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Mining Monthly: April Edition

What you need to know:
• Following a big breakout in March, gold pressed on hitting new all-time highs, however, lost steam and fell towards the end of the month up just 2% in April. Silver outperformed gold, being up 5% on the month.
• Copper held its big gains from early in the month, up 13% to $4.6/lb. However, copper equities lagged, being up only 8%.
• We continue to see substantial M&A activity in the sector and have consolidated some transactions as of late in Figure 1. We view M&A as a leading indicator for rising equity prices and look to take advantage.

Sentiment Update
Following a massive breakout in gold during the month of March, gold continued to press higher in April, reaching all-time highs mid-month at $2,431/oz. This surge lost some steam however, falling ~6% from the highs and ending the month at $2,293/oz (+2% on the month). Silver followed a similar pattern hitting a 10-year high just cents under $30/oz and falling to $26.3/oz by end of month. Copper also had a large breakout following a strong month in March, however unlike gold and silver, copper better held its gains up 13% on the month closing at $4.6/lb up from $4.0/lb last month.

Equities continued to perform well in April with the GDX, GDXJ, SIL, and COPX up 4.7%, 4.5%, 11.8%, and 7.9% respectively. We remind readers that in March the mining equities substantially outperformed their underlying metals, up 20%+ MoM across the group (see March Mining Monthly report here). The above indexes again outperformed broader markets with the TSX and S&P500 down 1.8% and 3.8%, respectively.

Battery metals had a big month, bouncing off the lows with the majority of metals up over 16%+ (Nickel, Zinc, Tin, Manganese) and lithium and cobalt lagging +3% and -3%, respectively. As discussed last month, we have still yet to see a definitive direction of the battery metal and EV space but believe there exists an investment opportunity, particularly in the lithium space, given the recent sell-off.

We sound like a broken record, but it seems month over month more capital is flowing into the mining sector resulting in big gains and we believe this is just the beginning. Beyond the gains and capital flow into the mining equities, we particularly want to highlight the elevated M&A activity. This has been going on for a few months now, so we took the time to highlight some major transactions over that period (Figure 1, M&A and Financing section below). As mentioned before, we believe M&A is a strong leading indicator for incoming capital to the sector as major players (well-informed industry leaders) have been taking this opportunity to purchase companies at discounted prices. A notable consideration is that major producers are not investing in internal growth projects or returning capital to shareholders but would rather use capital to acquire projects at significant premiums. This signals to us that the industry leaders believe these junior companies are heavily discounted and will make for great investments.