Year-to-date gain: 74.19 percent
Market cap: AU$620.21 million
Share price: AU$1.08

Firefly Metals is advancing its high-grade Green Bay copper-gold project in Newfoundland, Canada.

This year, the company’s aggressive exploration campaign resulted in a 42 percent increase in Green Bay's resource estimate, as well as a surging share price. In late October, Firefly released a JORC-compliant resource for the asset of 59 million tonnes at 2 percent copper equivalent for 1.2 million tonnes of copper equivalent.

A few days later, in early November, the company purchased the adjacent Tin Cove copper-gold project.

Firefly’s share price hit a year-to-date high of AU$1.31 on November 1, and then again on November 6.

Year-to-date gain: 59.09 percent
Market cap: AU$304.48 million
Share price: AU$0.175

Aurelia Metals operates three mines in New South Wales, Australia: the Peak mine in the Cobar Basin, which produces copper, lead and zinc concentrates; the Dargues gold mine; and the newly opened polymetallic Federation mine.

The Federation operation was up and running as of September 24, and Aurelia has now switched gears to developing its Great Cobar copper deposit, which is also located in New South Wales.

The project is accessible to the north of the New Cobar mining complex at the company’s Peak mine.

A prefeasibility study for Great Cobar shows that the brownfield development project can economically provide feed to the Peak process plant for at least five years, delivering a total of 47,000 tonnes of copper and 61,000 ounces of gold.

Aurelia’s share price saw its highest year-to-date value on July 11, coming in at AU$0.23 per share.

Year-to-date gain: 51.72 percent
Market cap: AU$23.59 million
Share price: AU$0.088

Lachlan Star is a copper and gold exploration company with a large portfolio of projects in New South Wales, including the Junee, North Cobar and Bauloora North projects in the mineral-rich Lachlan Fold Belt.

The company has conducted a series of exploration programs across these projects in 2024.

Additionally, re-logging of historical drill cores and geological work at Junee's Basin Creek prospect have revealed zones with high-grade semi-massive copper sulphides. The positive news flow helped drive Lachlan Star’s share price to a year-to-date high of AU$0.13 a few times in the third and fourth quarters, most recently on October 18.

In mid-October, the company began a 2,100 metre drill program targeting the copper-sulphide-rich system at the Basin Creek prospect and the previously reported historical high-grade intercepts.

Year-to-date gain: 42.62 percent
Market cap: AU$4.72 billion
Share price: AU$10.34

Sandfire Resources is a copper mining and development company with a geographically diverse portfolio.

Its biggest producing operation is the MATSA copper-lead-zinc mine in the province of Huelva, Spain. In Sandfire's first fiscal quarter of 2025, MATSA's copper equivalent production rose 4 percent year-on-year to 23,682 tonnes.

Sandfire also owns the Motheo mine complex in Botswana’s Kalahari Copper Belt, which produced 14,340 tonnes of copper equivalent for the quarter, a 67 percent increase year-on-year. The mine achieved first production in May 2023.

Sandfire’s exploration assets include the Black Butte project in Montana, US. Its interest in the project is held via an 87 percent stake in Sandfire Resources America (TSXV:SFR,OTCQB:SRAFF).

Share of Sandfire reached a year-to-date high of AU$11.14 on October 14.

Year-to-date gain: 25.9 percent
Market cap: AU$168.08 million
Share price: AU$0.37

Exploration-stage Encounter Resources controls a portfolio of wholly owned copper and niobium/rare earths projects in Australia's Northern Territory and Western Australia. It is also advancing large-scale copper projects via partnership and farm-in agreements with South32 (ASX:S32,OTC Pink:SHTLF) and IGO (ASX:IGO,OTC Pink:IPGDF).

The company's partners have released multiple news items so far this year. In March, IGO announced a significant copper anomaly discovery at the Yeneena project in Western Australia.

The following month brought news out of the Jessica copper project in the Northern Territory, where a South32 subsidiary completed assays on drill core, confirming "the presence of copper sulphide bearing veins and alteration signatures associated with iron oxide copper gold style mineralisation."

More recently, South32 launched a 2,500 metre diamond drill program at Jessica in October to test targets identified through seismic reprocessing and interpretations from the company's 2023 drill campaign.

As for Encounter's wholly owned projects, the company reported the discovery of significant copper mineralisation during drilling at its Sandover copper project in the Northern Territory in mid-May. It has also continued to explore its high-grade niobium discoveries at its Aileron project in the West Arunta region of Western Australia.

Encounter's share price climbed to a year-to-date high of AU$0.62 on June 24.