Regardless of the metal or mineral you pick, you have a good chance of finding exploration and development stocks with high-quality assets and operations divorced from the promise of their target commodities. This dislocation between price and potential value can be attributed to a handful of factors unique to the recent economic climate. Here are three to note:
- Inflation has made it more expensive to explore a project and develop it into a mine, making non-producing companies especially at risk of illiquidity.
- High-risk, high-reward assets with the potential for exponential returns are especially plentiful at the moment, with cryptocurrency, venture capital, artificial intelligence and fractionalized art, among many others, vying for a retail allocation alongside undervalued miners.
- High global interest rates, though on a downward trend, have left a more difficult capital-raising environment in their wake, raising the bar and the price for projects to justify a long-term investment.
Add to this junior miners’ propensity for volatility and share dilution, given their pre-revenue operations, the decade or so it takes to make a discovery and develop it into a mine, and the inherent complexity of valuing a non-producing asset, and it becomes clear that it takes a seasoned investor to recognize and capitalize on an undervalued miner. Someone who will not flinch when there’s blood in the streets, like the present moment, holding conviction in the ability of solid management, strong results and long-term commodity tailwinds to deliver shareholder value.
With the pool of prospective miners overflowing and PDAC 2025 wrapping up on Wednesday, there’s no better time to consider standout operators attending the convention whose portfolios and development track records have yet to be rationally reflected in their stock prices. Here are four names to consider, each tied to a different strategic commodity:
Benton Resources
Benton Resources is a mineral explorer with a diversified portfolio highlighted by its high-grade Great Burnt copper and gold project in Newfoundland, which houses a mineral resource estimated at 667,000 tons grading 3.21 per cent copper indicated and 482,000 tons grading 2.35 per cent copper inferred. The project’s six known copper, gold and silver zones span 15 km and are open for expansion, guided by highlight intercepts such as 13 metres of 8.31 per cent copper (GB-23-02) and 26.87 m of 7.18 per cent copper (GB-23-04). This is in addition to numerous untested geophysical targets and copper-gold soil anomalies, as well as the South Pond gold zone about 7.5 km north of Great Burnt, which houses a gold-mineralized system measuring over 2.5 km yielding up to 74.20 m of 1.43 g/t gold (SP-24-07).
The rest of Benton’s portfolio offers prospective exploration exposure to gold, silver, platinum, palladium, nickel and lithium, granting investors diversified upside potential backed by a leadership team with the multi-commodity experience required to generate value.
With over C$4.5 million in cash and stock in the bank, Benton’s expert operators are well-equipped to capitalize on rising demand for its target commodities.
Stephen Stares, Benton’s president and chief executive officer (CEO), spoke with Stockhouse from the floor at PDAC 2025, stating that “a lot of money has moved out of junior miners and even large-cap companies, whose record profits and EBITDA are tiny compared to tech stocks like Tesla where a lot of money is being funneled. But if you talk to big players in the mining space, they believe the industry is starting to turn around. It think it’s coming and very soon. Benton is putting out world-class intercepts and we’re not getting the credit I think we should be. The catalyst for the industry might be new major discoveries in good jurisdictions like Canada, and Newfoundland in particular, where some companies like Calibre Mining are starting to see some love.”
Benton Resources stock (TSXV:BEX) has given back 55.56 per cent year-over-year and remains flat since 2020, last trading at C$0.08.
West Red Lake Gold Mines
West Red Lake Gold Mines, another attendee at PDAC 2025, is advancing its flagship past-producing Madsen gold mine and 47-square-kilometre land package in Ontario’s Red Lake district, which hosts some of the world’s richest gold deposits.
The pre-feasibility-stage project houses a resource estimated at over 2 million ounces indicated and inferred, complemented by exploration upside through numerous growth targets, including the South Austin zone and McVeigh zone. Management plans to restart production in 2025.
The company’s portfolio also includes the 31-square-kilometre Rowan property in Red Lake, which houses three past-producing gold mines: Rowan, Mount Jamie and Red Summit.
Guided by president and CEO, Shane Williams, who has ushered numerous gold projects into production, West Red Lake Gold is on the verge of revenue generation with the gold price touching an all-time-high, though you’d never be able to tell based on its stock’s recent trajectory. Shares have given back 6.25 per cent since the signing of the definitive agreement for the Madsen project in 2023.
According to Gwen Preston, West Red Lake Gold Mines’ vice president of communications, “the disconnect between the price of gold and equities exists because investors haven’t been interested in gold for many years. The gold price has been strengthening despite that lack of interest because other forces have been pushing it higher, such as central bank buying, Chinese buyers and sovereign wealth funds, none of which buy gold equities. It takes Western investors to buy these equities and they’ve been doing very well with indexing, AI, whatever it is. But there seems to be a shift happening.”
“Falling interest rates expected under President Trump, geopolitical uncertainty, the awareness of debt and these things that have been nebulous for a long time – de-dollarization, de-globalization – are becoming very real in arenas around the world. These are all classic drivers for investors to put some money into gold and begin to resolve the disconnect with gold equities,” Preston added. “Additionally, producers from majors down to single-asset operators are flush with cash and being pressured by investors to put money into dividends. I’m a huge proponent of attracting more investors by making gold a yield consideration. If we put more money into the top of the funnel, there’s a better chance that it reaches farther down to make a difference for developers and explorers.”
