Miners rebound for Christmas

The TSX Composite Index ended the holiday-shortened Dec. 20-23 report period with a 91.09-point rise to a near-record high of 11,245.37 points. TSX gold miners enjoyed some holiday buying, with the group ending 7.59 points, or 3.2% better at 243.91. Gold managed to regain US$5.15 per oz. from the last period’s meltdown to end at US$503.60. Likewise, the base metal miners regained 9.52 points to 387.73, while aluminum and zinc were alone in the black.

Tahera topped the volume chart among miners with around 25.6 million shares bouncing around to end unchanged at 70. Tahera’s Jericho diamond project in Nunavut is slated to begin producing in early 2006.

Barrick Gold‘s sweetened US$10.4-billion bid for Placer Dome was good enough to generate more than 32.5 million shares worth of traffic between the two; Placer ended 30 better at $26.11, while Barrick edged a penny higher at $31.65. The new deal would also see Goldcorp pay US$1.485 billion for Placer’s major Canadian assets, up from the previous US$1.35 billion. Goldcorp gained $1.33 to $24.38.

Eldorado Gold shot up 69, or 13.5% to $5.77 after it said that drilling in 2005 had boosted measured and indicated resources at its 85%-owned Tanjianshan gold project in China by 31% to 1.35 million contained ounces.

Kinross Gold said it plans to restate its 2003 and 2004 losses to reflect larger foreign exchange losses associated with the acquisition of assets under the takeover of TVX Gold and Echo Bay Mines in 2003. The previously posted loss for 2003 is expected to grow by $25 million; for 2004, the loss will increase by around $15 million. The non-cash adjustments will not affect stated operating cash flows or cash balances. Kinross’s quarterly financial statements for 2005 are expected in January. The issue gained 56 to make $10.33 on 14.5 million shares.

EuroZinc Mining broke up the gold jamboree with 11.9 million shares advancing 15 to make $1.28. The company recently adopted a shareholders’ rights plan, which will be put to a shareholder vote in May. EuroZinc owns the producing Neves-Corvo copper mine and mothballed Aljustrel zinc mine in southern Portugal. EuroZinc’s shares also began trading on the American Stock Exchange on Dec. 23.

Zinc miner Breakwater Resources was the only other base metal miner to break into the top-10-traded list, with just shy of 8.5 million shares gaining 14, or 28% to reach 64. The company recently completed a $6-million flow-through financing to fund exploration around its formerly producing Bouchard-Hbert and Langlois mines in Quebec.

Other impressive percentage gainers were: Stornoway Diamond, up 31.5% to $1.00; Northern Peru Copper, plus 27.3% to $2.14; and Almaden Minerals, which jumped 21.5% to $3.69.

Stornoway expects a steady flow of microdiamond and till-sampling results from its Aviat, Churchill and Wales projects over the next few weeks. Recent stepout drilling by Northern Peru on the Galeno copper-gold-molybdenum project in northern Peru is highlighted by 358 metres running 0.69% copper, 0.03% molybdenum, and 0.12 gram gold per tonne. Meanwhile, Almaden recently turned up a significant new belt of epithermal gold mineralization in B.C.

On the minus side, Sulliden Exploration fell a dime, or 15.3%, to 55. The on-again-off-again arbitration aimed at resolving Minera Algamarca’s challenge to Sulliden’s ownership of the Shahuindo silver-gold project in Peru is off again.