MTA heads into the final days of April with a notable split in the ownership register: its biggest new shareholder is buying aggressively at prices well below the current market, while the stock itself drifts lower alongside the broader precious metals complex.
The dominant story this week is insider accumulation from an unusual source. Tether Holdings has been buying MTA shares every single trading day since at least April 14 — picking up roughly 429,000 shares over the past two weeks at prices ranging from CAD 6.84 to CAD 7.09. That activity has lifted Tether's reported stake to 9.73 million shares, or just over 10% of the company. Brett Heath, Metalla's CEO, simultaneously reported a fresh 3.45 million-share position as of April 27, bringing his disclosed holding to 6.78 million shares. The net insider buy across the past 90 days is just under 9.9 million shares, worth roughly US$67 million. The contrast is striking: both the company's chief executive and its largest new investor are accumulating at levels well below where the stock is trading — the buying cluster centered near CAD 7, roughly 20% below the April 29 close of CAD 8.82.
The stock, however, has struggled. MTA fell 6.3% this week to CAD 8.82 and dropped 2.9% on Wednesday alone. That's not an outlier in the precious metals space — peers across the TSX had a rough week too. PPTA dropped nearly 14%, fell 13.7%, and gave back close to 10%. MTA's decline of just over 6% looks relatively contained in that context, though the stock is off sharply from the insider buy levels, which suggests the buying was done through a private placement or structured transaction rather than open market purchases at spot.
Short positioning is negligible and tells no meaningful story here. SI holds at just 0.17% of free float — effectively zero. Borrow costs run around 1.1% annualised, and the lending market is fully loose, with availability at a small fraction of the 52-week high utilisation reading of 62%. Shorts have been covering steadily since late March, when SI peaked near 212,000 shares estimated; the latest reading of roughly 160,000 is down more than 21% over the past month. There is no squeeze dynamic and no meaningful short-side pressure to watch.
Valuation multiples reflect a royalty-company premium. The EV/EBITDA multiple has eased to 28.1x, down about 2.5 turns over the past month, while the P/E has drifted to 55x. Neither is cheap in absolute terms, but both are consistent with how gold royalty vehicles have historically traded against precious metals spot. Recent earnings reactions have been negative — the March 2026 print drove a one-day fall of 12.6% — so the stock has form for punishing disappointing results. No next earnings date is currently confirmed. Analyst coverage data is too stale to cite reliably.
What to watch: whether the Tether/Heath buying cluster near CAD 7 represents a floor in the stock's consolidation, and whether a narrowing gap between those accumulation prices and the current market level shifts sentiment as gold's macro backdrop stabilises.
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