BC Business
The company’s Valley discovery is behind a 74-percent stock surge over the past year
The stock: Fun fact! For all the Yukon’s having seen the world’s largest gold rush between 1896 and 1901 and more than a century of exploration since, no one has pinpointed the source of all those shiny nuggets and flakes found lying in Klondike stream beds. Indeed, the territory had never hosted a hard-rock gold mine of much size until Vancouver-based Victoria Gold Corp. (TSXV:VGCX) commenced production at the Eagle Mine near Mayo in 2019. But over the past two decades several discoveries have been made in the relatively inaccessible White Gold district to the west. And now, with its Valley discovery in the Selwyn Basin to the east, Snowline Gold Corp. (TSXV:SGD) may have found the biggest Yukon gold deposit yet.
The drivers: Valley is just one drill site within Snowline’s sprawling Rogue Project. The company has another expansive exploration property, Einarson, just to the north. Along with earlier stage projects nearby, the Vancouver-based company aims to develop what it believes to be a “district-scale” gold belt in the previously overlooked area.
Snowline’s big footprint makes it an attractive target for a major mining company. (Already, B2Gold Corp. has a 9.9-percent stake in the junior.) It was spun out of an even more substantial portfolio originally staked by long-time Yukon prospector Ron Berdahl. His son and co-founder Scott Berdahl, a second-generation geologist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now serves as CEO.
Closing at $5.55 a share on Tuesday (January 30), Snowline stock is up 74 percent over the past year. It doesn’t hurt that the price of gold continues to hover over US$2,000 an ounce, not far shy of its US$2,114 peak last May.
Word on the street: “We see the potential for up to 10 million ounces to be delineated over time in a bulk-tonnage open-pit scenario,” National Bank Financial analyst Rabi Nizami wrote of the Valley discovery upon initiating coverage of Snowline last week. He has an “outperform” rating on the stock with a $9 target.
Coming and going: Vancouver-headquartered Xenon Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:XENE) raised US$345 million in an oversubscribed share offering at a price of US$32.50 per share in December. The funds are meant to further development and testing of the company’s medications for epilepsy and depression. The stock closed Tuesday at US$45.67 per share.