TSX Venture dips, Jan. 20-24: Abitibi Royalties, New Pacific, Camino, K92

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index fell 0.47% to 581.76 and spot gold finished at US$1,571.60 per oz., up US$14.90 per ounce.

Abitibi Royalties posted the largest value gain, jumping $1.45 to $19.55 per share. The company’s board of directors approved a 25% dividend increase from 12¢ to 15¢ per common share on an annualized basis starting in April. The frequency of the payments will change from quarterly to monthly. The company also reported that it generated $2.1 million in total cash in the fourth quarter of 2019, with $999,000 coming from royalties on the open-pit portion contained within the company’s 3% net smelter return royalty on the Canadian Malartic mine in Quebec. Royalties from the open-pit part of the mine started at the end of 2018. The company’s core underground royalties at East Malartic and Odyssey are not in production. For the full year, Abitibi Royalties generated $5.3 million in cash. The company has no debt and only 12.52 million issued shares. As of Jan. 17, the company had $46.3 million in cash and investments.

New Pacific Metals rose 24¢ to $6.86. The company reported assays from 19 holes of a 24-hole, 6,000-metre drill program at its Snake Hole prospect in Bolivia. Snake Hole is a target 600 metres east of the core area of the company’s Silver Sand project. Drill hole 52-18 returned 72 metres of 279 grams silver per tonne from 61 metres, including 33 metres of 517 grams silver. Drill hole 525-20 cut 38 metres of 143 grams silver per tonne from 30 metres, including 6 metres of 749 grams silver per tonne. The prospect consists of artisanal underground workings started in the Spanish colonial era.

Camino Minerals soared 124% to 19¢ after announcing it appointed Keith Peck as chairman and Jay Chmelauskas as CEO. Peck was a founder of Chilean copper company Centenario Copper, which was acquired by Quadra Mining in 2009, and Chmelauskas was CEO of Jinshan Gold Mines, which built one of China’s largest gold mines in Inner Mongolia. China National Gold acquired a controlling stake in the company in 2008.

K92 Mining closed at $3.52 per share, up 15¢. The company announced it was named to the 2020 OTCQX Best 50 — a ranking of top-performing companies traded on the U.S. OTC market last year. The ranking is calculated based on an equal weighting of one-year total return and average daily dollar volume growth in the previous calendar year. This is the second consecutive year the company made the list. Last year K92 increased its gold-equivalent production by 74% year-on-year. The company also reported it is pushing ahead with the Kora expansion project at its Kainantu mine in Papua New Guinea, which should raise throughput from 200,000 tonnes per year to 400,000 tonnes by the end of 2020.