??Uranium Hits Triple Digits
CEO.CA Presents the Chairman's Briefing - January 18th,?2024
"Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold." — Joseph Campbell
Metals/Crypto Prices
In Partnership With
Klondike Gold Makes New High Grade Discovery; Intersects 90.55 g/t Au (2.91 oz/t Au) over 0.55 Meters and 5.49 g/t Au over 6.50 Meters at Stander Zone
Klondike Gold?is pleased to report prospecting and diamond drill results from the Stander Zone on the Company's 100% owned Klondike District Property in the Dawson mining district, Yukon, Canada.?Highlights include:
In Today's?Briefing?
Gold
Gold continues to chop sideways. The metal reacted positively to the airstrike drama playing out overseas, but recent hawkish talk out of the Fed reined it back in -?Remarks by Fed officials results in U.S. dollar surge and a strong drop in gold.
Fed governor Christopher Waller: “As long as inflation doesn’t rebound and stay elevated, I believe the [Federal Open Market Committee] will be able to lower the target range for the federal funds rate this year. I see no reason to move as quickly or rapidly as in the past.”
The big story in the gold arena is Barrick Gold's dismal full-year and fourth-quarter production results, which dropped yesterday (Tuesday, Jan. 16). With multiple misses (production, sales, 2023 guidance), the shares got pounded on both sides of the border, ending the session on the US side down 9.5% on heavy volume. The beating continues today (Weds, Jan. 17, mid-session)...
Barrick is the world's 2nd largest gold miner. What a shame - Barrick Gold reports lower preliminary gold output for 2023.
Barrick reported a 2.17% fall in 2023 gold output at 4.05 million ounces from a year earlier, which came below its forecast, and analysts' average estimate of 4.16 million ounces, according to LSEG data.
Copper production also fell 4.76% to 420 million pounds. Analysts had estimated 433 million pounds of output.
The lousy trajectory on Barrick's price chart also spilled over into Newmont, Barrick's JV partner in?Nevada Gold Mines?(NGM), the single largest gold-producing complex in the world. Investors are thinking that what's bad for Barrick will also be bad for Newmont as NGM's recent quarter was weaker than expected (NEM's estimated earnings release date is February 22nd).
With the two Bigs in the gold arena catching What For, the GDX printed an ugly reversal pattern on its price chart...
The Bears are having a ball with this price action.
Bulls can only hope that this is a big-ass bear trap.
Uranium
U3O8 Tags Triple Digits
Uranium continues its tear with futures prices carving out 16-year highs north of $105 (up 500% from its 2016 low).
Equities in the space have also seen their trajectories surge amidst all this buoyancy. Adding to the catalyst-rich environment is Biden's attempts to goose production of a new fuel type, not to mention the approval of legislation that would bar enriched-uranium imports from Russia -?Uranium Miners Surge on $500 Million US Enrichment Push.
The Energy Department is requesting proposals from US companies to produce a type of fuel known as high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, it said Tuesday. It plans to invest as much as $500 million in the projects and other ventures to convert HALEU into chemical precursors for nuclear fuels.
Most of the higher-quality names in the space show a similar price reaction to these recent catalysts. The following chart belongs to Athabasca Basin explorer/developer NexGen Energy (NXE.TO).
John Ciampaglia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management: “The global pivot back to nuclear energy creates opportunities and challenges. We need to rebuild supply chains that have long since disappeared.”
Kazatomprom Warns
Also bolstering the compelling underlying fundamentals underpinning this energy dense-metal - World’s Biggest Uranium Miner Warns of Production Shortfall.
London-listed and Kazakhstan-controlled Kazatomprom, the world’s biggest U3O8 miner, warned that it’s likely to fall short of its production targets over the next two years.
Shortages of sulfuric acid and construction delays at new development projects are creating production challenges that could persist into 2025. The company will update matters by the end of the month.
The setback adds to a list of supply challenges that have helped to catapult spot uranium prices to 15-year highs, with last year’s coup in Niger disrupting shipments to European reactors, and key miner Cameco Corp. lowering its production targets due to challenges at its operations in Canada. Many mines were mothballed as prices plunged in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, and now operators are racing to bring them back online as demand rebounds.
It's Go Time in The Basin
With ground access in the region freezing up nicely, a number of U3O8 explorecos are mobilizing drill rigs to the Athabasca Basin to commence winter exploration campaigns (some areas in The Basin are only accessible in the winter when the ground freezes).
A few headlines that crossed my screen in recent sessions include:
IsoEnergy (ISO.V) - IsoEnergy Commences Athabasca Basin Winter 2024 Exploration Program.
Skyharbour Resources (SYH.V) - Skyharbour to Carry Out Winter Diamond Drilling Program Totalling Combined 8,000 Metres at its Russell Lake and Moore Uranium Projects, Saskatchewan.
CanAlaska Uranium (CVV.V) - CanAlaska Plans Aggressive 2024 Exploration Programs.
Expect strong newsflow out of The Basin in the coming weeks/months.
Lithium
Bottom Pickers Sift Through the Carnage
Budget-conscious bidders have entered the lithium auction arena suspecting the soft, silvery-white alkali metal essential to our decarbonization and electrification journey has been punished enough, and that now might be an opportune time to begin accumulating -?AustralianSuper Swoops on Lithium Stocks After Price Plunge.
AustralianSuper, Australia's largest pension fund—overseer of A$300 billion in pension savings—is targeting the battery metal to ride a demand-trend its senior portfolio manager believes will play out for at least a decade. The fund is looking to double its exposure to 'local lithium equities' over the next five years.
