- The contrarian mindset: Most investors naturally avoid heavily discounted stocks due to herd behavior, creating an opportunity for value investors to buy out-of-favor small-cap and micro-cap companies before the broader market recognizes their true worth.
- Price vs. fundamentals: Value plays are synonymous with companies that pair severe year-over-year price declines with solid fundamentals, such as proprietary technology, exposure to critical mineral tailwinds, net asset value discounts or active profitability.
- Let the bargain hunting begin: We profiled five beaten-down, arguably undervalued stocks on the CSE for your due diligence, including Victory Square Technologies (digital health/tech accelerator), Powermax Minerals (rare earth elements), Aventis Energy (uranium, copper and gold), Humanoid Global Holdings (robotics/embodied AI) and MindBio Therapeutics (AI voice-based intoxication detection).
It’s a quirk of human nature that we’ll jump at the chance of buying groceries, medications, an appliance or a vehicle priced well bellow what they’re worth, but will recoil at the idea of buying value stocks, even if the underlying companies are brimming with long-term potential, simply because we’re social beings for whom going against the prevailing trend runs contrary to our nature.
Our shared desire for comfort by following the herd is, at the same time, an opportunity for investors capable of analyzing the consensus view about a company and proving it to be false, revealing a falling stock price to be a sign not to flee for the hills, but to back up the truck and invest at a discount, before the broader market catches on, piles in and erases the gap between current and fair value.
This article is a journalistic opinion piece on the best value stocks on the CSE written based on independent research. It is intended to inform investors and should not be taken as a recommendation or financial advice.
A reliable rule of thumb to identify potential value stocks is to limit your scope to small-cap and micro-cap names, whose nascent growth stories, thin trading volumes and minimal analyst coverage make it more likely for them to unfaithfully reflect the quality of their underlying companies.
This is why I’ll turn my attention to the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE), a leading forum for emerging companies, whose friendliness towards smaller, unproven ventures renders it an ideal setting for bargain hunting.
How I picked the best value stocks on the CSE
My first step to identify the best value stocks on the CSE was to organize stocks by largest year-over-year (YoY) loss, positioning myself to scan the exchange’s most out-of-favor names.
I then kept my eyes open for upside potential, backed by solid data, which could take the form of differentiated technology in a market ripe for disruption, strategic exposure to a rapidly growing market, current and growing profitability, or undeveloped assets with evidence for long growth runways ahead, with the goal of compiling companies trading at the largest discounts to this potential.
After pouring over financial results, investor decks and press releases with this framework in mind, five stocks in particular stood out from the rest. Here they are, organized by largest YoY loss:
- Victory Square Technologies, down by 44.83% YoY.
- Powermax Minerals, down by 83.04% YoY.
- Aventis Energy, down by 91.35% YoY.
- Humanoid Global Holdings, down by 94.57% YoY.
- MindBio Therapeutics, down by 95.77% YoY.
Now, let’s get into the finer details of these underlying companies to shine a light on what the market is missing.
The best value stocks on the CSE
Victory Square Technologies
Victory Square Technologies, market cap C$49.02 million, is an accelerator of venture-stage technology companies with a focus on digital health, healthcare infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI), Web3 and gaming, among other emerging industries.
By providing portfolio companies with capital and guidance from a specialized leadership team, Victory Square has turned several investments into exponential returns, including:
- Its flagship position in Hydreight (TSXV:NURS), a profitable digital health infrastructure company in the United States, which was valued at $109 million as of June 2026, up from an initial investment of US$1.8 million in VST stock. Victory Square receives a 10% profit share proportional to its ownership stake.
- A more than $1.4 million outcome from crypto miner Argo Blockchain, up from an initial $79,000 investment.
- A more than $1 million position in Covalent, a blockchain data company, up from an initial $50,000 investment.
According to the June 2026 investor deck, Victory Square’s portfolio commands a net asset value estimated at ~$170 million ($1.63 per share), more than three times its market cap, offering investors a highly mispriced entry point.
