Venture recovery stumbles in Oct. 17-21 period

Vancouver – The recent market rebound at least temporarily stalled in the October 17 to 21 period as the S&P TSX Venture Composite Index lost 24.7 points to end at 1,532.91 points. Volume was roughly in line with recent weeks at an average of 86 million shares traded daily.

Silver Quest Resources and Geo Minerals were trading briskly after New Gold announced plans to acquire both for their land holdings around the Blackwater deposit in British Columbia. New Gold has offered 0.09 of a New Gold share plus one share in a new Yukon exploration entity for every 3 Silver Quest shares held, which values Silver Quest at $1.32 per share for an equity value of roughly $131-million. Silver Quest’s share price jumped 30¢ or 35% to end at $1.17, shy of its 52-week high of $1.28 reached in early July, with a total of 19.6 million shares were traded. New Gold has offered Geo 16¢ per share, valuing the company at roughly $17-million, with Geo’s share price climbing 4¢ or 33% to 16¢ with 23.4 million shares traded.

Boss Power saw the biggest non-share-rollback percentage gain after the company settled a long-standing legal dispute with the Government of British Columbia. The province had suspended uranium exploration in 2008, effectively expropriating the company’s property, so the company had sued for compensation. In the period Boss got its compensation in an out-of-court settlement to the tune of $30-million without having drilled a single hole on the property, though the project did have a historic resource outlining some 10 million lbs. of U₃O₈. Boss’ share price jumped 14¢ or 104% to end at 28¢ on the news.

St. Elias Mines had a burst of activity in the period, climbing from $1.98 to a brief high of $2.80 before ending up 51¢at $2.49 for the highest value gain of the period. The company released only a corporate update midway through the period, reminding investors that it is working through a 10,000-metre drill program on its Tesoro gold project in Peru and that, thanks to its recent $4.5-million financing, it now has roughly $9.2-million in its treasury.

Grayd Resource was one of the most traded companies after Agnico-Eagle, currently working on taking over Grayd, was forced to write-off its Goldex mine. The news sent Agnico’s share price down some 20% and Grayd’s share price 19¢ to $2.30. Agnico later doubled the cash component of the $275-million takeover bid to $183-million and Grayd’s stock bounced back. In the end though, Grayd’s share price ended down 7¢ at $2.47 on 14.2 million shares traded.

The curious and rapid rise of Hellix Ventures looks to have come full circle. The company’s share price shot up from around 70¢ in early September to a high of $1.67 on September 21 in the lead-up and following the release of sampling results from its Athabasca property near Nelson, British Columbia, where the highest gold value found in the 374 samples was 0.695 gram gold per tonne. The company’s share price managed to hover around $1.40 until the end of September before starting a gradual fall. Only in the latest period did the price plunge, however, down 36¢or 34.6% to end at 68¢.