Top 5 Canadian Mining Stocks This Week: Baru Gold Sparkles with 125 Percent Gain

Weekly gain: 125 percent
Market cap: C$11.35 million
Share price: C$0.045

Baru Gold is a development company working to advance its Sangihe gold project in Indonesia.

The company holds a 70 percent stake in the 42,000 hectare project with the remaining 30 percent interest being held by three Indonesian-based companies.

A mineral resource estimate contained in a 2017 technical report demonstrates an indicated resource of 114,700 ounces of gold and 1.97 million ounces of silver from 3.16 million metric tons of ore with grades of 1.13 grams per metric ton (g/t) gold and 19.4 g/t silver. It also hosts an inferred resource of 105,000 ounces of gold and 1.06 million ounces of silver.

Shares in Baru gained this week following a pair of news releases.

The first came on Tuesday when the company announced it had signed a letter of intent with Indonesian company PT Arsari Tambang, which will become a strategic equity partner and investor with a 10 percent stake in Baru Gold subsidiary PT Tambang Mas Sangihe.

The initial 10 percent stake is being purchased from one of Baru’s private partners, meaning it will not affect Baru’s interest in its Sangihe project. However, PT Arsari will also be granted a five-year option for an additional 15 percent stake in the company; if exercised, Baru’s interest will lower from 70 to 59.5 percent.

The second announcement came on Thursday when Baru Gold announced it had retained the services of a specialist advisory firm to lead fundraising operations. The move comes after Baru received several unsolicited inquiries from investors looking to invest in the Indonesian gold sector, including from companies looking for diversification opportunities.

Weekly gain: 85.71 percent
Market cap: C$380.5 million
Share price: C$0.91

I-80 Gold is a gold mining company working on expanding its operational footprint in Nevada, US.

The company owns three producing assets, Granite Creek, Ruby Hill and Lone Tree. While Granite Creek is a mining operation, the other two are processing material from heap leach pads. It is also developing its McCoy-Cove project. Construction at Ruby Hill’s Archimedes underground deposit is anticipated in H1 2025.

I-80 has been working to advance exploration and development work at all its properties to expand its production capacity. To this end, the company is refurbishing the autoclave at Lone Tree, which is planned to be the hub of its operations, processing sulfide ore from Granite Creek, Archimedes at Ruby Hill and McCoy-Cove.

In its Q3 report released on November 12, i-80 indicated it sold a lackluster 7,186 ounces of gold from its assets through the first nine months of the year, a steep decline from the 11,263 ounces sold during the same period in 2023. This was in part due to declining recovery from the heap leach pads and increased groundwater in the underground operations at Granite Creek.

However, the company, which changed leadership during the quarter, also outlined an extensive new plan that will focus on the development of assets with the goal of constructing five gold mines by the end of the decade with combined annual production of 400,000 to 500,000 ounces of gold.

While i-80’s share price dropped sharply after the release, it rebounded 85 percent last week.

Weekly gain: 83.33 percent
Market cap: C$10.46 million
Share price: C$0.165

CopperCorp Resources is an exploration and development company working to advance projects in Western Tasmania.

Its primary work over the past several months has been exploration of the 171 square kilometer Razorback prospect. Razorback hosted a historic mining operation and is home to mineralized deposits of copper, gold and rare earth elements.

The company has identified three high-priority target zones: Jukes, Hyde and Darwin.

The share price of CopperCorp climbed this week following an announcement on Monday (November 18) in which the company reported that it encountered broad zones of visible copper from the Jukes zone.

The company is currently awaiting assay results but said it was encouraged by the results, which include 24.4 meters of visual copper sulphide from 400 meters downhole and 88.7 meters of visual copper sulphide from 463.3 meters downhole. This comes after CopperCorp reported 0.35 percent copper and 0.19 g/t gold over 132 meters from an adjacent hole on October 15.

Weekly gain: 60 percent
Market cap: C$21.24 million
Share price: C$0.04

Northcliff Resources is a development and exploration company working to advance its Sisson tungsten and molybdenum project in New Brunswick, Canada.

The 14,140 hectare property has seen extensive exploration dating back to the early 1980s. A 2013 mineral resource estimate demonstrated measured and indicated quantities of 25.7 million metric tons of tungsten oxide and 178 million pounds of molybdenum from 387 million metric tons of ore with average grades of 0.07 percent tungsten oxide and 0.02 percent molybdenum.

The project is currently in the development stage and in 2022 was granted an extension to the construction commencement timeline by New Brunswick’s Department of Environment and Climate Change. Construction is now anticipated to begin in December 2025.

The company has not released news in the past week.

Weekly gain: 41.67 percent
Market cap: C$510.91 million
Share price: C$0.87

Rusoro Mining is a gold-mining company that had interests in Venezuela. Up until 2012, the company was operating two mines and two mills in the country, along with two additional projects that were nearing the production stage.

In March 2012, the company announced that the Venezuelan government had nationalized Rusoro’s operations without compensation. Following the appropriation of the company’s operations, Rusoro entered into arbitration proceedings before the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes; in August 2016, Rusoro was awarded US$967.77 million, plus pre- and post-award interest to total more than US$1.2 billion.

After protracted legal battles to receive payment from the Venezuelan government, Rusoro filed a claim to enforce actions against assets of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), and in April 2023, the US District Court for Delaware found in favor of Rusoro. Venezuela's appeal of the decision was rejected by a three judge appellate panel in July 2023.

Venezuela appealed to the Supreme Court of the US, but on January 8, Rusoro announced that the court refused to hear the appeal, making the July 2023 ruling the final hearing on the case.

In its press release, Rusoro noted that the Delaware court designated Rusoro as an “additional judgment creditor,” meaning the company will be entitled to a share of the sale of PDVSA assets when they go to auction.

The auction was supposed to take place earlier in the year but was pushed back in August after a US court agreed to delay the selection of finalists until October. The auction was then further delayed as Venezuelan bondholders put the auction in jeopardy as they filed a parallel claim for a portion of the assets.

Shares in Rusoro climbed this week after the Delaware judge overseeing the auction proposed major procedural changes and wanted the auction opened up to new bidders.