New Nadina shares stumble into the new year

New Nadina Explorations (TSXV: NNA; US-OTC: NNADF) shares plummeted 86% to 48¢ in the new year after the company released drill results from its Silver Queen polymetallic project, 43 km south of Houston, British Columbia.

Results include a 0.2-metre interval from 424 metres downhole grading 91.3 grams silver per tonne, 0.06 gram gold per tonne and 0.65% copper, as well as a 3-metre interval from 690 metres downhole grading 120 grams silver, 0.24 gram gold and 0.5% copper.

Company stock was trading at 8¢ on Oct. 24, 2017, but skyrocketed to $4.17 by Nov. 14, after the company announced a 132-metre intercept of “high-grade core” containing bornite, sphalerite, galena and pyrargyrite. The stock cooled a bit the next month but stayed above $3 — until now. 

A drill rig at New Nadina Explorations Silver Queen polymetallic property in west-central B.C. Credit: New Nadina Explorations.

“I genuinely feel sorry for the people who have lost money,” New Nadina president and CEO Ellen Clements says during a telephone interview with The Northern Miner. Clements took over New Nadina in 2006 after her husband George Stewart, the company’s former president and CEO, suddenly died a year earlier.

“There are two things that are important to me, and that is that the value of the property is excellent, excellent potential, and without the investors and the shareholders you don’t have any opportunity to explore, so I hold both in great respect.”

Clements insists New Nadina is not done with its Silver Queen project. The company raised $1.1 million throughout the fall of 2017, and intends to use the cash for more drilling.

“It’s mineable,” Clements says, “but to stop at that and not explore further to try to increase the tonnage to get that perfect partner in there — it would be sacrilegious to stop and not do that when the potential is still so high.”

Further exploration will have to wait, however, for at least a few more months. Snow blankets the ground and will flood the surface with water when it finally melts. Clements points out that the area has a clay layer just below the surface, meaning the soil retains water for a long time.

Historical and current drilling with location of Geotech EM and Quantec Geoscience TITAN-24 DCIP and MT anomalies noted in green and blue. Credit: New Nadina Explorations.

“You can’t go in there when it’s wet,” she says.

Clements says New Nadina will start monitoring Silver Queens’ water level at the end of March, and hopes to mobilize drills between April and June.

New Nadina may have been the last mining stock to dramatically rise and fall in 2017, but it certainly wasn’t the only.

Earlier in the year, shares of GT Gold (TSXV: GTT; US-OTC: GTGDF) shot up from 38¢ to $2.76 between July and September. The stock rose on assay results from drill holes at its Tatogga gold property in B.C.’s Golden Triangle. By mid-November shares had dropped back down to 70¢.

Over a similar time span, shares of Garibaldi Resources (TSXV: GGI;US-OTC: GGIFF) surged from 18¢ to a $5.27 peak after news that 12 drill holes on its E&L nickel-copper property in B.C.’s Golden Triangle had returned “broad sections” of nickel-bearing pentlandite, chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite. But when the company received assay results, it saw that while some of the holes were mineralized, they were not as nickel-rich as expected. To complicate matters, drilling was interrupted several times due to poor weather conditions. The stock now sits at $2.74.

Concurrent with both of those, shares of Novo Resources (TSXV: NVO; US-OTC: NSRPF) jumped from 83¢ to a $8.55 peak on Oct. 10, 2017. In November, the company reported that it was “uncomfortable” with the experimental bulk-sampling technique it had been using at its joint venture Purdy’s Reward gold project with Artemis Resources (ASX: ARV; FRA: ATY). The announcement accelerated the descent of a stock that had already begun to fall. It now sits at $3.70.

Novo Resources and Artemis Resources’ Purdy’s Reward and Comet Wells paleoplacer gold projects in Western Australia. Credit: Novo Resources.

In May 2017, shares of Arizona Silver Exploration (TSXV: AZS; US-OTC: AZASF) spiked to $1.22 from 40¢ after the company announced that one of its holes intercepted 44.2 metres of quartz veins peppered with a “submetallic grey mineral” that could have been a silver-bearing sulphide.

However, assay results at the end of May dispelled any excitement. The interval didn’t contain silver, while another hole reported in the release was only weakly mineralized. Shares tumbled back down to 24¢, and at press time rested at 20¢.

Reflecting on the past few months, Clements says that she wouldn’t have done anything differently, except speak less to investors.

“Some of the calls now are asking for due diligence material,” Clement says. “They want to know other things that would be critical to making a decision as to whether they would be buyers. And so that’s good. That’s what people need to do.”

Despite New Nadina’s struggles, Clements is optimistic about Silver Queen. She calls the company’s current discoveries “veinlets,” and hopes they will feed into large veins that can be mined for a higher tonnage.

“One good thing is we know it’s not a body of water,” Clements says. “Because with an anomaly that’s very conductive it could have been an aquifer. And in that Blue zone target we already know that we didn’t hit the highest signature of the anomaly.”

Shares of New Nadina sit at 32¢ with a 52-week range of $4.6 to 8¢. The company’s market capitalization is $5 million.