in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The announcement focused on test work designed to confirm whether rare earths from Woolrich can be recovered using in situ recovery, or ISR. ISR is a mining method where a solution is circulated through mineralised material to recover target minerals, rather than using traditional open pit mining methods.

The latest results confirmed proof of concept for Axel’s ISR approach. The company successfully recovered rare earths from Woolrich using a mild magnesium sulphate solution under test conditions designed to more closely simulate how ISR could work in the field.

The best test result, known as CLT-01, recovered 560ppm soluble total rare earth oxides, or TREO. This exceeded Axel’s previous best diagnostic result and confirmed that rare earths from the 128Mt Woolrich deposit can be recovered under ISR-style conditions.

The recovered rare earth mix was magnet-rich, with approximately 39% magnet rare earth oxides, including dysprosium and terbium. These are high-value heavy rare earths used in permanent magnets.

The tests also showed very low levels of impurities, including aluminium, iron, thorium and uranium, which is positive for potential downstream processing.

Axel plans to use the results to design its first ISR field exploratory test program at Woolrich, targeted to begin in the December quarter of 2026, marking the next step in testing a potential low-acid, low-impact and low-cost ISR development pathway at Caladão.

Desert Minerals Limited (ASX:DSM)

Desert Minerals (ASX:DSM) is a lithium and gold explorer, with assets located in Nevada, USA and Western Australia’s Goldfields region. The company is well-funded, with around $4 million of cash available, inclusive of a recently completed $1.0 million placement. This means Desert Minerals is well placed to advance exploration activities across its project book.

The company’s share price has rallied strongly since late April 2026, and has surged by around 260% since it listed on the ASX in October 2025.

The company has issued a couple of positive announcements over recent months.

On 10 June 2026, Desert Minerals announced that the drill program at its 51%-owned Scotty Lithium Project in the US state of Nevada had been successfully completed on time and on budget. This program used a targeted drill plan designed to test near-surface lithium mineralisation.

If pending assay results from the program are positive, they will be captured in any work towards creation of a maiden Mineral Resource Estimate for the Scotty Lithium Project.

Desert Minerals has also recently undertaken exploration work at its 80%-owned Mt Monger Gold Project, located in the Goldfields region of Western Australia.

On 7 May 2026, the company announced that Ultrafine soils sampling work at the Project had returned strong gold anomalism, with gold values of up to 112 ppb, defining a coherent north–north-westerly trend (Titan anomaly) through the central portion of the survey area.

The Mt Monger Gold Project already has an initial JORC Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate of 204,700 tonnes at 2.5g/t gold for 16,400 ounces at the Providence Prospect located 45km southeast of Kalgoorlie.

The company has plans to drill the Providence Prospect once access and native title procedures are formalised to test extensions of the Inferred Mineral Resource and increase the gold inventory at Mt Monger, dependant on results.