Furthermore, the overall company is profitable, taking in C$2.45 million in net income in Q2 2026 and C$6.5 million during the first half of the year. This demonstrates that, while portfolio investments are the epitome of early stage, their ability to foster shareholder value is in action today.
Victory Square Technologies stock (CSE:VST) last traded at C$0.48.
Powermax Minerals
Powermax Minerals, market cap C$2.91 million, is a junior mining company specializing in rare earth elements (REE), the key ingredients in permanent magnets, without which electric vehicles, smartphones, AI data centers and key medical technology like MRI machines could not function. The company is advancing three flagship projects with multiple avenues for exploration upside, each of which are worth a mention.
The 184-hectare Ogden Bear Lodge Project in Crook County, Wyoming, prospective for neodymium and praseodymium, is adjacent to Rare Element Resource’s Bear Lodge Project, where drilling since 2004 has spanned more than 500 holes totaling more than 285,000 feet, uncovering multiple highly prospective target zones.
Ogden Bear Lodge’s potential has attracted US$24.2 million in funding from the US Department of Energy, plus a non-binding letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States in March 2025 for up to US$553 million in debt financing.
The 9,416-hectare Atikokan Property, located in Northwestern Ontario, features REE anomalies across the district-scale land package up to the 99th percentile of Geologic Survey of Canada lake sediment sampling. According to the latest investor deck, these anomalies have been validated by radiometric and magnetic data, as well as high-grade cerium and lanthanum samples, offering Powermax a clear direction to pursue a large mineralized system.
Finally, the 2,984-hectare Cameron Project in Kamloops, British Columbia, prospective for REE, niobium, barium, cobalt and zircon, is supported by a rich historical dataset, which the company validated with a 2023 exploration program including 105 rock samples averaging 373.27 parts per million (ppm) REE ranging from 12.46-1,426.83 ppm.
Aided by CEO, Paul Gorman, who has led several successful mining companies and exploration programs over the past 25 years, plus a tight 41.61 million shares outstanding to cover future capital needs, Powermax benefits from an abundance of arrows in its quiver to keep positive news flowing over the coming years.
Powermax Minerals stock (CSE:PMAX) last traded at C$0.095.
Aventis Energy
Aventis Energy, market cap C$3.24 million, is another junior mining company that should be on value investors’ radars thanks to a trio of diversified projects tied to markets with well-established demand.
The 12,364-hectare Corvo Uranium Project in Saskatchewan, located in the eastern Athabasca Basin, is only 60 km east of Cameco’s McArthur River Mine, the largest uranium mine in the world, a proximity it backs up with historical outcrop grab samples up to 8.10% U₃O₈ and anomalous uranium in all nine drillholes from the maiden winter 2026 campaign, which successfully outlined a multi-km mineralized system.
The project, under a 75% option from Standard Uranium, boasts 29.3 km of strike along three magnetic-low and electromagnetic conductor corridors, granting it blue-sky exploration potential, with a supply gap for the low-emission energy source on track to widen as mine output halves by 2030 and reactor demand doubles by 2040, as detailed in slide 19 of Aventis’ most recent investor deck. A surface program at Corvo is currently underway in anticipation of further drilling in 2027.
The 3,675-hectare Sting Copper Project, located in Newfoundland and Labrador, is a 100%-owned asset hosting three historical copper zones where channel samples reach up to 14.3% copper over 3.12 m. Aventis validated these results with a 2024 drilling program returning up to 1.21% copper over 20.5 m (VB24-001), further aligning the project with copper’s expected 10 million ton supply deficit expected by 2040 (slide 14) driven by the metal’s starring role in the clean energy transition.
Also of note is the 863.16-hectare Seneca Gold Project in British Columbia, located only 120 km from Vancouver, a past-producing volcanogenic massive sulphide property with five target areas informed by historical drilling dating back to 1971. Intercepts are highlighted by 3.05 g/t gold, 20.28% zinc, 0.94% copper and 100 g/t silver over 2.6 m in drillhole SN05-57. Aventis will follow up on high-priority targets with planned geophysics and drilling on the project, currently under a 100% option agreement, to foster exposure to a gold market experiencing record demand (slide 10), surpassing the US$5,000 per ounce mark for the first time in 2025.
