Forgent

Shell valuation; upside is there.

Good Morning Team.

I like investing in shells.

Fundamentally, any AIM-listed stock is worth £1 million, because that’s what you pay if you’re a hermit crab. It’s the bare minimum ascribed to any listed vehicle with a clean balance sheet and a ticker.

That’s roughly where Forgent sits today, at a market cap of well under £1 million ahead of its latest placing.

For most stocks at this level, the market is right to be sceptical.

But behind that shell-level valuation sits a company that has, in the space of several months, restructured £5.8 million of debt, acquired a 99%-owned copper-gold exploration project in Western Australia, secured an option over a second large-scale project, mobilised a geological team to site, received a non-binding technology insurance offer from a global underwriter, and cut its cost base by more than 50%.

That’s not nothing.

Whether it’s enough — and whether management can execute — is the real question. But at £1 million, the market isn’t really asking it.

What Forgent Does

Forgent was, until February 2026, called EQTEC. The name change reflects the classic AIM strategic pivot, though the company is at pains to stress that its core gasification technology — which converts waste and low-value biomass into syngas, power and biofuels — remains central to the long-term thesis.

The pivot is this: while gasification projects take years to develop and commercialise, the company has bolted on near-term copper and gold exploration exposure in Western Australia.

The logic is that exploration assets can re-rate quickly on drill results. Gasification projects re-rate slowly, on commissioning milestones. Running both in parallel gives the company a continuous newsflow engine while the longer-duration technology business matures.

It’s a structure that small-cap resource companies have used successfully before.

The question is always execution.

Balance Sheet Reset

Before getting to the assets, it’s worth understanding what the company has done to its capital structure.

EQTEC entered 2026 in a precarious position. It had approximately £5.8 million of debt — a £5.1 million secured term loan and a £690,000 convertible — a dwindling cash runway, and a lender (Rebel Ion) that had suspended further subscriptions under an existing option agreement.

The language in the January 2026 announcements was blunt: without a resolution, the directors would need to consider formal insolvency proceedings.

That resolution came a month later, when the company completed a restructuring. The £5.8 million debt pile was addressed through a combination of equity conversion at the placing price, new zero-coupon long-dated loans, and a non-recourse structure in the Spanish subsidiary.

The result: approximately £1.93 million of secured, zero-coupon debt remaining at the plc level, with no near-term refinancing risk. A £1.3 million equity raise provided working capital. The GIS convertible facility was cancelled and creditors were settled in equity.

Is the capital structure clean? Not pristine — the Final Subscription Shares from the lenders (RiverFort and YA II) still need to be issued, and the April 2026 placing at 0.015 pence represents a further significant dilution. But the existential threat has been removed.

Green Rock: Near-Term Catalyst

The first and most advanced exploration asset is Green Rock, a 99%-owned copper-gold project covering 31.5 km² in the Ashburton Mineral Field of the southern Pilbara — a proven, Tier 1 Western Australian mining region.

The headline numbers from historical sampling are decent.

Rock chip samples returned grades of up to 54.5% copper at Ming Bore North, channel samples of 1 metre at 14.1% copper with associated gold at the Green Rock prospect itself, and historic small-scale production at Glen Florrie grading 13.6% copper.

Surface gold values run up to 2.2 g/t Au.

Of course, surface rock chips and channel samples are point-in-time, high-grade expressions at outcrop. They do not translate directly into resource estimates.

Grades at surface can be spectacular while the underlying system is narrow, discontinuous or shallow.

The critical unknown — which only drilling will resolve — is whether these surface expressions have depth and lateral continuity.

That’s what the maiden field programme, which mobilised to site in March, is designed to determine. The team is undertaking systematic rock-chip sampling across four priority target areas, infill sampling between historical results, stream sediment sampling, and structural mapping to understand the controls on mineralisation.

Maiden drilling is targeted for August 2026.

August is the catalyst. If the drilling intersects significant copper-gold mineralisation at depth, the re-rating could be quick.

If it doesn’t, or if the results are thin, the market will have its answer. That’s the binary nature of early-stage exploration — and it’s the reason the stock is where it is.

What’s notable is that the company acquired Green Rock for just $150,135 — $15,000 in cash and the balance in shares.

That’s a low entry price. The vendor retained a 1% working interest carried to $350,000. The deal structure was capital-light, which is consistent with the company’s stated acquisition criteria.

