Mountain Province Sells 95-carat Diamond

Mountain Province Diamonds (TSX:MPVD,NASDAQ:MPVD) has sold a 95-carat diamond for an undisclosed price. However, the company did confirm the sale has set a new record for the Canadian diamond miner.

While Mountain will not divulge the exact price of the diamond saying it would disadvantage the buyers, Reid Mackie, the company’s vice president of marketing, acknowledged the diamond sold for almost three times more than the previous highest price diamond the company sold.

The 95-carat white octahedron diamond was unearthed in May at the company’s Gahcho Kue project in the Northwest Territories. The rare natural gem is of top clarity and is also the largest gem quality stone and fourth largest stone recovered from the mine since production commenced just under two years ago.

“The recovery of this diamond firmly establishes Mountain Province as a reliable producer of exceptional, high quality, Canadian diamonds in very large sizes and bodes well for the future discovery of similar gems,” said Mackie, in a May press release.

In addition to the almost 100-carat diamond, a number of fancy and special diamonds were also acquired by Mountain as part of a production split at the site. Mountain is a 49-percent partner with mega diamond miner De Beers.

The large gem quality white diamond as well as the other stones recovered at Gahcho were sold in June, during Mountain’s fifth diamond sale for 2018 located in Antwerp, Belgium. The proceeds from the sale brought the company C$40 million, the most Mountain has ever earned from a single diamond sale.

“The fifth sale of the year saw a strong performance for Mountain Province in sales and pricing, reflecting the growth in appreciation of our production by our customers as well as a continued strong rough diamond market,” Jonathan Comerford, interim president and CEO, said in a company announcement. “We set a new record for total proceeds realized by Mountain Province in a tender, and the normalized value for this sale at US$86 a carat is one of the highest we have achieved to date.”

He continued, “this tender also saw the successful sale of our highest-value diamond to date, at a price we were very happy with.”

Despite the exact price of the cherry-sized gem being kept a secret, Paul Zimnisky, an independent diamond analyst in New York, told CBC he believes the diamond, which is said to have no visible cracks or inclusions, probably sold for US$2.5 to US$3 million.

Mountain plans to continue exploring Gahcho for large gem quality diamonds and credits the latest discovery with helping to put the company on international radar.

Mountain Province shares were down slightly on Wednesday (July 4), sitting at C$3.09 at 12:00 p.m. EST.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Georgia Williams, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.