The exhibit hall at the Silver Summit in San Francisco was filled with
resource companies. Investors roamed the booths and sat in on CEO
presentations to determine which companies had the best geography, core
samples, business plan—and ultimately—chance of returning big upside to
shareholders. The
Gold Report took the advice of Frank Holmes, CEO and chief investment
officer at U.S. Global Investors, who recommended the book "The
Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki and polled attendees for the
best prospects. The results were pretty overwhelming.
According to Surowiecki's research, a motivated, independent-minded group
can come up with the right answer and be smarter than even the smartest
single member of the group. To test that, we asked investors to tell us their
three favorite companies and then aggregated the results to determine which
ones the group thought could outperform the market itself.
The top three—First Majestic Silver Corp. (FR:TSX; AG:NYSE; FMV:FSE), Silver Wheaton
Corp. (SLW:TSX; SLW:NYSE) and Hecla Mining Co.
(HL:NYSE)—were the clear crowd favorites. All had recently reported news.
First Majestic, fresh off the acquisition of SilverCrest Mines Inc., now has
six producing mines in Mexico and projected output at 11–11.2 million ounces
(11–11.2 Moz) by the end of the year. Silver Wheaton, which reported record
production in Q3/15 of 11 Moz silver equivalent, recently announced it had
added a 140 Moz silver stream from Glencore's producing Antamina mine. Hecla
Mining, which is getting ready to celebrate its 125th anniversary,
recently announced that it would begin open-pit mining by the end of 2015 at
the San Sebastian project in Durango, Mexico.
Other companies that came to the conference with news include:
Balmoral
Resources Ltd. (BAR:TSX; BAMLF:OTCQX) brought results from a new
nickel-copper intercept based on ongoing exploration at the Grasset project
in Quebec and confirmation of a new gold bearing fault on the Martiniere
property in the Bug Lake Gold Trend.
Columbus
Gold Corp. (CGT:TSX.V; CBGDF:OTCQX) had drill results that, according to
company chairman and CEO Robert Giustra, "indicate that gold
mineralization at Eastside [gold discovery in Nevada] is considerably more
widespread than previously understood."
MAG Silver
Corp. (MAG:TSX; MVG:NYSE) flew to San Francisco days after reporting
Q3/15 financial results that showed working capital of $77.68 million and no
debt, enough cash to fund the next 12 months of projects. Additionally, drill
results from the Juanicipio project with Fresnillo Plc (FRES:LSE) indicate a
possible "ore-fluid upwelling zone, which could open up a new
exploration target zone."
Newmarket
Gold Inc. (NMI:TSX; NMKTF:OTCQX) announced that in the wake of a merger with
Crocodile Gold, it had delivered record production of 169,491 ounces (169,491
oz) from three Australian mines over the first nine months of the year with
operating cash costs reduced to $700–750/oz.
Quaterra
Resources Inc. (QTA:TSX.V; QTRRF:OTCQX) announced results from the first
core hole in the Bear copper deposit in Yerington, Nevada. It included an
intercept of 1,157 feet of 0.42% copper along with some molybdenum, gold and
silver.
Victoria
Gold Corp. (VIT:TSX.V) was in the final stages of closing a flow-through
private placement to raise $1.75 million to explore the Olive and Shamrock
targets at the Dublin Gulch project in the Yukon.
What were your favorite companies at the Silver Summit? Share in the
comments below.
Read more company recommendations in The Gold Report interview
"Rob
McEwen, the Investor, Has Some Advice for Mining Executives Everywhere."
