Lundin Mining said on Wednesday that it expects to be able to update shareholders by the end of this month on discussions to sell all or part of the company, but cautioned that a deal is not a certainty."I think we should be in a position to give a pretty good update come the end of this month and give some indication in terms of which direction we're heading and whether a transaction is likely to...Read More
Lundin Mining said on Wednesday that it expects to be able to update shareholders by the end of this month on discussions to sell all or part of the company, but cautioned that a deal is not a certainty."I think we should be in a position to give a pretty good update come the end of this month and give some indication in terms of which direction we're heading and whether a transaction is likely to...Read More
Copper fell to within a few cents of its year-to-date lows early Monday morning, hit by cooling demand concerns in China following data that showed the country's vast manufacturing sector slow down in April.But prices managed to recover from their losses at the New York open, supported by a firmer tone on Wall Street following the confirmation that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed b...Read More
Narrowing market price ranges suggest now may be a good time for consumers and producers to take advantage of the cheaper cost of hedging their exposure to copper and aluminium, analysts said.Hedging or insuring using options - contracts which give holders the right to buy or sell the three-month metal contract on the London Metal Exchange at a fixed price in the future - now costs less because vo...Read More
Copper rose over 2 percent to a two-week high on Wednesday as investors focused on expectations of a supply deficit this year, but the recovery may be hindered by unrest in Libya and concerns about Japan's nuclear crisis.A fall in stocks of the metal used in power and construction also offered a little respite for investors concerned about this year's climb in inventories.Benchmark copper on the L...Read More
Aftershocks from last Friday's earthquake and tsunami - especially efforts to avert a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear reactor - hit most global equity markets on Monday, starting with the Nikkei in Tokyo, which fell 6.18% - its worst day since the global economic crisis in October 2008.In Toronto, the benchmark S&P/TSX composite index fell steeply in morning trading but later pared some of thos...Read More
The positive outlook for both energy and base materials has many investors favouring countries whose stock markets are heavily tilted toward natural resources. This includes Canada, Brazil, Norway, Russia and Australia. So it is for good reason that correlations between equity performance in those countries has been high and rising in recent years.This effect has been further magnified by the risk...Read More
Base metals would see the biggest retreat among commodities if the Chinese economy hits a hard landing, says a new report from Brockhouse Cooper global macro strategist Pierre Lapointe.While he is still positive on China and the related commodity boom, Mr. Lapointe raised a warning flag on the country's economic backdrop a couple of weeks ago. A jump in the seven-day repo rate was the first sign t...Read More
Commodity prices have finally risen to the point that miners can start new development projects, but the rally in metals prices also brings higher costs for producers.Both operating and capital costs tend to climb sharply during cyclical rallies for metals. However, some companies have proven more adept than others at generating returns in the face of this challenge.Stephen D. Walker, head of glob...Read More
OPEC’s production-cutting deal had set the stage for the oil market in 2017, but base metals prices hinge on policy coming out of China.Industrial metals continue to see support from strong Chinese buying and the reflationary trade that followed Donald Trump’s election victory.However, analysts at J.P. Morgan think prices have run ahead of fundamentals, with the exception of zinc.The o...Read More
TORONTO — Nickel prices have jumped almost 40 per cent since bottoming out in January, yet most miners of the steelmaking metal are still bleeding cash at a rapid rate.Canadian nickel miner Sherritt International Corp. noted this week that more than 60 per cent of global output is losing money on a simple cash margin basis. Once capital spending and other costs are added in, the actual perce...Read More
After many months in the gutter, two of the world’s least-loved metals are enjoying an honest-to-goodness turnaround.Zinc and nickel are both soaring this summer after recovering from shocking depths early in the year. Zinc touched US$1.00 a pound on Thursday for the first time since mid-2015, while nickel jumped to a nine-month high of US$4.73 a pound. Zinc is up 48 per cent from its Januar...Read More
It feels like a lifetime ago, but only five months have passed since investors thought Canada’s two biggest copper miners were at risk of collapsing.In mid-January, Teck Resources Ltd.’s long-term notes traded as low as 38.5 cents on the dollar. Meanwhile, the debt of First Quantum Minerals Ltd., one of its chief rivals, traded between 40 and 45 cents. The mining industry was drowning...Read More
Well, that rally didn’t last long. BMO Capital Markets analyst Jessica Fung pointed out on Tuesday that copper prices have given back all of their gains so far from 2016. Prices rose as much as 7.5 per cent before they started to slip in March.And Fung said further declines are a strong possibility in the short term. She noted that June is typically a weak month for copper prices, the U.S. d...Read More
Commodity prices have finally risen to the point that miners can start new development projects, but the rally in metals prices also brings higher costs for producers.Both operating and capital costs tend to climb sharply during cyclical rallies for metals. However, some companies have proven more adept than others at generating returns in the face of this challenge.Stephen D. Walker, head of glob...Read More
The plunge in commodity prices has forced many mining companies to sell assets or metal streams to boost their liquidity. But their work is far from finished.TD Securities analysts Greg Barnes and Craig Hutchison studied the liquidity of base metal miners and found that if prices remain low, liquidity will become “extremely tight” for many of them by the end of 2017, if not sooner.&ldq...Read More
Falling base metal prices are putting major pressure on producer balance sheets, especially for those miners that are carrying a lot of debt. Canaccord Genuity analyst Peter Bures is among those cautioning investors to be very careful in this sector right now.“With producers feeling the squeeze of over-levered balance sheets amidst a backdrop of significantly lower commodity prices, we belie...Read More
With safety issues increasing the likelihood of a work stoppage at Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold Inc.’s Grasberg project in Indonesia, coupled with a strike set to begin Nov. 10 at the Antamina mine in Peru, the probability of a deficit in the copper market has significantly risen.Estimates suggest that these two labour disruptions could remove 84,000 tonnes of mined copper supply throu...Read More
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and Lundin Mining Corp. have enough nickel exposure to provide investors with an opportunity to benefit from higher prices, but there are plenty of ways they differ.Neither company faces the risks associated with excessive nickel exposure since the primary focus of both companies is copper, but Tom Meyer, a mining analyst at CIBC World Markets, noted First Quantum&rsquo...Read More
Base metal stocks have been battered in recent months as commodity prices declined, regardless of their quality. Buying them after a sell-off is a risky proposition, so Raymond James analyst Alex Terentiew waded through the muck to determine which ones have been punished unfairly.He evaluated the stocks from a number of angles, including a sensitivity test to see how they would withstand a prolong...Read More