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

Copper already accounts for about 25% of overall revenue at Teck Resources Ltd., but the base metal’s role in the company’s portfolio should become even greater after 2014.Deutsche Bank’s Jorge Beristain, who was part of a group of analysts that recently toured two of Teck’s copper assets in Latin America, noted that ongoing expansion in the region points to approximately 2...Read More

It goes without saying that beating guidance is a good way to earn favour from investors. The market has been simply brutal to mining companies that failed to meet their own expectations — or those of analysts — in the last 12 months (just ask Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd).So which companies do a good job of meeting guidance, and which don’t? Canaccord Genuity base metal analysts Gary...Read More

The underperformance of Canadian equities versus their U.S. counterparts may be coming to an end.With investor sentiment towards U.S. stocks suggesting excessive optimism and recent comments from the Fed and ECB signaling a less dovish near-term stance, David Doyle of Macquarie Capital Markets thinks global equities may be entering a consolidation phase.The strategist believes this could bring abo...Read More

As metal prices plunged on the eve of the financial crisis in September 2008, Peru’s billionaire Brescia family paid about $400 million to buy the world’s largest tin deposit in the Amazon jungle.Now their mining company Minsur SA sits alone among mostly Asian rivals as the only major producer in 2014 that can raise output of a metal increasingly in demand because it’s mixed into...Read More

Global miner Rio Tinto surprised investors with a 15 percent dividend hike after reporting a huge jump in second-half profit on Thursday, putting it in a strong position for a big capital return in 2015.Rio’s result will set the pace for other mega miners, who have shelved projects, axed costs, sold assets and cut debt over the past 18 months to satisfy shareholders wanting a bigger share of...Read More

Slowing growth and credit concerns in China have taken an enormous toll on base metal prices. The related mining stocks have been hammered as well in recent weeks, and according to analysts at Dundee Capital Markets, there could be worse to come.“The bottom line is that with stimulus being tapered, China’s slowing fundamentals will likely reassert themselves and we believe miners will...Read More

Thursday was such a dreadful day for global markets (and especially for precious metals) that investors and media took little notice of base metals, which also took a tumble. Copper is now trading just above US$3.00 a pound, way down from a high of more than US$4.50 in 2011.Jessica Fung, a commodity strategist at BMO Capital Markets, noted that a slight bounce back is possible in the short term. B...Read More

By Veronica Brown and Melanie BurtonLONDON — Copper fell to its lowest in a month on Tuesday after disappointing U.S. employment data on Friday raised concerns about slowing growth, while a slight fall in China’s copper imports did little to shore up sentiment.Losses were limited, however, by the view that China’s economic slowdown was not drastic, with off-take for copper seen k...Read More

While global markets have not been kind to stocks in recent days, it’s mining stocks that have taken the biggest beating — and are now at levels not seen since mid-2010.“Energy, base metals and gold stocks remain more than 20% off their cyclical peaks of a year ago,” said Ste??fane Marion, chief economist and strategist with National Bank.Mining stocks have not been this lo...Read More

By Silvia AntonioliLONDON — Copper was steady on Thursday, after a 2 percent fall the previous session, and was on track for a 10 percent increase this quarter, although doubts over demand in China and over the pace of economic recovery in the U.S. made investors cautious.Benchmark copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) traded at $8,330 a tonne in official rings, little changed from a clo...Read More