NEW YORK – Silver this first of March, well, marches on.
The leaders in terms of equity gains are nearly all primary silver producers or junior miners extracting actual silver (and some polymetallic) from the bowels of Mexico.
Thus, First Majestic Silver Corp. (TSX: T.FR, Stock Forum) has quintupled its Canada-traded equity from the stock’s one-year low. Fortuna Silver (TSX: V.FVI, Stock Forum) in Peru and Mexico is a triple by that gauge.
“Silver is going to pop to $39-$44 and I’m going to short the s--- out of it. It’s still a commodity. Supply and demand still work,” says Robert Moriarty, editor of 321gold.com. Mr. Moriarty spoke to me from Florida, where he was checking in on the yearly BMO gathering of asset managers and metals companies.
I am not a forecaster. I prefer to accept what is. What is this first of March is this: silver is outpacing most commodities in percentage gains, both on the physical and the equity facets.
Few companies have enjoyed the gains in Mexico production and accompanying rise in share price as accomplished by Great Panther Silver (TSX: T.GPR and GPL).
Robert Archer of Great Panther Silver rang the closing bell at the NYSE in New York the other day. (Please see photo here, with Bob in middle, flanked by marketing consultants, Cliff Mastricola at left, James Macdonald at right.)
Mr. Archer has catapulted his Mexico silver company’s fortunes to new levels. Great Panther was one of the first companies to be featured in our Ticker Trax service. The stock was something like 40 cents Canadian two years ago, when I first met Mr. Archer in a San Francisco hotel. It is now closing in on $5.
I own the shares and have been selling a percentage as GPR (and now GPL on NYSE’s Amex) figuratively hijacks my portfolio – something about which I regularly rib Mr. Archer. I still own about US$120,000 worth (make that $135,000 worth this morning) of the Guanajuato and Durango primary silver miner.
Mr. Archer and his team, including Guanajuato mine manager Andrew Sharp, long have insisted the Guanajuato complex of tunnels and legacy mines was worthy of intensely high silver (and some gold) grades. Perhaps more importantly to investors, Mr. Archer’s Panther has regularly extended the depths and strike lengths of Guanajuato’s mineralization.
A 2010 deep drilling program at the Guanajuatito Mine cross-cut started at 100 meters and extended silver-gold mineralization to the 245-meter level from an original 80 meters. The new mineralization’s strike length: about 100 meters. The-so called Mother Vein, Veta Madre, enjoyed an intersect of 8.52 g/t gold and 1,300 g/t silver over a true width of 0.61 metres. The Panther’s website has a respectable longitudinal on all this Mexico drilling.
Another silver company that I have visited is attempting to meet requirements for a USA listing: Revett Minerals (TSX: T.RVM, Stock Forum) and its Troy Mine in Montana, which I have visited. I own about $1,000 worth of John Shanahan’s Revett and am considering purchasing more. RVM is a producing silver and polymetallic miner with a court-delayed project at Rock Creek, also in Montana. The shares appear to be cheap when one factors in the potential development of tortuously delayed Rock Creek.
SSP in British Guyana: Please see Bob Moriarty’s article after his visit to Sandspring Resources’ (TSX: V.SSP, Stock Forum) Toroparu copper and gold project in British Guyana. Bob of www.321gold.com reports that SSP’s team is spending just $5 per ounce on average for exploration costs. Mr. Moriarty’s article distinguishes between alluvial and lesser known elluvial placer gold and is worth reading. I visited the mine about two years ago. I do not own the shares. I consider the members of the Adams family that runs Toroparu – patriarch John Adams and sons Wes, Trace and assorted others of Steamboat Springs, Colo., along with President Abraham Drost and do-it-all Mr. Richard Munson – our friends here at home.
CALAIS RESOURCES: The Colorado miner and prospector (CAAUF) saw its stock in the U.S. halted the other day. The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission requires Calais Resources to file fresh quarterly reports. The SEC said in its Feb. 24 statement, “The Commission temporarily suspended trading in (Calais) due to a lack of current and accurate information … because (it) has not filed certain periodic reports with the Commission.”
I visited Calais Resources’ Caribou Mine in early February and wrote about the company: See Stockhouse coverage. Calais must run a fine-tooth comb through its financial statements going back many quarters (2005 to 2010) if it ever is to gain acceptance among investors.
Dave Russell, the CEO, chairman and 54-year-old Colorado miner who stepped into the company’s corporate office about 41 days ago, says he expects the financial statement repairs to happen soon. His COO, Dave Young, is a chemist who has been trying to cut corners and keep Calais alive with scants amount of financing the past year, Mr. Russell said.
“Dave Young's largest hurdle, from what I can see over the last year or so, was trying to work through boxes of financials and keep the company going without much financing to work with. In the past eight or so, the financing has come from close associates, friends and family and the company is getting repaired accounting wise and audit wise as we speak,” Mr. Russell told me.
We will see. Mr. Russell assures me none of the top three at the company – Mr. Young, mine founder and 40-years-and-running operator Thomas Hendricks and Mr. Russell himself – has sold any shares in the 80 percent or so run-up in the Pink Sheet shares after my first report was published in early February. See Stockhouse coverage.
“There was no intention of raising money to solve the debt situation before the financials are brought current with the SEC and BCSC,” Mr. Russell said. “I personally hold 100 percent of any shares I have acquired over time and have never sold one share. The specific reason I came directly into the company is that I have a very large investment in the Calais Company and I believe in the geological and mining assets.”
He said Calais will work with the SEC to “develop a timeline and filing schedule to bring the company current.”
The Caribou Mine has potential as a producing open-pit entity, according to my own visit and to conversations I have had with geologists, including Quinton Hennigh of Evolving Gold (TSX: T.EVG, Stock Forum). Still, CEO Russell must ensure investors, current and future, that he can get Caribou on track … and solve a debt load that runs above $10 million. Oh yeah, and change the Calais name, would ya?
Congratulations: Great Basin Gold (TSX: T.GBG, Stock Forum and GBG)officially opened its Burnstone Mine in South Africa the other day. I was there three weeks ago. Please see the video. It includes singing of the RSA National Anthem, pouring of liquid gold and, in a ceremony I participated in 13 months ago during my first visit, the planting of one of almost 600 indigenous trees at the site, which is cubby-corner to a sweeping corn field and sports grand vistas. In my second visit to Burnstone, I asserted that Great Basin Gold shares would see terrific levels of short-sale covering that will take the USA and Canada-traded equities to new highs. The company’s mines, at Burnstone and at Hollister in Nevada, are a wonder to behold.
Finally: I know I am repeating this, but the silver component makes it relevant this week. David Mathewson, Jonathan Adwe and team at Nevada’s Gold Standard Ventures’ (TSX: V.GV, Stock Forum) raised some $12 million Canadian, most of it from Albert Friedberg and family, who backed Paramount Gold several years ago. Gold Standard, as reported here on-site in November and December, is developing the Railroad gold and silver project near Elko, Nevada. When I was there in December, I did not get the silver story, which is developing. (Please see the details and our first-hand Ticker Trax and Stockhouse coverage.)
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