Hedley Widdup thinks these are the best gold developer names on the ASX

• Gold’s bull run has a way to go yet, says Hedley Widdup – central banks and conflict are keeping the market tight
• Developers are where the money’s flowing, with juniors now able to raise big capital and rerate fast
• There are three ASX names Widdup thinks could be 2026’s breakout gold devs … read on to find out who

It’s been a watershed year for the gold sector, clocking what looks like it will be the precious metal’s best annual gain since 1979.

US dollar gold was up 54.14% YTD as of Monday’s market close, rising to an astonishing US$4045.30/oz across – nearly – the first 11 months of the year.

Having run close to US$4400/oz in October, when tensions between Donald Trump’s America and Xi Jinping’s China were at their apex ahead of a trade detente, there are jitters that gold’s best days could be behind it.

But Lion Selection Group’s (ASX:LSX) Hedley Widdup, a fund manager who has tracked the gold market and led discourse on the mining cycle for two decades, believes the ingredients for a continued bull market are in the stew.

Central bank buying remains as strong as it’s been since the metal was used to hedge against inflation and war risk during the Cold War, Widdup says.

BRICS nations, in particular, have been net buyers since the gold price rolled over in the 2013 downturn – providing tightness as mined supply closely tracks incremental demand records.

“We’re a few years into this central bank buying (which) provides the tightness. I don’t know how long that operates for, but are we going into an environment where gold needs to be owned by central banks more than ever?” he told Stockhead over coffee in Melbourne.

“I think the conflict that seems to be popping up, you could argue we’re going into a globalised, more conflict-ridden world, which is sad but it produces an environment where a lot of these central banks need gold.

“Investors have wanted to own more recently because of inflation in the economy and uncertainty, and we’ve seen that outperform.

“But it’s only outperformed for a short period of time. It hasn’t happened for a long period where you go, well, we now need to roll out of gold into all sorts of other things.“

Well supported

While lines stretching out the door at ABC Bullion’s Martin Place shopfront drew headlines and curiosity, the feeling remains that generalist investors only have a toe in the water.

“The generalists, on my observation, are only just starting to take notice of this. So I think for that reason, we’ve probably got legs left in this,” Widdup said.

“You can never tell what that’s going to run to in terms of price, but I think it probably suggests that at US$4000, gold is well supported.

“North of there is icing on the cake, really, it just makes all the gold investments look more and more attractive.”

While there have been pullbacks, the former geologist views that volatility as part and parcel of a bull market.

With that set-up in mind, the area of the gold market where Lion is really bullish is in the developer stage.

Widdup already noted earlier this year that the sector was beginning to outperform the large caps in terms of share price growth, after gold producers initially led the precious metals rally.

Assessment and development phase companies lifted 81% to early August, above producers’ (at the time) 40% rise, on Lion’s numbers.

There is now ‘tremendous liquidity and earnings’ in the ASX gold space, Widdup says, reflected not just in the majors’ cash generation, but also in the capacity of small companies to access equity.

“An Ausgold (ASX:AUC) three years ago might have been able to raise $10 million bucks and that’ll be a big raise to catapult them forward. They just raised $80m,” Widdup said.

“Saturn Metals (ASX:STN), which is one of ours, raised $45m going back a month and a half or so. You go back three years, they were raising fives then.

“So you’re seeing those companies which have big, good projects but were struggling to raise money, they haven’t really changed the face of their projects in that time.

“It’s the gold price which has enabled them to raise that. They’ve now got the ability to do a lot of work, generate a lot of news and get rewarded for it in the market.”

Stocks to watch

Three developers with large scale production potential are at the top of Widdup’s watchlist heading into 2026.

One is the aforementioned Saturn, which is aiming to establish a large reserve at the Apollo Hill heap leach project near Leonora by the end of the year.

“I think they’re going to have a circa 2Moz reserve by Christmas. That is something which can then come to market to produce with fabulous economics, because they can apply bulk, low cost movement to their gold ounces,” he said.

“You can’t do that anywhere else in the gold market, particularly not in the junior developer market.

“Heap-leach processing and a very, very broad ore zone where they don’t need to be selective. So they can move material more cheaply than most other gold miners, and they can process it more cheaply than most other gold miners.”

The next is Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR), which has small scale gold production running at its Menzies and Laverton projects and plans to expand Laverton to ~70,000ozpa in the coming years.

But its real value proposition is in the consolidation of the forgotten Sandstone gold district in WA.

A scheme to acquire neighbour Aurumin (ASX:AUN) has been approved, taking its resource in the area to 2.4Moz at 1.5g/t Au, the majority of BTR’s overall 3.9Moz WA resource base.

“I think that has produced about 4Moz down to circa 50m on average. You strip that off, start drilling deeply as they’re doing, drill the resources that they’ve got there and that’s going to be a large ounce position,” Widdup said.

“In terms of reported metrics, it’s not that large at the moment but I think of that as a 5Moz opportunity.

“They’re going to be announcing feasibility numbers on that sometime through next year. I think that’s an asset which is going to come to prominence in the next couple of years in terms of not only ounces, but ‘producability’ from it.”

The last is Medallion Metals (ASX:MM8), the owner of the +1Moz Ravensthorpe gold and copper project, which has identified a low cost path to market via the proposed and now binding acquisition of IGO’s Forrestania Nickel Operations.

They include the Cosmic Boy mill, a flotation plant that will be repurposed to treat sulphide ores from Ravensthorpe, around 160km to the south.

“They’re going to come to production very rapidly compared to what the normal pathway is, and they’re going into 2026 looking like the next serious gold producer coming to market that came from nowhere,” Widdup said.

“The valuation reflects that. But if you compare them to similar size peers with similar cost structures and outlooks, there’s a long way for them to go and a lot of the risk is coming out of that [and] is coming out very quickly.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Ausgold, Medallion Metals and Brightstar Resources are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.