Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
By the end of July, the S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index – half of which is weighted toward materials stocks – had dropped 5.4 per cent from its 52-week high of 814.73 set on July 21.
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Insiders have been buying the pullback, which is an encouraging sign for Canada’s junior market. Notably, junior mining titan Eric Sprott is one of the insiders we saw buying in the public market in late July.
Mr. Sprott has been an active insider as a net buyer of shares in more than 40 junior mining companies over the past two years. However, much of the money he invested was via financing deals that often involve warrant sweeteners. Occasionally, he will buy shares in the public market. It is those situations, when he is buying without any added sweeteners, that we find the most interesting.
With that in mind, we see that since July 21, he has reported buying one million shares of Blackrock Silver Corp. BRC-X in the public market. The purchases were made on July 28 and 30 at 54 cents a share. He now holds just over 45.6 million shares via 2176423 Ontario Ltd., representing about 14.4 per cent of Blackrock shares outstanding.
Blackrock is focusing on its Tonopah West project, about 370 kilometres southeast of Reno. In 2024, Blackrock released a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) that outlined an average annual production profile of 8.6 million silver equivalent (AgEq) ounces per year at an all-in sustaining cost of US$11.96 per AgEq ounce over an eight-year mine life. An August, 2024, mineral resource estimate reported a total of 100.56 million AgEq ounces in the inferred category.
On July 21, the company announced the start of an expansion drilling program, stepping out across a 1.2-kilometre corridor. Blackrock hopes the campaign will help it meaningfully grow the scale of the project.
TSX consolidates its record-setting run as metal mining shares fall
Other junior mining players have also been buying. On July 23, Pat DiCapo bought two million shares of Yukon-focused White Gold Corp. WGO-X at 29 cents a share. He now beneficially holds 21.925 million shares, representing about 11.1 per cent of White Gold shares outstanding. Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. AEM-T also bought three million shares of White Gold on the same day at the same price.
Mr. DiCapo is the founder and chief executive officer of PowerOne Capital Markets Ltd., a Toronto-based merchant bank. His investments in the junior mining space include a 1.6-million-share direct ownership stake in Collective Mining Ltd. CNL-T which has soared more than 200 per cent over the past 12 months.
On July 28, White Gold launched the first phase of its 2025 exploration program targeting critical minerals on properties across its land package in the White Gold District. White Gold’s property portfolio includes 15,362 quartz claims across 21 properties covering 300,000 hectares. Its flagship White Gold project hosts four near-surface gold deposits that collectively contain an estimated 1.2 million ounces of gold in the indicated resource category and just over 1.1 million ounces of gold in the inferred resource category.
The DiCapo and Agnico Eagle purchases took place on the same day that Kinross Gold Corp. K-T sold 23,681,160 White Gold shares at the same price.
Rounding out our three biggest individual buyers is Donald Njegovan, who is president of Osisko Metals Inc. OM-X. He recently served as chief operating officer at Osisko Mining Inc. before its sale to Gold Fields Ltd. He was also a director of St. Andrew Goldfields Ltd. until it was acquired by Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. in 2016. From July 23 to 25, he bought 773,000 shares of Osisko Metals at an average price of 44 cents a share. He now holds just under 3.8 million shares.
The company has been working on a 110,000-metre 2025 drill program at its Gaspe Copper Project in Quebec with an aim to convert existing inferred resources to the measured or indicated categories and expand existing resources by testing deeper and further to the south.
A November, 2024, updated mineral resource estimate (MRE) included 4.9 billion pounds of contained copper (Cu) in the indicated category and 4.4 billion pounds inferred. The deposit was also reported to include 274 million pounds of molybdenum and 46 million ounces of silver in the indicated category, and 294 million pounds of molybdenum and 29 million ounces of silver inferred.
Ted Dixon is CEO of INK Research, which provides insider news and knowledge to investors. Securities referenced in this profile may have already appeared in recent reports distributed to INK subscribers. INK staff may also hold a position in profiled securities.
