Greatland’s Mark Barnaba and PLS boss Dale Henderson collectively pocket $17 million from share sales

Greatland Gold chair Mark Barnaba and lithium kingpin Dale Henderson have joined the mining cash rush, pocketing more than $17 million from share sell-downs inflated by record prices. Mr Barnaba, Australia’s best-paid non-executive chair via his $1.2 million gig at Fortescue, realised $13.2 million this week by offloading two-thirds of his 1.478m Greatland shares between Tuesday and Thursday, according to ASX disclosures on Friday. The sales came less than two weeks after his holding was released from 12-month escrow locks applied part of Greatland’s ASX float in May 2025. After a rocky first few months, the stock has leapt along with gold prices, gaining nearly 90 per cent over the past 12 months and hitting record highs above $15 last month. Mr Henderson, chief executive of Pilbara lithium miner PLS, sold 627,500 of his company’s shares for just over $4m on Tuesday, according to new filings. It marked his first PLS share sale since September 2023 and was done to meet “tax obligations” and for “portfolio balancing purposes”, PLS said. The sale represents about half of the shares acquired on-market by Mr Henderson since December 2024. He retains another 2.8m shares and vested but unexercised performance rights worth a combined $17.7m at PLS’ Friday close of $6.38, plus another 3.6 million active performance rights. Shares in PLS, which is the largest lithium pure-play on the ASX with its $20 billion market capitalisation, hit a record of $6.59 earlier this month. After this week’s sales of 978,000 shares worth nearly $7m at Friday’s closing price of $13.59, up more than 6 per cent. PLS shares have surged about 380 per cent over the past year. Mr Henderson has made some well-timed PLS stock purchases in recent years. In December 2024, he bought 500,000 shares at a $2.23 average and in June last year acquired 755,000 more at around $1.34 a pop when PLS’ price was languishing near four-year lows. The benchmark price of the spodumene concentrate all of WA’s lithium miners produce, including PLS at its Pilgangoora mine near Port Hedland, was around $US600 a tonne in June last year. It has since soared to about $US2600/t in the wake of mine closures in China combined with a wave of demand for battery energy storage systems. Mr Henderson has been a vocal lithium bull, even in comparison to his counterparts. While most miners of the battery mineral were battening down the hatches during the latter half of 2024, PLS inked a deal to buy Brazilian-focused lithium developer Latin Resources for $560m. PLS is currently in the midst of ramping up supply at Pilgangoora to capitalise on the lithium price rebound. The Ngungaju processing plant at the site is set to be restarted in July after being put into care and maintenance during late 2024. PLS boosted its bank balance by $501m during the first three months of 2026, its most cash-generative quarter since the 2023 lithium bubble. The company was sitting on a $1.46 billion pile of cash at the start of the current quarter but Mr Henderson said PLS would not rush to bring dividends back for the first time in three years.“We have a principle of maintaining strong balance sheet, we’ve seen that as a key differentiator for PLS in the market,” he told The West Australian last month.