Another glowing report from Purcell The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Tuesday was a so-so 88-93-119 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose seven points to 961 and polished diamond prices edged higher. Dermot Desmond and Stuart Brown's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) lost two cents to 67 cents on 361,000 shares. The company was a busier trader yesterday, gaining one cent to 69 cents on 2.55 million shares after it cheered the results of its January sale of rough diamonds, held in Belgium last week. The company sold 241,827 carats for $27.8-million, about $90 (U.S.) per carat, an outcome that Mr. Brown, president and chief executive officer, deemed "excellent."
That result seemed likely as the company had won the right to market a 157-carat diamond, now dubbed Polaris, that had been mined at Gahcho Kue late last year. The good news is that the stone, deemed to be of "exceptional quality," is still on hand: Mr. Brown says that Polaris will be sold in the February offering, along with other "high-value diamonds."
Mr. Brown attributes the average price achieved by the latest sale to the growing confidence amongst rough diamond buyers translating into a healthy price improvement, with prices up 8 per cent on a like-for-like basis when compared with the company's December sale. In that sale, Mountain Province sold just under 400,000 carats for $34.5-million, about $69 (U.S.) per carat, so it appears that much of the higher value is the result of a better mix of diamonds in the latest parcel since an 8-per-cent increase falls short of $75 (U.S.) per carat.
Mr. Brown expects the coming sale next month will produce another price increase, as "rough and polished markets continue to strengthen" after what was by all accounts a successful holiday retail season, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the latest sale, some of the improvement will be driven by increasing rough prices, but Mountain Province is also likely to use the sale as another chance to monetize some of its best diamonds, which it had been stockpiling last year.
Indeed, Mr. Brown is already ramping up his promotion of the 157-carat gem, starting with its newly-bestowed moniker. Gahcho Kue sits 250 miles northeast of Yellowknife and Polaris is the North Star, but that is just his opening salvo. The Polaris diamond, beams Mr. Brown, appears colourless in daylight but under ultraviolet light it "exhibits a rare natural blue fluorescence that echoes its Arctic origins."
That sounds pleasant enough, almost enticing as a concept, but ultraviolet light can make the homeliest of objects shimmer, and in any case, future owners of the polished diamond will undoubtedly be showing off their big rock in sparkling daylight. Either way, the rough gem and its lesser siblings look set to get Mountain Province off to a sparkling start in 2021.