Weekly Metals Mining Rundown for Week Ending 18 April 2025 - Substantial Upticks in PGM, Nickel and Gold Prices

This past week’s top & bottom metal price and mining company peer group movers include:

This past week’s top 40 performing metals mining stocks (out of Peer Table’s 458) include (share price rounding errors apply, as sourced from Google Finance):

Coverage of metals mining company announcements incorporated into this week’s Peer Table (resource updates, economic studies, changes in attributable project ownership) includes:

• 16 April 2025 - Gold and nickel explorer WIN Metals (ASX:WIN) announced an updated mineral resource estimate for its Butchers Creek project in Western Australia, which grew the deposit slightly to 5.23Mt @ 1.91 g/t Au for 321 koz Au. Most importantly, much of the inferred resources were converted to indicated for a higher-grade indicated component of 3.58 Mt @2.24 g/t Au for 258koz Au, which helps de-risk future development. And growth is set to continue, with 2025 drilling focused on high-priority, high-grade targets, including at Golden Crown where recent drilling returned 10.85 g/t Au over 6m. While currently focused on gold, WIN also has a nickel project (and a small lithium project). Altogether, WIN’s resource inventory totals 577 Mlbs NiEq or 1.45 Moz AuEq (now 25% from Au, 72% from Ni, rest Li). WIN stock traded up a whopping 29% Wednesday (16 April) following this news, before closing the week (ending 18 Apr) flat +0% at a market cap/unit resource of US$0.013/lb NiEq ($5.3/oz AuEq), which is in-line with our 17-company nickel explorer peer group median market cap/lb of $0.012/lb NiEq ($4.9/oz AuEq). But in terms of gold explorers, WIN (still) trades at a 75% discount to our 80-company gold explorer peer group median’s $21/oz.

• 15 Apr 2025 - Copper explorer Peel Mining (ASX:PEX) announced a resource upgrade for its 100%-owned Wagga Tank deposit - part of its flagship South Cobar project in Australia - following recent drilling success. The update grew Wagga Tank’s indicated + inferred resource tonnage by 46% to 9.99 Mt (also 46% in indicated category), which increased total South Cobar project resources to 22.9 Mt @ 1.03% Cu, 0.37 g/t Au, 35 g/t Ag, 0.72% Pb, 1.45% Zn, containing 1.15 Blbs CuEq or 1.84 Moz AuEq (45% from Cu, 16% from Ag, 15% from Au, rest from Zn-Pb) at our estimated 3-month trailing average metal prices, resulting in a 12% increase in contained metal. The company says this update is important because the new larger open pit component offers lower development capital cost than prior plans contemplated. PEX stock traded up slightly (~1%, roughly in-line with copper explorer peer median share performance) on 15 April following this news, before closing the week ending 15 April flat +0% at a market cap/lb resource of US$0.024/lb CuEq ($15/oz AuEq) - which is in-line with (just above) our 36-company copper explorer peer group median of $0.021/lb CuEq ($13/oz AuEq), and below the group mean of $0.033/lb CuEq ($21/oz AuEq).

• 11 April 2025 - Nickel and cobalt explorer Nordic Resources (ASX:NNL) announced the transformational acquisition of 3 advanced stage gold projects in Finland (where the company’s base metals projects are also located) from gold explorer Northgold AB (STO:NG) in exchange for 70 million newly issued NNL shares and SEK 2 million in cash. The deal is subject to approval by NG and NNL shareholders around end of May 2025. The new NNL shares and any excess cash net of transaction costs etc. will then be distributed to the shareholders of NG in a liquidation process, and NG will be de-listed in Sweden. The acquired assets include:

  • Kopsa gold-copper project - hosts JORC compliant 2025 resource estimate of 23.2 Mt grading 0.85 g/t Au and 0.17% Cu (1.09 g/t AuEq) containing 631,100 oz Au and 38,360t Cu (84.57 Mlbs) for a combined 814,800 oz AuEq (69% in measured and indicated categories)

  • Kiimala Trend gold project - hosts historic resources (which had been historically compliant with Canada’s NI 43-101) at Angesneva deposit stated by NG to be 3.85 Mt grading 1.19 g/t Au containing 147,300 oz Au.

    • Excluding historic non-compliant resources at Vesipera prospect of 0.29 MT grading 2.52 g/t Au.

  • Hirsikangas gold project - hosts historic resources (which had also historically been compliant with NI 43-101) stated by NG and by Rupert Resources (TSX:RUP) before them to be 2.27 Mt grading 1.2 g/t Au containing 89,000 oz Au.

  Together, these historic and compliant NG resources amount to 29.56 Mt with average grade 0.94 g/t Au and 0.13% Cu, which at our Peer Table’s estimated 3-month trailing average amounts to 1.026 Moz AuEq grading 1.08 g/t AuEq (87% from Au), which NNL is acquiring for (A$5.6M in shares at 14 Apr NNL share price of A$0.08 plus A$0.33M in cash for a combined A$5.93M or US$3.6/oz AuEq. Together with NNL’s existing (lower-grade) JORC resources of 2.08 Blbs NiEq (which were 92% from Ni, 7% from Co, 1% from Cu) or 5.2 Moz AuEq in gold-equivalent terms, for an new combined NNL resource inventory (including small share historic resources) of 2.48 Blbs NiEq (6.3 Moz AuEq) - now 77% from Ni, 14% from Au, 6% from Co, rest Cu), resulting in a 19% increase to contained resource metal value from this deal (and now at a higher overall grade). Following this pending acquisition (+70M shares NNL) and pending NNL cap raise announced 14 April 2025 (+47.5M shares), NNL’s shares outstanding will grow from current 147.38M (Google Finance) to 264.88M shares, for a proforma (18 Apr 2025) market cap/unit resource of US$1.9/oz AuEq or $0.005/lb NiEq or $0.008/lb CoEq, which is a ~60% discount to our 17-company nickel explorer peer group median $0.012/lb NiEq ($4.9/oz AuEq), a ~90% discount to our 79-company gold explorer peer group median $21/oz AuEq, and a ~60% discount to our 9-company cobalt explorer peer group median $0.02/lb CoEq ($4.9/oz AuEq).

  

  Location of the three gold projects shown over a geological map of Finland (Source: Nordic Resources)

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