With a team of well-established explorers and mining executives in its corner, a robust target inventory across multiple highly prized commodities, plus a mere 9.27 million shares outstanding to flexibly raise capital for future growth, Aventis has re-rating written all over it.
Aventis Energy stock (CSE:AVE) last traded at C$0.32.
Humanoid Global Holdings
Humanoid Global Holdings, market cap C$5.47 million, stands out for offering diversified, differentiated and actively managed exposure to the potentially multi-trillion-dollar humanoid robotics and embodied AI sector. On top of that, the company is the first publicly listed issuer dedicated to the space.
Humanoid Global’s portfolio, spanning the sector’s value chain from software, to hardware, to enabling technologies, is grounded in stringent investment criteria and a long-term, partnership-oriented approach designed to facilitate the growth of some of the most exciting and commercially viable private technology companies in the market today. A few highlight holdings include:
- Agility Robotics, the developer of the first commercially deployable humanoid robot for logistics, warehousing and manufacturing environments.
- RideScan, an AI company innovating to increase the reliability, safety and efficiency of autonomous robots.
- Formic Technologies, whose robots-as-a-service offering provides automation solutions for a monthly fee with no CAPEX required.
- See the latest investor deck for a full portfolio breakdown.
The company’s strategic investments make it an important catalyst to counteract global labor shortages, rising labour costs and an aging population, leveraging rapidly falling AI and robotics infrastructure costs that position it for long-term scale.
A leadership team of proven technology builders, including recently appointed CEO, Sunny Ray, a founder of some of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is keen to deliver on this promise by tying Humanoid Global’s success to the meticulousness of its due diligence process. A multitude of portfolio milestones on the company’s Stockhouse news page serve as evidence that everything is progressing according to plan.
Humanoid Global stock (CSE:ROBO) last traded at C$0.12.
MindBio Therapeutics
The last value stock on our list, MindBio Therapeutics, market cap C$655,480, is developing the world’s first AI-powered drug and alcohol intoxication detection technology using voice analysis, whose potential to radically reduce costs, result times and invasiveness compared to products on the market today could have transformational effects on the mining, aviation, construction and law enforcement sectors.
After more than five years of clinical trials, more than 20,000 tests conducted and more than 50 million data samples analyzed, the company’s AI prediction model is now able to deliver a blood alcohol content estimate almost instantly with more than 85% accuracy, while predicting intoxication under its binary classification model with up to 88% accuracy. This technological step-change and the scale it opens up compared to legacy breath, saliva, blood and urine tests, grants MindBio a seat at the table when it comes to reducing the trillions of dollars in annual economic costs directly tied to drug and alcohol use.
The company has deployed its technology through a smartphone app, Booze AI, as it develops its Edge-AI kiosk for enterprise settings, which recently completed its manufacturing process in anticipation of an initial commercial pilot program later this year.
With a leadership team combining expertise in speech analytics, AI, software design, M&A and investment banking and software in place, branded as Intox AI, to expand the model’s utility to cocaine, cannabis and psychedelics, among other narcotics, MindBio is a clear front-runner in the race to screen employees in essential industries at scale for drugs and alcohol use.
MindBio Therapeutics stock (CSE:MBIO) last traded at C$0.09.
Takeaway
To invest in value stocks is to invest in companies under consensus pessimistic views, which your research has determined to be wrong, revealing negative sentiment to be evidence not of danger but of discounts.
While you may have to wait for years for the market to recognize these discounts, suffering through volatile price swings as leadership teams roll out their growth plan, the returns could be exponential, as the true extent of company potential shifts into full view.
That said, no future is promised today, so take care to diversify your portfolio, sizing positions according to your conviction, such that all of your best ideas have a chance to contribute to your time in the market.
Join the discussion: Find out what investors are saying about the best value stocks on the CSE on the Victory Square Technologies Inc., Powermax Minerals Inc., Aventis Energy Inc., Humanoid Global Holdings Corp. and MindBio Therapeutics Corp. Bullboards and explore the rest of Stockhouse’s stock forums and message boards.
