Trading Summary (May 13, 2004)

Toronto’s gold stocks took a 1.58-point hit to finish at 183.26 on Thursday, as the yellow metal dropped US$2.90 per oz. to end at US$374.40 per oz. in New York. The diversified metals & mining subindex shed 0.8 of a point to make 199.29. With just six subindices barely managing to end in the black, the S&P-TSX composite index ended Thursday’s trading session off 11.06 points at 8,176.61.

Falconbridge saw a dime trimmed from its shares, which finished at $29.45. On Thursday, Falconbridge declared force majeure on deliveries of copper cathode from its Kidd Creek smelter in Timmins after an unplanned furnace outage. The company expects to lose 12,000-13,000 tonnes of copper cathode in the short-term. Reuters said the roof on the furnace building was damaged when water leaking from a cooling system contacted molten copper. Falconbridge will carry out maintenance originally scheduled fro July during the outage. Zinc production should not be affected.

Alcan dropped another $1.08 to $52.76. On Thursday, Alcan is considering joining forces with rival Alcoa to build a 1.5-million-tonne-per-year alumina refinery in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa. The pair expect to wrap up their study by mid-2005; the refinery could begin producing by early 2008.

Vancouver-based Cusac Gold Mines put in the best percentage gain among the miners regaining 3, or 11.5%, to make 29. The company’s shares have recovered since Monday’s announcement that a previously arranged $3 million convertible debenture financing was cancelled owing to current market conditions. The funds would have gone to put the Table Mountain gold mine in British Columbia back into production. The company is looking for alternative funding.

Cambior returned most of Wednesday’s gain falling 19, or 6%, to $2.98. On Wednesday, Cambior reported first-quarter net earnings of US$7.3 million, up from a year-earlier loss of US $2.3 million. Cash flow from operations soared to US$7.8 million from just US$500,000 in the corresponding period of 2003. Revenue between the two periods climbed US$13.8 million to US$59.4 million.

Aurizon Mines‘s shares slipped 4 to a $1.34 after it posted a first-quarter net loss of $296,000, compared with a net loss of $53,000 in the corresponding period of 2003. Cash flow from operations soared 68% to $472,000.

Palladium producer North American Palladium‘s recent first-quarter net income came to $6.1 million on revenue of $53.2 million, compared with year-ago earnings of $8.4 million on $45.1 million. The issue fell 28 to $12.62.