Corvus Gold Site Visit Report
January 23, 2019 – Beatty, Nevada
written by Kai Hoffmann
Corvus Gold - “He who controls the water, controls the west”
During the last few months we have seen two mega mergers in the gold sector. The Barrick Gold and Randgold merger was completed during the first week of January. While the Newmont and Goldcorp merger was announced only days thereafter. The much-needed consolidation could stir up a lot of activity in its aftermath. The shedding or repositioning of projects, shareholdings, royalties and streams could have a tremendous impact on the junior mining industry. One region in particular could see a lot of attention: NEVADA.
Earlier in January, we travelled to Las Vegas to meet up with Corvus Gold and take a look at their North Bullfrog and Motherlode projects in the Walker Lane Trend just outside of Beatty. We were accompanied by Quentin Mai, VP Corporate Development and Ryan Ko, responsible for Investor Relations.
A quick overview of Corvus Gold
Before diving into the projects and our observations during a long day on the road, lets quickly take a look at the company itself. Corvus Gold is listed on the TSX mainboard (ticker: KOR) and currently trades at a price of C$2.26 and a market cap of C$251mn at the time of writing. The company has 110.3mn shares outstanding and no warrants. Major shareholders include AngloGold Ashanti (19.9%), Toqueville Asset Management out of New York holds 17.6% and van Eck Global also based in the Big Apple, sits on 9.6% of the outstanding shares. CEO Jeff Pontius is the largest single shareholder with 4mn shares and about 2mn options.
Mega mergers starting to affect the juniors
The Corvus stock is coming off a high of C$3.39 at the beginning of October. Since the share had a pretty good run up in the past 12 months – it started 2018 at C$1.65 – we can assume that tax loss selling was not the primary reason for the decline in recent months. We have picked up in conversations that in fact Goldcorp, apparently in anticipation of the merger with Newmont, has started to come off its 1mn share position which it received when it sold the Motherlode deposit to Corvus in June of 2017.
Once Newmont got involved the selling was stopped and we have been told that there is currently no sell order from Newmont in the market while they are re-evaluating their holdings. The soon to be largest gold producer in the world – expected annual gold production of 6 to 7mn ounces - apparently still holds about 300,000 shares. On top of that, the new Newmont will hold a 1% NSR on Motherlode, giving the major a small foothold in a district that screams for consolidation of projects to revive it.
Read our full report here:
http://oreninc.com/orenthink/entry/corvus-gold-he-who-controls-the-water-controls-the-west
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