Senior portfolio manager Luke Smith: “The biggest opportunities for us as investors at AustralianSuper is when the prices are at cycle bottoms.” Smith also sees an opportunity in nickel, cobalt, and graphite as key materials in the global megatrends of decarbonization and electrification.
The Melbourne-based fund raised its stake in Pilbara Minerals Ltd. to 6.12% earlier this month as it aims to reduce its underweight position in lithium equities, Smith said. It now holds about A$1 billion in Australian producers of the EV material, which Smith expects to increase to between A$2.5 billion and A$3 billion over the five-year period.
South Korean Battery Giant Takes a Piece of CNC
Earlier this month,?Agnico Eagle took down a 12% stake in Canada Nickel (CNC.TO) for $23.1 million triggering healthy gains in the company's stock. Then the shares got goosed good when the company dropped the following headline a few days back - Canada Nickel Receives Equity Investment from Samsung SDI.
According to the terms of the deal inked last Friday, Samsung will purchase US$18.5 million worth of Canada Nickel for C$1.57 per share, giving the battery giant an 8.7% stake. Samsung will also be granted the right to purchase a 10% interest in the?Crawford Nickel Project?for US$100.5 million, warranting a 10% share of the deposit's nickel-cobalt production over the life of the mine (plus the right to an additional 20% of production for 15 years, extendable by mutual agreement).
Crawford currently boasts the world's second-largest nickel resource of some 13.3 billion lbs (2.46 billion tonnes at 0.24% Ni). An?October 2023 feasibility study?pegs the project's after-tax NPV(8%) at US$2.6 billion with an IRR of 18.3%.
Capital costs for the buildout of Crawford's two open pits and on-site mill are expected to run US$3.5 billion. Over its anticipated 41-year mine life, total metal production should ring in at 3.54 billion lbs of nickel, 52.9 million lbs of cobalt, 490,000 ozs of palladium and platinum, 58 million tonnes of iron, and 6.2 million lbs of chromium. First production, 2027.
CEO Mark Selby: "As we advance the Crawford nickel sulphide project, it is critical to form long-term partnerships with companies that truly understand how crucial this production is for electric vehicle supply chains across North America and Europe."
A Bit of M&A in the Gold Junior Space
This is a micro deal involving a micro exploreco (Orford Mining). Still, you can't knock the percentage gains triggered by this transaction - Alamos Gold Announces Acquisition of Orford Mining Including the Qiqavik Gold Project.
The terms of the all-paper deal are meaningful as Orford shareholders get 0.005588 shares of Alamos for each share held, which represents a ~134% premium based on Orford's 20-day volume weighted average price (a ~114% premium to the closing price of Orford Shares on the TSXV on January 12, 2024).
Alamos is keen on Orford's Qiqavik and West Raglan exploration projects—a land package totaling over 168,336 hectares—in the Cape Smith Belt of Northern Quebec. The Qiqavik Project?hosts several new high-grade gold discoveries along a > 40-kilometer mineralized trend. The?West Raglan Project?hosts a number of high-grade Raglan-style nickel/copper/platinum group metal discoveries along a 55-kilometer mineralized trend.
A Fat Hit (via the biz end of the bit)
Snowline Gold (SGD.V) delivered more broad intervals of robust mineralization from the Valley target at their?Rogue Project?in Canada's Yukon Territory via the following headline -?Snowline Gold Intersects Strong Mineralization at Open Eastern Edge of Its Valley Target, Rogue Project, Yukon, with Drill Results of 383.0 M at 2.0 Grams per Tonne Gold from Surface Including 107.5 M of 4.0 Grams per Tonne Gold.
Three holes collared along the open eastern boundary of the Valley target corridor included the following values, all of which began within a few meters of surface:
CEO Scott Berdahl: "Today's results highlight the strength and scale of mineralization near the open, eastern edge of the well-mineralized, near surface corridor at our Valley target. V-23-066 is drilled through a gap in the east-central part of the target, carrying an average grade of almost 4 g/t Au over a 107.5 m downhole interval, within a broad interval of consistent, multi-gram gold starting from surface. Such grades are highly atypical of a reduced-intrusion related gold system. Additional strong grades in holes V-23-065 and -067 bolster the known scale of the eastern part of the system, where we are still chasing open boundaries of mineralization at Valley. As we await further drill results and metallurgical studies, this demonstration of robust mineralization in the eastern part of the target highlights a key direction for potential expansion of the Valley system that we will be testing in our upcoming 2024 exploration campaign."
Assays for more than 2,640 meters of diamond drilling from Snowline's 2023 exploration efforts are pending.
Hits of the Week
The notion of nuclear power in the oilsands has kicked round for decades, including the wild 1950s Project Cauldron proposal to detonate a bomb underneath the province to assist in bitumen recovery - Prospects for nuclear power have just brightened in Alberta
In a deal that would test Canada's new foreign investment rules, Solaris Resources (SLS.TO) said on Thursday that Chinese mining firm Zijin Mining Group plans to acquire a 15% stake in the Canadian miner for about C$130 million ($96.99 million) - China's Zijin Mining to buy 15% stake in Canada's Solaris
More than a third of adults report feeling fatigue most or all of the time, while diagnoses of burnout are at an all-time high. What is leading us to feel so exhausted? And how can we develop greater resilience? Extreme exhaustion and burnout: How it happens and what to do about it
Some children with cancer are receiving a new type of drug treatment far less toxic than chemotherapy - Exciting new cancer drug kinder than chemotherapy
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