IPO Watch: Gold bull market turns old stomping ground into new hunting ground

• IPO market well and truly alive as bullish gold environment brings too floats to ASX in hours on Wednesday
• Right Resources is looking for a major gold find near NSW’s Gilmore Fault
• Golden Dragon Mining up 12.5% on first trading day

After a dearth of IPO activity in the first half of 2025, the dam walls have broken with the gold bull run powering a recovery in new ASX listings.

Signalling an increasing appetite for risk among junior ASX investors, some 36 companies have already hit the bourse in the first four months of FY26.

Many are chasing the precious metal, with high net worths and institutions alike hungry for the opportunity to back potential discoveries.

The latest one-two punch has been delivered by Right Resources (ASX:RRE) and Golden Dragon Mining (ASX:GDR), which listed within hours of each other on Wednesday.

It came after another two in a day salvo last Tuesday, a sign IPOs are back in vogue and capital is flowing freely for early stage exploration again.

That’s the sort of thing Right is planning at its Pilot project near Canberra in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt.

It’s in a region called Tumbarumba, where MD Graham Howard used to prospect for beer money as a geology student at the University of Canberra.

Now, 40 years later, the veteran explorer who played a major role in Newcrest’s Telfer gold mine and recently led mineral sands and rare earths developer VHM (ASX:VHM) is back on his old stomping ground.

“There’s a mob of us and we used to drive around and look for gold and pan gold back in the day over 40 years ago, and I was always curious why no one was really interested in this area,” he said.

“And it’s such a large area. And so I became involved in early 2024 and basically set the company forward as managing director.”

Gilmore golds

Right has over 90km of mineralisation proximal to the Gilmore Fault Zone, which hosts LinQ Minerals’ (ASX:LNQ) +1Moz Gilmore gold and copper project as well as Evolution Mining’s (ASX:EVN) +11Moz Cowal gold operations, one of Australia’s top producers.

Explored since 1855, it’s been overlooked, with very little modern drilling to speak of.

Permits are already in place for a 4800m diamond drill program to begin at the flagship Pilot project next month, part of 2089km2 of ground Right holds between its Tumbarumba and New England projects in NSW.

“It all stems back to there has been no work because everyone thought it was boring granite and that all came out of studies in the early 1950s and the rock samples from where they were taken to the north of Tumbarumba,” Howard said.

“Basically when they were doing the interpretations, they thought that sequence extended all the way to Tumbarumba and to the south of Tumbarumba, so it’s a misclassification of geology.

The aim is to find a large open pit style system like those Howard worked on at Newcrest, which was sold last year to the world’s biggest gold miner Newmont.

“I looked at this opportunity and said that there is potential for very large systems in this area, and no one has explored it. In fact, there are no drill holes in any of our major projects,” he said.

The undercurrent for this wave is the hot gold price, which has transformed the fundraising potential for speculative investment stories.

While it’s come off it’s all time highs, at US$3982/oz, bullion is at levels few thought it would ever reach not too long ago, powered by global economic uncertainty, a shift away from the US dollar and expected interest rate cuts.

Right went out for $8m and came to market with $10m after the IPO was oversubscribed.

“The gold price has really opened up the IPO markets at the moment,” exec director Lauren Robinson said.

“There are a lot of junior exploration companies going to float. We were really successful with our over-sub. We had no issues with the timeline of our IPO, got things away really quickly.

“I think it’s a good credit to the team that backs the company and the advisors that we’ve got.”

First day blues

It wasn’t a perfect first trading day for Right, which copped a 10% hit on debut.

Things were happier in the west for Golden Dragon, which lifted 12.5% after a $5 million float.

It plans to complete an initial 2000m drill program at tenements near Cue in WA’s Murchison, where it is flanked by major gold mining operations and mills held by Westgold Resources (ASX:WGX) and Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS).

You can read more about the Golden Dragon Mining float HERE.

More is due soon, with Sentinel Metals expected to hit the bourse at midday today and Golden Globe Resources slated for a Friday listing.