US markets slip, May 10-14

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 1.14% to finish the week at 34,382.13 and the S&P 500 fell 1.39% to 4,173.85. Spot gold increased by US$13.20 per oz., or 0.72%, to US$1,843.90 per ounce. 

Nexa Resources rose US68¢ to US$11.05 per share. The company, which is one of the five largest zinc mining companies in the world and part of Brazilian conglomerate Votorantim S.A., announced that it is expanding its operations in entrepreneurship and innovation through an international partnership with the Israeli company IBI-Tech. The partnership “will allow the exchange of Israeli technologies, solutions, products and services capable of responding to the main challenges of Nexa’s operations in Brazil and Peru,” the company said in a press release. “With this partnership, we will identify solutions that help us building the mining of the future, based on ESG aspects,” Tito Martins, Nexa’s CEO, said. 

Shares of Kinross Gold grew by US4¢ to US$7.78. The company reported net earnings in the first quarter of US$149.5 million or US12¢ per share, up 22% year-on-year, and adjusted net earnings of US$192.8 million or US15¢ per share, a 51% year-on-year increase. The company’s attributable production reached 558,777 gold-equivalent oz., at all-in sustaining costs of US$975 per gold-equivalent oz. sold, down from US$993 per gold-equivalent oz. sold in the first quarter of 2020. Kinross also announced that it is on track to meet its full-year guidance of 2.4 million oz. gold-equivalent. Kinross ended the quarter with cash and equivalents of US$1.06 billion and total liquidity of US$2.6 billion, and declared a quarterly dividend of US3¢ per common share payable on June 7. The gold major also announced a commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and said it will finalize a strategy to reach that goal by the end of the year.

Vale dropped US$1.05 to US$21.03. The company expects to receive its first transport ship propelled in part by ‘sails’ in the coming weeks. The ship will be the largest ever to be outfitted with rotating sails, which are essentially large metal cylinders four metres in diameter and 24 metres tall. The cylinders spin at different velocities, creating air pressure differences that help propel the ship forward. The ship has a load capacity of 294,835 tonnes and has five sails, and will be 8% more energy-efficient, equivalent to the reduction of 3,084 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. “Wind energy was how commercial navigation started. It was forgotten about in the last few centuries, and it’s coming back,” Rodrigo Bermelho, Vale’s head of marine engineering, told Reuters on May 13.