About 30 minutes ahead of Tuesday's opening bell, Starcore International Mines Ltd. (TSX:SAM) quietly released production results from the first quarter of fiscal 2018, ended July 31, 2017. The Vancouver-based company, through its Mexican subsidiaries, owns the San Martin mine in Queretaro, Mexico and the Altiplano Gold Silver concentrate processing facility in Matehuala, Mexico. Elsewhere in Mexico, Starcore has El Creston, an advanced exploration project in Sonora. In North America, the company has four earlier stage exploration projects, two in Canada and two in the U.S.
During the first quarter, 69,753 tonnes of ore was milled at an average grade of 1.97 grams per tonne gold and 12.6 grams per tonne silver, equating to 3,888 ounces of gold equivalent, based upon a gold/silver ratio of 74.9-to-1.
At a $1,250 spot price, that's approximately $4.86 million in gold equivalent.
At the same time, the Altiplano processing facility received 37.21 tonnes of concentrate and 24.2 tonnes of slag were containing about 150 ounces of gold and 25,525 ounces of silver. Across the quarter, 223 ounces of gold and 21,000 ounces of silver were sold by Starcore's subsidiary.
With metals - and commodities in general - trading down in Tuesday action, including gold being off by 1.2% and silver skidding 2.9%, miners aren't getting much love at the moment. It's only about one half hour into the session and not a share of SAM has been traded on the production results, with shares sitting right at 37 cents each where they closed on Monday. So far in 2017, shares of SAM are down 33.9%.
