Who is the next multi-bagger on Mark Creasy’s roster?

• At 80, Mark Creasy remains one of the most prominent resources investors on the ASX
• And he still has sway – the uber prospector’s largesse has helped Peregrine Gold and FMR Resources to big 2025 gains
• The latest on Creasy’s ASX (and LSE) portfolio

It’s 2025, and even at the age of 80 few investors have the sway of WA’s prospector extraordinaire Mark Creasy.

Look no further than FMR Resources (ASX:FMR), which has seen its shares more than double since announcing a deal to earn up to a 60% interest in a host of tenements at the Llahuin copper and gold project in Chile.

Partnering up with Southern Hemisphere Mining, the announcement on June 13 was accompanied by a $2.2 million capital raising at 16c. It brought Creasy on board as a major shareholder, his 2.05m share stake comprising 5.01% of the register.

There was more to it. Oliver Kiddie, a Creasy loyalist who previously worked directly for Creasy Group, and led one of Mark Creasy’s long-standing ASX investments Legend Mining (ASX:LEG) as managing director, also flew through the door as MD.

It shows Creasy had more skin in this game than his 5% stake in the $16m minnow would suggest.

He can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. While the long-term outcomes for FMR will depend on drilling success at the Southern Porphyry JV, the aftermath of his investment has seen the microcap run 150% beyond the placement price to 40c.

That’s influence.

It’s got us wondering, where else is the notoriously private British-born billionaire looking for value in 2025?

Under the radar

Your average punter would be familiar with many of Creasy’s success stories and the mythology surrounding one of the ASX’s most successful and calculated gamblers.

A mining engineer by training who first got into the outback life as an opal hunter, his decision to peg vast swathes of golden turf in WA’s remote Yandal province paid dividends when he made a motza selling the Jundee and Bronzewing discoveries to Diamond Joe Gutnick’s Great Central Mines.

In Sirius Resources’ 2012 Nova nickel discovery, on WA’s even less traversed Fraser Range, the main man further burnished his rich reputation.

Having reputedly claimed the ground while chasing wreckage from the Skylab crash near Esperance in 1979, companies backed by Creasy would go on to be the first and best movers in the WA nickel province.

A role in the 2023 Andover lithium discovery cemented his status as one of WA’s top mine-finders, a rare third tier-1 deposit after Jundee and Nova.

But Creasy’s scrip is spread liberally across ASX and international explorers and there are plenty of under the radar stocks where the ‘uber prospector’s’ magic touch could still yield a major find.

Among the most successful this year is Peregrine Gold (ASX:PGD), which is sitting on a 104% six month gain as of Monday, and has seen Creasy lift his stake from ~12% to over 17% since the start of the year after bankrolling most of an entitlement offer closed in February.

The partnership between Creasy and Peregrine has grown since, with Creasy striking a deal with Peregrine to tap gold material down to 50m vertical depth on three special prospecting licences over the Peninsula prospect at PGD’s Newman gold project.

It should see a flow of cash to fund exploration, with Peregrine to nab 60% of the net proceeds of any gold extracted by Creasy and his team.

Iron giant

While the Newman project has delivered bedrock gold discoveries at Tin Can and Tin Can West in 2023, this year’s gain has been down to two emerging channel iron deposit finds.

Both the Coopers CID North prospect and the Peninsula CID prospect, some 2.5km to the west, sit in world-class areas, 10km from BHP’s Western Ridge deposit and 21km from its famous Mt Whaleback mine.

Mt Whaleback is the largest open pit iron ore mine in the world, having grown to 1.5km wide and 5km long since its opening in the late 1960s, the development on which the inland Pilbara town of Newman was founded.

An 85:15 JV between BHP and the Japanese partnership of Mitsui and ITOCHU, any nearby discovery of scale would be a logical acquisition target for the Big Australian.

And those sorts of deals have proven popular this year as the Pilbara majors have reinforced their cash cow iron ore divisions.

Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue (ASX:FMG) acquired Red Hawk Mining in a $254 million takeover to pick up the Blacksmith project near its Solomon Hub, and a consortium led by Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) is on track to buy the Robe Mesa project near its Robe River JV for $75m from majority Creasy owned CZR Resources (ASX:CZR).

The 6.4km long Coopers is just 2km from Western Ridge with average grades from shallow samples of 57% Fe and as high as 61% Fe. Historical samples from Peninsula have graded between 56.9% and 60.2% Fe.

It would be a great time to find a new source of the cheap and easy to dig CID style iron ore in the region. BHP is bringing Western Ridge online from FY2027 as a 25Mtpa replacement mine to counteract depletion at the ageing Newman hub.

Profit raking

While he’s always had spectacular paper wealth, Creasy’s investments in the resources space have become increasingly lucrative for the octogenarian prospector in cold hard cash.

Creasy Group pulled out a $48.6m profit in FY2023, more than doubling to $106.8m in FY2024.

The critical feature there was the $1.7bn sale of Azure Minerals to SQM and Hancock Prospecting.

It was a two headed monster for Creasy. He made bank off the sale of his ~12% stake in Azure to the well-heeled partners.

But he also retained 40% of the Andover lithium project – now one of the world’s largest hard rock deposits.

The SQM-Hancock deal handily placed a valuation on his stake in the Pilbara find.

Another key contributor in the past financial year – results still to be reported – will be his control of the Warrawoona gold mine near Marble Bar, picked up off the collapsed Calidus Resources in 2024 and now run through the AIM Mining Corporation vehicle.

Saddled by out of the money hedges and high costs when it was operating as a listed entity, Creasy’s decision to acquire first the Macquarie debt and then to mop up the operations in a DOCA could not have been better timed to capitalise on gold’s run beyond $5000/oz Aussie.

The $75m sale of the Robe Mesa project to the Rio Tinto led Robe River JV by CZR is also likely to end with a distribution to shareholders – the billionaire prospector chief among them.

Read also: WA’s Prospector Laureate has had another big year. Where else could Mark Creasy strike it rich?

Paper trail

On the paper side there have been some hitches.

IGO (ASX:IGO), Creasy’s largest single ASX shareholding by value thanks to its 2015 purchase of Creasy-backed Sirius Resources and Nova, is up around 10% YoY.

But at $5.44 on Monday, the lithium producer’s shares are well down on their highs, having commanded $16.57 at their peak in 2023 following the EV boom.

Galileo Mining is down 3% in the past year, but at 16c is well down on the $1.78 record it hit in 2022 as a PGE discovery near Norseman had punters frothing.

Zuleika Gold (ASX:ZAG), in which Creasy holds a 42% share, is up around 100% YTD after a spike in June when it announced progress in some court hearings related to historical matters against Catalyst Metals.

But it’s small fry by Creasy’s standards, with a market cap of just $16.5m.

While the value of Creasy’s ASX holdings are lower than they were a couple years ago, they’ve been supplemented by the float of Lexington Gold in London, which holds a large resource in South Africa’s Witwatersrand Basin in a partnership with Harmony Gold.

To check out all the investments identified through substantial shareholder notices and Top 20 reports on the IRESS platform, check the table below.

Source: IRESS, Company ASX announcements

*Lexington Gold reported in British Pounds

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