Daily Metals Mining Rundown and Peer Table - Free Edition for 20 Feb 2025 (intraday TSX)

Today’s spot metals price movements intraday TSX (over past ~24 hrs) include:

Today’s top metals mining peer group movers intraday TSX (including ASX movements earlier today) include:

Metals mining company announcements incorporated into today’s Peer Table (resource updates, economic studies, changes in attributable project ownership) include:

• Gold explorer Northgold AB (STO:NG) announced a resource update for its flagship 100%-owned Kopsa gold and copper project in the top tier jurisdiction of Finland, resulting in an 8% increase (since last year) to the deposit’s gold-equivalent resource ounces to 814.8 koz AuEq grading 1.09 g/t AuEq (0.85 g/t Au and 0.17% Cu) from only 385m of drilling (yielding an outstanding accumulation rate of 170 koz AuEq/additional m drilled, although historic drilling data was also used). The increase of 65.3Koz AuEq exceeds the company’s guidance of >20koz that was previously stated by the company in its corporate presentation for this shallow north zone. The cutoff grade remained at 0.5 g/t AuEq, and based on past announced resource estimates and grade-tonnage relationships could possibly be decreased to 0.3 g/t AuEq resulting in a ~10% increase to ounces (offset by a ~10% decrease in grade). But the real prize for investors at Kopsa could be what lies beneath, as highlighted by past geophysical surveys that the company says could lead to a deposit size in the range of 1.2-1.5 Moz AuEq in the medium-term (together with additional increases of >20koz from the shallow west target and >150koz from the south down-dip target). Northgold trades at a market cap/oz resource of US$1.51/oz AuEq - a stark 91% discount to our 62-company gold explorer peer group median of $16.6/oz AuEq. This discount does not seem justified given Kopsa alone is approaching the 1 Moz mark and comes with a dominant regional central Finland land package that already hosts several nearby drilled satellite prospects and deposits that require follow-up.

  

  Block model for Kopsa 2025 MRE, compared to previous 2024 MRE. (Source: Northgold AB)

  

  Kopsa resource growth history (Source: Northgold AB)

• Intermediate gold producer Mandalay Resources (TSX:MDN) reported its 2024 mineral reserves and resources, showing that the company more than replaced its reserves and measured and indicated (M&I) resources - increasing reserves by 9% and M&I resources by 14%, both after depletion. And near equally as important was the substantial growth in inferred resources across both of its producing mines (Bjarkdal in Sweden and Costerfield in Australia) paving the way for future reserves expansion, and resulting in a 46% increase in overall gold resources (to 2.74 Moz Au from 1.88 Moz Au). This increase in MDN’s overall resources lowers MDN’s market cap/oz resource to 86/oz AuEq (including some copper and silver resources from one of MDN’s non-core projects that increases its total resources to 3.61 Moz AuEq), which is now a 26% discount to our intermediate gold producer peer group median market cap/oz of $117/oz AuEq.

• Lithium brine developer LithiumBank (TSXV:LBNK) announced a 30% increase to its overall lithium resources at its flagship 100%-owned Boardwalk project in Alberta, which included 5.195 Mt LCE measured and indicated resources grading 81.6 mg/l Li, and which paves the way for a sizeable mineral reserve in a future possible PFS. Together with the company’s secondary but much larger 21.7 Mt LCE deposit (Park Place project), LBNK hosts one of North America’s largest inventory of lithium resources. LBNK trades cheap at a P/NAV (market cap/NPV) of 0.005x based on its 2023 PEA results at our Reference lithium price of US$20,000/t LCE - a steep 87% discount to our lithium brine developer median of 0.038x, which is at least partly due to the relatively low grade of LBNK’s groundwater brine projects in Alberta vs. the higher-grade salar brines of Latin America held by many of its peers. LBNK also trades at a steep discount (of 79%) to its closer, yet more advanced, fellow Alberta groundwater brine peer E3 Metals (TSXV:ETL), which is PFS-stage, has a significantly larger measured and indicated resource size, a slightly smaller overall resource size, and trades at a P/NAV 0.024x.