Trading Summary (February 13, 2004)

The Toronto Stock Exchange ended the week on a sour note posting a second straight loss on Friday. The golds dropped 1.31 points to 218.47 while the diversified miners shed 2.1 points to 224.39. Overall, the S&P/TSX Composite Index fell 30.58 points to end at 8,694.46.

Barrick Gold finished 4 lower at $27.62 despite reporting higher fourth-quarter earnings of US$77 million (or 14 per basic and diluted share) on revenue of US$536 million, compared with year-ago income of US$54 million (10 a share) on $526 million. The improvement is thanks to higher precious metal prices and gains from derivatives.

Falconbridge fell 85 to $33.35. Falco recently agreed to join Barrick to jointly explore and develop the Kabanga nickel deposit in Tanzania.

Barrick’s peers followed suit with Kinross Gold falling 2 to $9.79 and Placer Dome ending 45 lower at $22.53.

Noranda shed 20 to $21.18 as Metallica Resources grabbed a penny to make $2.20. On Friday, Noranda pegged inferred resource for the El Morro area on Metallica Resources‘s (MR-TY) like-named copper-gold project in Chile at 45 million tonnes running 0.5% copper and 0.18 gram gold per tonne, based on a cutoff grade of 0.4% copper.

Copper miner Aur Resources stood out with a 26, or 3.6%, gain to $7.43. On Wednesday, Aur posted net earnings of US$10.9 million (or 11 a share) on revenues of US$215.6 million. Copper production from the Quebrada Blanca, Andacollo and Louvicourt mines totalled a record 249 million lbs.