Coeur d'Alene Mines (
NYSE:CDE,
Stock Forum) reported a nice increase in mineral reserves Tuesday, upping their share price by 6.8% to $11.925, and continuing its 21% climb off its 52-week low over the last two weeks.
With resources totaling 255.4m silver ounces (up 15.9% from 2013) and 2.2m gold (up 12.3%), the company showed measured and indicated mineral resources totaling 386.3m silver ounces (up 26.6% from 2012) and 2.5m gold (up 1.4%).
Mitchell J. Krebs, Coeur’s President and CEO,
said in a news release, “For the past several years, our main focus has been to get all four of our mines up and running consistently. 2012 was the first year we devoted significant capital to exploration and we are starting to see the fruits of these efforts. We have spent $74 million in exploration expenditures over the past two years and will continue to fund exploration activities using a success-based approach focused on resource conversion. We believe a robust exploration program represents a high-return use of our capital based on the results we have achieved.”
In 2014, we plan to invest $23 - $28 million in exploration, including approximately $10 million in capitalized drilling, but may increase this budget if we receive positive drill results that warrant further exploration activity. We are continuing a targeted focus on resource conversion at Palmarejo, which we believe holds considerable opportunity for new sources of production.”
Coeur is the largest US-based silver producer. It has a market cap of $1.2 billion with 104.7 million shares outstanding.