West Red Lake Gold Mines stock (TSXV:WRLG) last traded at C$0.60 per share.
Commerce Resources
Commerce Resources is a junior miner developing its Ashram rare earth elements and fluorspar deposit in Quebec. The deposit houses simple rare earth (monazite, bastnaesite, xenotime) and gangue (carbonates) mineralogy featuring:
- A large-tonnage resource at favourable grade, estimated at 73.2 million tons averaging 1.89 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO) and 6.6 per cent calcium fluoride (CaF2) indicated and 131.1 million tons at 1.98 per cent TREO and 4 per cent CaF2 inferred.
- Demonstrated production of high-grade mineral concentrates (30-45 per cent TREO) at high recovery (60-75 per cent) as required by global producers.
- Potential to host one of the largest fluorspar deposits in the world, generating long-term revenue from the met-spar and acid-spar markets.
The company is also actively exploring the Eldor property, only 2 km from Ashram, which has yielded niobium intercepts as high as 24 m of 0.91 per cent Nb2O5 and 122.5 m at 0.62 per cent Nb2O5.
Supported by a growing market (slide 6) and a leadership team with wide-ranging rare earth elements experience, Commerce Resources is vying to become one of the lowest-cost producers globally. The Canadian government recently recognized this potential, granting conditional approval for C$2.6 million in funding from the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund.
Christopher Grove, head of corporate development at Commerce Resources, sat down with Stockhouse to comment on the disconnect between rare earth elements and their related equities, opining that ‘the most significant factor there is the dysfunctionality of the TSXV since the repeal of the uptick ruling in March of 2011. Prior to that, the exchange was trading near 2,600 points. It’s at about 600 points now, among the worst-performing in the world, primarily because it allows major Canadian banks to short sell unprofitable companies, like junior miners, leaving them with little in the way of defense.”
“We have also had lower prices across the board for rare earth elements,” Grove added, “which is arguably not indicative of long-term demand estimates for magnets in electric motors across the board. Economic deposits for rare earth elements are also extremely rare, with Ashram standing out for its extremely positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) in 2012. All we’ve done since then is optimize those economics – we’re looking to release an updated PEA by Q2 2025 – and we think the C$2.6 million grant from Canada is a significant vote of support for Ashram that should be interpreted positively by rare earth element majors, many of which we are in conversation with.”
Commerce Resources stock (TSXV:CCE) has given back 53.13 per cent year-over-year and 68.75 per cent since 2020. Look for the ongoing PEA and an application for funding under consideration at the Defense Industrial Base Consortium run by the U.S. Department of Defense to serve as near-term catalysts for a share price re-rating.
Purepoint Uranium
Purepoint Uranium offers exposure to a portfolio of advanced projects within the Athabasca Basin, one of the world’s premier sources of uranium.
Its most prospective projects reside along established mine corridors and on trend with major discoveries, and are actively operated in partnership with Cameco, Orano Canada and IsoEnergy, all Tier-1 names in the industry.
Additionally, its Denare West VMS project is optioned to Foran and adjacent to its McIlvenna Bay project (probable reserves of 697 million pounds of copper and 1.4 billion pounds of zinc).
Purepoint’s high-potential properties and high-profile partners, assembled by management specialized in geology and the mining c-suite, make it an ideal candidate for harvesting value through positive exploration, leveraging the uranium market’s expected long-term growth (slide 4).
Chris Frostad, Purepoint Uranium’s president and CEO, stated in an interview with Stockhouse from PDAC 2025 that “the uranium’s spot price represents only maybe 10 per cent of the overall market, while the rest of it is determined by long-term contracts, most of which occur privately, meaning we don’t see the prices they’re negotiating, even though they’re what the market should be paying attention to. Throughout 2024, we saw the spot price dropping, to the point where it’s gone beyond the long-term price and caused equities to fall. This makes no sense, as the long-term price has been steadily rising – reaching the US$80 breakeven mark to run a mine – and the supply gap from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has yet to be baked in.”
“I think we’re about halfway through a uranium bull run that has been masked by spot-price volatility,” Frostad continued. “I think we’ll see the long-term price edge up over the next year or two and hit US$100 or more. We see strength in the industry driven by the lack of access to fuel and we are geared in that fashion. Most of our projects are district-scale, sitting off of known deposits and trends, and we only have to come up with about a third of each dollar we put in the ground thanks to our joint venture partners, some of the biggest names in uranium. We know our projects have promise and the backing to delineate potential deposits.”
Purepoint Uranium stock (TSXV:PTU) is down by 59.09 per cent year-over-year and by 55 per cent since 2020. Shares last traded at C$0.22.
If you’re able to perform due diligence and verify mining projects’ potential to create value, and you possess an even-keeled, long-term attitude towards volatility as your explorers and developers prove out economical resources, you’ll be taking advantage of one of the most exponential opportunities available to active investors today.
Just take care to invest in line with your financial goals, diversify, keep a sufficiently large emergency fund, plus your preferred personal finance fundamentals, to ensure your time in the market is fruitful.
Join the discussion: Find out what everybody’s saying about these junior mining stocks on the Benton Resources Inc., West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd., Commerce Resources Corp. and Purepoint Uranium Group Inc. Bullboards and check out the rest of Stockhouse’s stock forums and message boards.
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(Top photo of core from Benton Resources’ Great Burnt copper project: Trevor Abes)