Diamond & Specialty Minerals Summary for Feb. 15, 2018

by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Thursday was a so-so 85-91-115. The TSX Venture Exchange lost one point to 834 while polished diamond prices fell 0.2 per cent. Ken MacNeill's Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) fell one-half cent to 17.5 cents on 176,000 shares. The stock has returned home after getting to 21.5 cents on the first day under its new name.

Eric Friedland and Tom Peregoodoff's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD), up one cent to 14.5 cents on 626,000 shares, has rolled out a resource update for the CH-6 kimberlite, the key pipe at its Chidliak diamond project on southeastern Baffin Island. The numbers show a hefty increase in tonnage and carats, but the gains were widely expected -- and indirectly promoted -- following last year's deep drill program. As a result, investors appear to be treating the new estimate as old news.

Peregrine now has 7.46 million tonnes inferred; and at 2.41 carats per tonne, the resource hosts just under 18 million carats. Two years ago, Peregrine had calculated that the pipe contained 4.64 million tonnes inferred at 2.45 carats per tonne, about 11.4 million carats. At that time, the company also listed a target for further exploration (TFFE) -- a regulatory workaround describing rock that is not yet a resource -- that ranged between 2.34 million and 3.75 million tonnes. Most of that target tonnage has made the leap into the resource. Meanwhile, Peregrine lists between 1.09 million and 2.35 million tonnes as a TFFE, which could bring the estimated size of CH-6 to near 10 million tonnes.

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