Beaver Creek's Young Leaders Panel Asks Who Follows Lassonde

Three mining executives, including Heliostar Metals founder and CEO Charles Funk, spoke on the Young Leaders panel at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit on September 22 about managing a mining company through a cycle in which gold, silver and copper have all set record highs over the past year.

The resource sector's standard advice to investors is to buy the management team before the deposit. The trouble with that advice in 2026 is arithmetic: the people it points to — Pierre Lassonde, Ross Beaty, the Lundin family — built their reputations over decades and are nearer the end of their working lives than the beginning. A Young Leaders panel at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit on September 22 put three executives on stage to address the gap, among them Charles Funk, founder and CEO of Heliostar Metals (OTCQX: HSTXF), who is credited with major discoveries at the Panuco project.

The timing is not incidental. Gold, silver and copper have each hit record highs over the last year, and capital that spent most of the previous cycle avoiding the mid-tier and junior end of the market has started to come back. That combination — high metal prices and a financing window that is open rather than jammed shut — is precisely the environment in which reputations get made, and also the one in which they get destroyed fastest.

Why the succession question is a valuation question

Investors in junior mining are not buying cash flow. In most cases there isn't any. What they are buying is a claim on a management team's ability to convert geology into an economic deposit and then either build it or sell it. That is why the Lassonde and Beaty names carry a premium: their track records are not one lucky discovery but the same outcome repeated across multiple companies and multiple cycles. Repetition is the evidence that the result was skill.

The practical consequence for a generalist investor is that a junior mining share price embeds a discount or a premium for the people running it, and that premium is not disclosed anywhere in the financial statements. When the generation that earned those premiums steps back, the market has to re-price a large number of small companies on the basis of executives with shorter histories. That repricing is already underway, and panels like the one at Beaver Creek are part of how the market forms a view.

The full discussion was covered by INN Precious Metals, which has been tracking the summit.

What a record-price cycle does to discipline

High metal prices are a mixed blessing for a developer. They lift the economics of marginal ounces, which means projects that failed a feasibility study at lower prices come back into scope. They also make it easy to raise money for projects that should never have been revived, because the commodity price assumption papers over a weak deposit. The distinguishing feature of the veteran operators the panel was convened to discuss is that they generally sold into strength and bought into weakness, rather than the reverse.

That is the test the current cohort faces. The specific decisions in front of a junior CEO right now are recognisable ones:

• Whether to issue equity while the window is open, accepting dilution to remove financing risk, or wait and risk the window closing.
• Whether to put capital into drilling that grows an existing resource or into generative exploration that might find the next one.
• Whether to build a mine into an inflated cost environment, where contractors, labour and equipment are all bid up alongside the metal, or to sell the asset to someone else who will.
• How much of the balance sheet to hold as cash against the possibility that the bull market in gold, silver and copper does not run as long as the consensus expects.

None of these questions has a single correct answer, and the answers are how a track record accumulates. A CEO who dilutes badly at the wrong moment carries that in the share register for years.

Heliostar and the market's reading

Heliostar Metals is the clearest listed proxy among the panellists for how this generation is being valued. The shares changed hands at 1.63 on the OTCQX as of 16:34 GMT on September 29, up 0.21% on the day from a prior close of 1.63, with an intraday range of 1.54 to 1.69. That is a wide swing relative to the net move — a reminder that liquidity in the OTC listing of a Canadian junior is thin, and that a modest order can push the quote several percent either way. The company's primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange under HSTR.

Set that against the broad market on the same day, which was soft: the S&P 500 tracker (NYSEARCA: SPY) was at $763.27, down 0.31%, the Dow 30 tracker (NYSEARCA: DIA) at $511.09, down 0.57%, and the Nasdaq 100 tracker (NASDAQ: QQQ) at $736.95, up 0.06%. A junior gold name holding its ground on a day when two of the three major benchmarks were lower is consistent with the broader pattern of capital rotating toward hard assets, though a single session proves nothing on its own.

What to watch from here

The useful signal from a panel like this is not the on-stage rhetoric but what follows it. Three things are worth tracking over the next several quarters.

Financing terms, not financing size. Announcements will emphasise the dollar amount raised. The informative numbers are the warrant coverage, the discount to market and whether the money came from strategic investors or a retail-heavy book. Cheap money attracted on hard terms is expensive money.

Whether the discovery record repeats. Funk's association with Panuco is one data point. The veteran names the panel was measured against earned their standing by doing it again somewhere else, with a different geology and a different team. The second success is the one that converts a reputation into a premium.

Insider behaviour at the top of the cycle. With three metals at record highs, what management does with its own shareholdings is a franker statement of conviction than anything said from a conference stage.

For investors, the honest position is that the succession question posed at Beaver Creek does not have an answer yet. It has candidates. The sector will find out which of them belongs in the Lassonde category the same way it found out about Lassonde — slowly, across at least one full cycle including the part where metal prices fall. Buying the team remains sound advice; the difficulty now is that the teams worth buying have shorter résumés than the ones investors have been trained to look for.

Key facts

• Event: Young Leaders panel, Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit, September 22
• Heliostar Metals (HSTXF): 1.63, +0.21%, as of 16:34 GMT Sept 29, 2026
• Listings: TSXV: HSTR / OTCQX: HSTXF
• Cycle backdrop: Gold, silver and copper all at record highs in the past year

Frequently asked questions

What was the Young Leaders panel about?

Held at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit on September 22, the panel brought together three mining executives to discuss their careers in the industry and how they approach running a mining company in the current commodity cycle. The framing question was succession: who follows the generation of Pierre Lassonde, Ross Beaty and the Lundins as the sector's most trusted operators.

Who is Charles Funk?

Charles Funk is the founder and chief executive officer of Heliostar Metals, which trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under HSTR and on the OTCQX in the United States under HSTXF. He is credited with major discoveries at the Panuco project and was one of three executives who spoke on the Young Leaders panel at Beaver Creek on September 22.

Where does Heliostar Metals stock trade and at what price?

Heliostar Metals has its primary listing on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol HSTR and a US over-the-counter listing on the OTCQX under HSTXF. As of the last trade at 16:34 GMT on September 29, 2026, HSTXF was quoted at 1.63, up 0.21% from its prior close, having traded in a session range of 1.54 to 1.69.

Why do mining investors focus so heavily on management teams?

Junior and exploration-stage miners usually generate no revenue, so investors are effectively buying a management team's ability to turn geology into an economic deposit and then build or sell it. Veteran operators command a premium because their results were repeated across several companies and cycles, which suggests skill rather than a single fortunate discovery.

What is happening with metals prices right now?

Gold, silver and copper have all reached record highs within the past year. That strength has coincided with capital returning to the mid-tier and junior segment of the mining market, which had spent much of the previous cycle starved of financing. Higher prices improve project economics but also raise the risk of marginal projects being funded.

What are the main risks for junior miners in a strong price environment?

Record metal prices can make weak deposits look economic and encourage over-raising or building into an inflated cost base, where contractors, labour and equipment are all bid up. Dilution at poor terms is the other recurring danger. The discipline that distinguishes strong operators is selling into strength and deploying capital into weakness, not the reverse.

Sources

• Mining's Next Elite Teams? Three Young Leaders Weigh In — INN Precious Metals

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