Mining Monthly: October Edition
What you need to know:• Following strong performance in September, the precious metals again posted excellent returns, with gold being up 3.2% (to ATHs) and silver being up 4.1% (reaching its highest price in 12 years).
• The mining equities had mixed performance relative to the metals with the GDX up 1.3%, GDXJ up 5.7%, SIL up 10.2%, and COPX down 7.6%.
• Financings picked up massively in October as generalist capital returns to the mining industry, providing much-needed capital to the juniors.
• M&A also increased significantly in the month as the majors look to take advantage of historically low valuations amongst developers and explorers.
Sentiment Update
Gold and silver had another stellar month in October, being up 3.2% and 4.1% respectively. Gold hit another ATH in the month, reaching $2,789/oz while silver hit its highest price since 2012 ($34.8/oz). Over the last year, gold is up 38% and silver is up 42%, being some of the best-performing assets globally. During October, the GDX was up 1.3% while the GDJX was up 5.7%; demonstrating the improving performance amongst junior companies, which still trade at a massive discount to historical valuations. The SIL was up 10.2%, largely outperforming the underlying commodity. Despite the outperformance lately, the gold-to-silver ratio remains at elevated levels of ~80 compared to historical averages of ~60. The COPX was down 7.6%, underperforming copper, which was down 4.4% in the month as concerns about global economic growth continued.
This compares to the TSX which was up 0.7% and S&P500 which was down 0.7%. As the metals and mining market continues to outperform the indices, we expect generalist capital to flow into the space at accelerating rates.
Notably, October included a significant uptick in financings, as seen in the large Financing Section below. 28 financings occurred in October at over $10M, the largest we have seen in recent years. This plays into the trend of generalist investors returning to the mining industry, providing much-needed capital to advance prominent projects. We expect this to continue as precious metals remain a minor allocation to institutions and small changes make big differences to junior mining companies due to their liquidity. M&A also largely picked up in October as most explorers and developers still trade at massive discounts to both historical valuations and the valuations of mid/large-caps.
Endurance Gold is engaged in the exploration and development of mineral properties in North America and has not yet determined whether its properties contain ore reserves that are economically recoverable. The recoverability of the amounts expended on mineral interests by Co. is dependent upon the existence of economically recoverable reserves, the ability of Co. to obtain necessary financing to complete exploration and development of its mineral properties and upon future profitable production or proceeds from disposition of its mineral interests.
Nicola Mining is a fully integrated silver mining, exploration and development company.
Tempo Gold is in the exploration stage and is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of gold resource properties in Tanzania, East Africa.
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