PRODUCERS, even the emerging and mid-tier ones tracked at The Calandra Report/TCR, are starting to realize approx. $1,900 and greater gold prices in their sales.
Gold sales are still below $2,000 an ounce yet demonstrate for small miners that there is demand for their concentrates, doré, bullion at near-market prices — without CFOs at these companies playing the derivatives hedging card that locks in greater prices but erases upside.
Two just in with their numbers:
— I-80 Gold IAUX IAU (Nevada) Production and sales totaled 2,349 gold ounces for the quarter at a realized gold price of $1,927 per ounce sold — report.
— Calibre Gold Mining CXB CXBMF (Nicaragua, Nevada) Record gold sales of 65,770 ounces grossing $126.9 million in revenue at an average realized gold price 1 of $1,891/oz — report.
I always check, and ask execs, if there are forward sales, derivatives hedging, options contracts — all which can limit reaping higher gold prices if (when) gold goes above its current $2,035 an ounce.
I-80 Gold tells me it had some “opportunity timed forward sales” but no long-term commitments that could lock in a price below fair market bullion price.
I-80, with its first gold sales from the Granite Creek Mine, also is paying down a gold loan and a silver deposit. Financing package with Orion here.
Let’s see the price that Victoria Gold comes in with for its first quarter. VITFF VCGX mined 37,600 ounces in this year’s first three months at Eagle Gold Mine in Yukon. I own those shares.
Speaking of Yukon, non-producer but active explorer Snowline Gold is seeing its shares rise almost daily. SGD shares just moved to the Toronto Venture Exchange from the CSE. Solid move — greater trading volumes. I own the stock. I believe SGD is looking for another 15,000 meters of exploration drilling at its Rogue property this season.
Colombia: A China miner, JCHX, is proceeding with its 50% purchase of Cordoba Minerals‘ copper project there, called Alacran. This in the face of a leader, Gustavo Petro, who is on-again, off-again radical, anti-mining. Report here.
Bodes well for explorers in the country, one of my favorite places. Ivanhoe Electric IE owns two-thirds of Cordoba CDB CDBMF.
LODE: I took in all of Corrado De Gasperis’ Comstock Inc. quarterly update last week.
Stock price, as we have been discussing in The Calandra Report/TCR, is on fire. I own some.
Several irons in the fire re: renewable energy; biomass fuels; real estate sales.
Corrado says of the hot-again, cold-again LODE stock that has a history of engaging adolescent buffalo investors in big volumes, says this time is different.
The Nevada silver property owner just sold a Sparks industrial building in a quick sale for $27 million after purchasing it for approx. $13 million. Comstock also is sitting on American Battery Metals shares ABML it intends to sell for an undetermined price.
Corrado is using the term AI-assisted minerals discovery and “quantum-probabilistic software in calibration testing” of what it hopes will be commercial biomass sales and critical metals recovery from waste. Jet fuel. Photovoltaic minerals recovery. Lots of physics.
This makes some nervous. Especially when Comstock uses the word “disruptive.”
“The market is starting to appreciate that all of our wholly owned businesses Comstock (carbon neutral) Fuels, Comstock (renewable critical elements) Metals and Comstock (gold and silver) Mining are disruptors and positioned for growth, not to mention our physics-based generative artificial intelligence unit that senses, simulates and engineers new materials and minerals.” That was Corrado in response to a question just now — today-Tuesday May 9, 2023.
The stock price has doubled in 5 weeks. LODE on NYSE.
The CEO VOWS NO NEW FINANCINGS, which as a rule dilute current shareholders.
The video quarterly call for Comstock is worth a view.
Gold price: another chart here — why gold could take it to the next price level, according to Al Marden, charter and longtime subscriber and metals investor in Las Vegas.
“These buyers are probably gone.” OK then.
The continuous gold contract at last look today-Tuesday May 9, 2023, was $2,042.
– Thom Calandra
Thom Calandra is a writer and an investor. Research and material are meant as editorial opinion. He is not a professional investment adviser. Please do not consider his reporting as a recommendation to buy or sell securities.