TSX Venture rises, May 25-29: Searchlight Resources, Ely Gold Royalties, Azimut Exploration

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index rose by 2.20% to finish the trading week at 553.77. Spot gold ended the week at US$1,728.70 per oz., a fall of US$4.00 per oz. from the previous week.

Shares of Searchlight Resources doubled from 4¢ to 8¢ per share. The company closed a private placement of 22.86 million units at 2.5¢ per unit raising $571,500. It also issued 14.58 million flow-through units at 3¢ per unit for proceeds of $437,520. The funds will be used on exploration at the company’s two gold projects in Saskatchewan: English Bay and Bootleg Lake. English Bay is a high-grade project about 10 km north of LaRonge. Bootleg Lake is about 5 km southwest of Flin Fon, and has potential for multiple high-grade gold mines that would feed a single centralized mill, the company says. The original Bootleg property consists of four contiguous claims totalling 867 hectares that host three past-producing mines: Bootleg/Rio, Henning Maloney, and Newcor. All three of the deposits have historic resource estimates completed by Vista Mine in the mid-1980s. In July 2017, Searchlight staked a total of 13 claim blocks covering another 2,851 hectares contiguous to the south and west of the original Bootleg Lake claims – increasing its ground by 329%.

Ely Gold Royalties’ shares rose by 13.38% from $1.42 to $1.61. The company purchased an interest in the Borden Lake royalty on May 28. Under the deal, it will acquire 0.40% of a 2% net smelter return royalty (NSR) on the Borden Lake mine, about 160 km southwest of Timmins and 9 km east-northeast of Chapleau in Ontario. The royalty was granted to Newmont under a 2010 option agreement with Probe Mines, which was acquired by Goldcorp in 2015. Goldcorp merged with Newmont in 2019. Under the agreement, Ely will pay $300,000 in cash, 100,000 Ely Gold common shares at an issue price of $1.15 per share, and 80,000 non-transferrable common share purchase warrants exercisable over five years at $1.37 per share.

Shares of Azimut Exploration rose 21.71% from $1.75 to $2.13. The company announced it had resumed drilling at its after the Elmer gold property, located in the James Bay-Eeyou Istchee region of Quebec. The company plans to conduct a 6,000-metre (30-hole) drill program to expand the recent Patwon gold discovery. The drill program, which will use two rigs, will target five main areas within a 2.5 km by 1 km corridor, which is open at both ends. The target areas are mostly defined by induced polarization anomalies along several subparallel axes, for a cumulative length of at least 7 km, according to the company. A previous drill hole at the Patwon discovery returned 3.12 grams gold per tonne over 102 metres.