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Wednesday, October 7, 2026

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What I’ve Been Up To

Cogent Communications and AI data-center bottlenecks feature in a newsletter update on recruiting, financial media and conference takeaways.

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The ransomware software of Nubeva Technologies $NBVAF (TSXV: $NBVA) passed every test in a month-long third-party lab evaluation in 2023, and its biggest customer, Kroll, walked away anyway. In January 2022, Nubeva launched Ransomware Reversal, or NuRR, the product the company is now built around. It’s a lightweight agent installed on servers, desktops, and laptops that watches for the file encryption a ransomware attack produces, captures copies of the encryption keys as the malware generates them, and stores those keys on the customer’s own network. After the attack, Nubeva uses the captured keys to build a decryptor (a program that reverses the encryption) and hands the customer its data back, without the ransom. The only outside test of NuRR I found was a month-long evaluation in 2023 at DreamPort, a lab in Maryland (the test doesn’t appear to have been commissioned by Nubeva). DreamPort is run by the Maryland Innovation and Security Institute (MISI), a nonprofit that partners with U.S. Cyber Command to connect the military with outside cybersecurity products. Per Nubeva’s July 20, 2023 release, NuRR passed all 17 tests in MISI’s test plan and captured the encryption keys in every attack, including ones using the LockBit, Ragnar Locker, and BlackBasta ransomware strains. But less than two months after the MISI results, Nubeva lost its biggest customer: → January 2023: Nubeva named Kroll, the risk advisory firm that runs more than 3,000 incident-response investigations a year, as a strategic partner using the product in its ransomware cases. → September 2023: Kroll ended the relationship and paid $180,000 to walk away. It had been 86% of FY2023 revenue (~$1.78M of $2.07M). Neither company gave a reason in a filing or press release. But in a July 2024 video on Nubeva’s YouTube channel, CEO Randy Chou said Kroll sometimes brought in 10 ransomware cases on the same weekend, and “neither the partner or us as a complete solution could handle the emergency services.” In an October 2025 video, he explained the constraint further. Each new ransomware variant needs its own decryptor, which Nubeva’s engineers built by hand. With 10 to 30 attacks running at once, “you don’t have enough engineers to go figure out the new decryptor.” Chou added that Nubeva “simply cannot afford to scale” its support, “and that’s still the reality,” so it’s waiting on automation before it grows again. A longtime investor I spoke with, who has followed Nubeva for years and has spoken with people who’ve used NuRR in the field, described the same constraint. He also says Kroll’s exit is why Nubeva stopped trying to grow on its own and bet on AI to write the decryptors.
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McCreedy West had “a few weeks” of development (the tunnels that reach new ore) ahead of its miners and no stopes (the blocks of ore being mined) ready to go when Magna Mining $MGMNF (TSX: $NICU) took it over in March 2025. So Magna spent 2025 catching up and missed its H2 2025 grade guidance, shipping ore at 2.64% copper equivalent (CuEq, which converts every metal into copper at set prices) in Q3 and 3.41% in Q4, below the 2.9-3.4% and 3.8-4.4% it guided. 2026 has gone better. In Q2, McCreedy West set Magna-era records for tonnage (98,446 tons) and cash margin, and production costs fell to US$144/ton processed from US$156 in Q1. Through H1 2026, McCreedy West produced 8.62M payable pounds of CuEq (the metal the mill and smelter pay for after recoveries). It needs 7.4-9.4M lbs in H2 to land in the 16-18M lbs guidance range, so repeating H1 would put the year inside guidance. Costs are inside guidance too. H1 cash costs (operating costs plus smelting and refining charges, per payable pound) of US$3.63/lb sit within the US$3.40-3.80 range. All-in sustaining costs (AISC, which add sustaining capital and corporate overhead) of US$4.39/lb also sit within US$4.20-4.70. Both exclude the precious metals stream held by Franco-Nevada $FNV, which buys half the mine’s gold, platinum, and palladium at a discount. Magna says the stream adds US$0.78-0.92/lb at its 2026 budget prices. Magna’s first reserve estimate for McCreedy West, effective December 31, 2025, came to 987,000 tonnes of probable reserves, which Magna says supports three years of production at its 2026 mining rate. Three years sounds short, but CEO Jason Jessup says it’s “in line with the reserves that McCreedy West has operated with since being restarted in 2003 by FNX Mining,” and that Magna “could have extended” the reserves. McCreedy West’s Intermain nickel zone isn’t in the reserves or the guidance. Jessup wants nickel to hold “north of $8” per pound “for at least a quarter” before restarting it, and says Magna could be shipping Intermain nickel to Vale $VALE “within 8 to 12 weeks” of a decision. At ~$7.48/lb nickel, the Intermain restart waits.
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Magna Mining $MGMNF (TSX: $NICU) paid US$6.5M for a package of assets from KGHM $KGHPF, the Polish copper giant, including McCreedy West, now its only producing mine, and Levack, its flagship restart project. It paid ~US$3.7M in cash and ~US$1.4M in shares at closing, with ~US$1.4M due on December 31, 2026. It could also owe up to US$16.9M in milestone payments as the mines reach commercial production, including US$4.2M for Levack. Counting the milestones at their US$4.7M fair value, Magna valued the consideration at US$11.2M against US$25.0M of net assets. That’s why its 2025 results include a US$13.8M “bargain purchase” gain (US$25.0M − US$11.2M). It also took on reclamation liabilities with a fair value of US$9.8M and a precious metals stream held by Franco-Nevada $FNV, the royalty and streaming company, which it booked as a US$22.6M liability at the acquisition. Here’s Magna’s pipeline, from production to exploration: → McCreedy West (producing): Run since March 2025. All of its 2026 guidance comes from the 700 Footwall Copper Zone. → Levack (restart study): Connected underground to McCreedy West and idle but maintained since KGHM stopped mining in 2019. → Crean Hill (permitted): Past-producing nickel, copper, and precious metals mine southwest of Sudbury, Ontario, with a pre-feasibility study (PFS) due in the first half of October. → Podolsky and Shakespeare (later): CEO Jason Jessup pencils in Podolsky as the fourth mine “probably sometime in 2029,” and says Shakespeare, which would need its own mill, is “probably 5 years down the road.” → Exploration: 584 km² of claims across the Sudbury Basin. Copper pays most of the bills. In H1 2026, copper made up 68.4% of McCreedy West’s metal revenue, nickel 10.3%, and platinum, palladium, gold, and silver 21.2%. So despite the ticker (NICU, for nickel and copper), Magna today is a copper producer with nickel upside. Magna doesn’t own a mill. It trucks McCreedy West’s crushed ore to the Clarabelle mill run by Vale $VALE, pays Vale a fixed price per ton for trucking and milling, and sells the ore to Vale on delivery. It also has an ore selling agreement with Glencore $GLNCY for Glencore’s Strathcona mill. Magna’s financial statements report just two significant customers, and with McCreedy West’s ore going to Vale, changes in Vale’s terms hit revenue directly. In Q2 2026, a retroactive adjustment to the Vale contract roughly doubled the smelting and refining charges taken out of Magna’s revenue, to US$2.9M from US$1.4M. Incoming CFO Greg Huffman expects the charges to normalize in H2 2026.

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