TSX posts decline, Dec. 10-14

The S&P/TSX Composite Index dropped 1.35% to finish at 14,595.07. The S&P/TSX Global Mining Index rose 1.6% to 64.51 and the S&P/TSX Global Base Metals Index increased 0.47% to 101.42. Spot gold fell US$9.70 per oz. to US$1,238.10 per oz., and the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index lost 0.26% to finish at 174.67.

Shares of Wheaton Precious Metals rose on news of a settlement with the Canada Revenue Agency regarding the company’s foreign income in the 2005 to 2010 tax years. The company reported that its foreign income on earnings will be not be subject to tax in Canada. These transfer pricing principles will also apply to all taxation years after 2010, including the 2011 to 2015 taxation years, which are under audit, and on a go-forward basis. The settlement resolved Wheaton’s tax appeal for reassessment under transfer pricing rules related to income generated by the company’s wholly owned foreign subsidiaries. Wheaton Precious Metals jumped $3.35 to $25.34 per share.

Condor Gold surged 44.4% to 78¢ per share. The company recently reported that Nicaragua’s Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) has granted it the Las Cruces concession, which is next to its La India project and expands the project’s land package 45% to 456 square kilometres. Condor says the concession “is potentially the heat engine and metal source that caused gold mineralization across the entire La India gold district.” MEM granted a 25-year exploration and exploitation concession to Condor’s wholly owned Nicaragua subsidiary.  The company says its geologists have found a major north- to northeast-striking basement feeder zone through the La India corridor, which hosts 90% of Condor’s 2.4 million oz. gold resource. The feeder zone, Condor says, “can be projected southeast into Las Cruces,” and “mapping and early prospecting and sampling show that Las Cruces lies inside a volcanic caldera, and has extensive clay alteration and rare, vuggy silica.” The company got its environmental permit in August for the development, construction and operation of a processing plant, with capacity to process up to 2,800 tonnes per day.

Shares of Nautilus Minerals, which is exploring the ocean floor for polymetallic   massive sulphide deposits, dropped 29% to 5¢. The company received a US$455,000 loan from Deep Sea Mining Finance under a previously announced, secured, structured credit facility of up to US$34 million. The proceeds will help fund the company’s working capital requirements, while it seeks the remaining project financing to develop its Solwara 1 project in Papua New Guinea. In connection with the latest loan, Nautilus has issued another 1.95 million warrants. Each warrant entitles the lender to buy one common share of Nautilus for 17¢ within five years. So far Nautilus has issued 73 million share-purchase warrants. The loans carry an annual 8% interest rate and mature on Jan. 8, 2019. Nautilus is in discussions to extend the date.