Peak Hill: Optionality

The second asset is Peak Hill, a significantly larger project covering 163 km² across five granted tenements in the Midwest region of Western Australia, approximately 80 km north of Meekatharra.

The company has now partially exercised its option, acquiring a 51% interest, with the remaining 48% still under option for a further five months.

Peak Hill is more advanced historically — nine defined prospects, historic drilling across multiple programmes, and infrastructure advantages including proximity to three operating gold processing plants and access via the Great Northern Highway.

Historic results include intersections of 2 metres at 21.9 g/t gold, rock chips up to 24.5 g/t gold, and copper values including gossans at 12.8% copper.

Early exploration in the late 1980s targeted gold and subsequently, the focus shifted to VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) base metals potential following nearby discoveries, driving extensive geophysical surveys.

Gold was never systematically followed up after that shift. The company’s thesis is that modern exploration techniques, applied to a dataset that has never been fully reprocessed with a gold lens, could define drill targets that previous operators missed.

The option structure on the remaining 48% is sensible. It preserves upside while limiting near-term capital commitment. The consideration for the 51% interest — $1.18 million, settled in cash and shares — is being funded by the April 2026 placing.

An additional point worth noting: in late March 2026, the company reported a notable increase in third-party Section 40E prospecting notifications at Peak Hill — formal authorisations submitted by individual prospectors to access the licence area.

These are typically concentrated in areas believed to be prospective for nugget-style gold. It’s anecdotal, but it suggests the ground is attracting attention.

The Gasification Business

EQTEC’s gasification technology — which operates at 750–900°C in a fluidised bed to convert waste and biomass into clean syngas — has over 125,000 audited operating hours across 11 years of continuous commercial operation. It holds three patents and has been tested across more than 60 feedstock types.

It’s active in the US, France, Spain and Greece.

Two reference plants are currently progressing through commissioning — one with Agrigas in Greece, and one at North Fork, California.

The company’s March 2026 update was sober: the priority is commissioning and stabilisation, not new contract wins. But it also flagged some opportunities: sustainable aviation fuel, where gasification provides a waste-to-syngas-to-fuel pathway; decentralised island and remote-grid applications, with Hawaii cited specifically; and the technology insurance development, where a non-binding offer from a global underwriter has now been received.

That last point is strategically significant if it converts to binding terms.

Technology performance insurance — covering the two-year warranty period and providing a site acceptance test backstop — would meaningfully de-risk the proposition for project developers and lenders.

It would also reduce Forgent’s balance sheet exposure to technology warranties and potentially accelerate project financing. The insurer has already conducted technical due diligence on the platform, which is itself a form of third-party validation.

The cost base has also been cut by more than 50% — a restructuring across Spain, the UK, France, Croatia and Ireland, with workforce rationalisation and establishment cost reductions.

The company describes this as a reset to 2021 cost levels. For a business targeting breakeven on the technology side in 2026, a leaner cost structure is essential.

The Bull Case

At <£1 million market cap before the cash injection, almost any positive development is a re-rating event.

A successful maiden drill at Green Rock in August 2026 — even a single intersection of meaningful copper-gold mineralisation — would attract attention to a company currently trading at shell value.

Junior resource stocks with confirmed drill intercepts in Tier 1 jurisdictions don’t stay at £1 million for long.

The gasification technology insurance, if converted to binding terms, changes the risk profile for project financing across Forgent’s pipeline.

That’s a structural improvement in the business, not a one-off.

The commodity backdrop is supportive. Copper is near record highs, driven by AI data centre buildout, electrification and constrained mine supply. Gold has been in a sustained structural uptrend. Forgent’s exploration assets are in the right metals at the right time.

The balance sheet risk has been materially reduced. The debt that was threatening the company’s existence several months ago has been restructured into long-dated, zero-coupon instruments. The near-term funding crisis has passed.

And there is a further option in the pipeline — the company has disclosed it is in advanced negotiations over an exclusive option on a nickel-copper-gold project in Western Australia. More assets, potentially more catalysts.

The Bottom Line

Forgent is not, shall we say, a wonderful investment.

The dilution is significant, the exploration is early-stage, and the gasification business has yet to prove its commercial repeatability. These are risks, and investors should weigh them seriously.

But at a market cap of <£1 million — less than what the market assigns to an empty shell — the stock is pricing in virtually nothing for the Australian exploration assets and nothing for the technology platform.

Keeping an eye on it.