Toronto Stock Exchange, March 25 – 29

Toronto stocks edged down during the holiday-shortened trading week, with the S&P/TSX Composite Index slipping 7 points to 12,749.90. Both gold and base metal miners tumbled, with the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index dropping 3 points to 254.873 and the S&P/TSX Capped Diversified Metals and Mining Index giving back 17 points to close at 874.50. The spot price of gold ended March 29 at US$1,597.60, down US$11.80 per oz.

Gold explorer MDN was one of the week’s top percentage gainers, jumping 30% to 7¢ after reporting its 2012 financial results. For the year ended Dec. 31, 2012, the Montreal-based junior reported a net loss of $12.8 million, compared to a year-ago profit of $1.6 million. MDN attributes the difference to exploration asset writeoffs and a decline in royalties from its 30%-held Tulawaka gold mine in Tanzania. African Barrick Gold holds the rest of the mine. For 2013, the debt-free junior plans to advance its exploration properties in Quebec and Tanzania.

On March 25, days after releasing a positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on its Duncan Lake iron ore property near Matagami, Que., Century Iron Mines published a PEA on its Joyce Lake direct-shipping project near Schefferville, Que. The PEA indicates it would cost $97 million to build a 2-million-tonne-per-year operation at Joyce Lake, with a mine life of four years. Joyce Lake, which is part of the larger Attikamagen project, has a net present value of $95 million and a 35% internal rate of return at an 8% discount rate. Payback is estimated in less than three years. Century ended the week up 26% at 41¢.

Carlisle Goldfields climbed 21% to 12¢ after reporting the final four holes from its 25-hole, 2012 drill program at the Farley Lake gold project in northern Manitoba. Standout hole No. 25 showed several high-grade gold intersections, including 35 metres grading 6.83 grams gold. The company intends to publish a resource estimate on Farley Lake in the second quarter.

Nautilus Minerals was down 35% to 26¢, as thee troubled company filed a preliminary short-form prospectus on March 28 to raise gross proceeds of $40 million by offering 200 million shares at 20¢ apiece. The proceeds will be used to fund building sea floor production system to advance its Solwara 1 deepwater copper-gold project, once it resolves the funding dispute with the Papua New Guinea government. Last November, Nautilus stopped building its sea floor production system to preserve cash, noting that the government failed to meet its contractual obligation to pay 30% of the development cost. It claims that the state owes it up to US$75 million for the development costs it incurred from January 2011 to September 2012.

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