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Wednesday, October 7, 2026

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

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Fajasy on X

The hoist at Levack, the flagship mine of Magna Mining $MGMNF (TSX: $NICU), was designed to move 6,000 tons a day, ~5.5x the record Q2 pace at McCreedy West, its producing mine. Most of Levack’s infrastructure is already built. Magna expects to finish refurbishing the hoist and the loading pocket where ore enters the shaft before the end of 2026. Magna is engineering a new ramp from surface (a sloped tunnel trucks can drive down) for the shallower zones, with the shaft serving the deeper Morrison ore. By mid-2026, crews had tunneled into the Intermediate Orebody (IOB), and Magna says mining the drilled part of the IOB “could begin immediately upon a positive restart decision.” CEO Jason Jessup said in July there’s a “very strong possibility that before the end of the year, we will skip first ore,” meaning hoist the first ore up the shaft, with shipments building through H1 2027. In the same interview, he said Levack and Crean Hill, Magna’s permitted nickel mine, are “both working towards commercial production in 2028.” On scale, he expects Levack to produce “possibly two to even three times” McCreedy West’s payable metal, which would make McCreedy West “our smallest mine within the next couple of years.” Magna’s first resource estimate for Levack (its estimate of the metal in the ground) found: → Contact deposits: 5.9Mt indicated at 3.2% copper equivalent (CuEq, which converts every metal into copper at set prices), mostly less than 750 meters deep. → Morrison footwall: 178,000 tonnes indicated at 15.5% CuEq, with the deposit continuing below the deepest drilling. → Total: 6.1Mt indicated at 3.54% CuEq and 5.2Mt inferred at 3.59% CuEq. Indicated tonnes come from drill holes spaced closely enough to support a mine plan. Inferred tonnes rest on fewer, more widely spaced holes, so their size and grade could still change with more drilling. Jessup says “the bulk of the PEA tons will come from the contact nickel zones,” so nickel matters far more to Levack’s PEA (preliminary economic assessment) than to McCreedy West, where it’s 10.3% of metal revenue. The PEA was due in Q3. On September 17, Magna pushed the PEA and Crean Hill’s pre-feasibility study to the first half of October to account for Canada’s proposed Productivity Mega Deduction. The deduction would let miners write off Canadian development spending right away, instead of deducting 30% of the balance a year, so both studies’ after-tax returns should come out higher. Jessup said of the PEA on September 24, “essentially it’s all done,” and he sees a “very high probability” of a restart declaration shortly after the PEA comes out.
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Fajasy on X

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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Fajasy on X

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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Calvin Blissett on X

$FSBW: Bought Pacific West Bank in August for 30m. Exp +7.5% EPS growth in 2027 due to this. PWBK has a 92% deposit mix NOT CDs. (attractive b/c lower cost). First Bancorp a bit cyclical due to home lending, consistent double digit ROE, conservative way to play eventual housing rebound. The problem was not that Pacific West had no franchise. It had a recognizable Portland commercial-banking niche, a relatively attractive deposit base, and specialized relationships with SMBs, nonprofits, professional-services businesses and digital partners. The problem was scale. Management acknowledged that Pacific West's size and market position made both organic and strategic growth difficult, while the cost and complexity of running a regulated community bank had risen materially after 2008 and 2020.
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Calvin Blissett on X

$ARTNA: microcap water utility at lowest P/E ever, 4% dividend. 9x cashflow. Family run for 115 years. Sussex county development expands regulated customer base. Wastewater growth engine. Its principal subsidiary, Artesian Water, is the oldest and largest regulated water utility on the Delmarva Peninsula. The company generates stable, recurring revenue by distributing and selling water and wastewater services to residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers under regulatory frameworks. In addition to its core regulated utility operations, Artesian Resources earns supplementary income from non-regulated activities including contract operations, infrastructure development, and service line protection plans, creating a business model that combines predictable utility income with service-based revenue streams.

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