Canada Unearthed: Four explorers TSX investors have loved more than maple syrup in the past 12 months

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• The TSX has been a dire place to be a miner in 2023, with almost two-thirds of our tracked TSX & TSX-V stocks being losers over the past 12 months
• Only 318 of 1123 on our TSX watchlist are in the green since November last year
• We check out four explorers up 600% or more in the past year

The TSX and TSX-V exchange is home to more mining companies and explorers in the world, with the exchange itself marketing that around 40% of the world’s mining companies are listed across the bourses.

It dwarfs the ASX, where there is far less capital and only one single exchange, and trumps the tech, finance and conglomerates that dominate the New York and London markets.

Yet complaints have grown from explorers in recent years that it’s harder to raise cash and make a buck in Canada, where stoned bankers are throwing their green into high-flying pot stocks before they sink a cent into a gold explorer.

Some of Canada’s established explorers are even making a run for Australia, where fundies and investors are either more knowledgable about mining or more tolerant of bulls**t.

READ: Canada Unearthed: The Canadians are Coming, the Canadians are Coming

Of 1123 number of companies in our TSX/TSX-V watchlist some 318 have recorded 12-month gains. That’s 28.3%.

Another 65 are unchanged, give or take a couple who have been acquired or listed for less than a year. Including those, it’s 5.8%.

A whopping 740 are 12 month losers. 65.9%.

Pick a random grab bag of Toronto-listed miners and you’re almost two-thirds likely to pick a loser, an outcome so bad you’ll wish you were on cannabis.

(But not in cannabis stocks. The Canadian Cannabis LP Index is down 38% in the past year and declining investor interest prompted S&P to junk its index with little commentary earlier this year.)

Granted the ASX has had plenty of losers as well. And like the Aussie market, Canada has also delivered its share of multi-baggers.

Here are four TSX-V stocks sitting on an outsized more than 600% gain and why they’re surging this year.

Hercules Silver Corp (TSX-V:BIG)

UP: +1157%
MC: C$165 million
$C: 0.88

Aussie investors likely get PTSD looking at a stock ticker with the code BIG.

Rest easy friends. Hercules isn’t flogging nonsense video content to small businesses, it’s drilling for silver and porphyry hosted copper at its project of the same name northwest of Cambridge, Idaho.

The first drill program in over 30 years began at the property in November last year, testing around 3.5km of silver mineralisation and a copper prospect in a historic but forgotten US silver district.

The ten-bagger’s first chip samples came in with high grade silver and copper, with a maiden program hitting 38m at 353g/t silver, 0.64% lead, 2.28% zinc and 0.16% copper from 26m in its first drill hole.

It hit more silver in a 6000m second phase program, with copper following on October 10, hitting 185.29m at 0.84% Cu and 111ppm Mo from 246-431.2m including a 45.33m stretch at 1.94% Cu in the first test of a more than 1.8km blind chargeability anomaly.

CEO and director Chris Paul said the discovery hole exceeded expectations, demonstrating with step-out holes the presence of a “very large system”.

“HER-23-05 (the discovery hole) also represents the first significant porphyry copper system discovered in the state of Idaho, which breaks the discovery gap between BC and Nevada, presenting an entirely new district for porphyry exploration in a tier 1 jurisdiction,” he said at the time.

“The Triassic-Jurassic island arc geology of the Hercules Copper Belt is reminiscent of British Columbia’s famous Golden Triangle, where some of the world’s largest porphyry copper systems have been discovered. The Hercules Copper Belt, however, is accessible year-round, with excellent infrastructure and a supportive, pro mining state government.”

Homerun Resources (TSX-V:HMR)

UP: +920%
MC: C$25 million
$C: 0.51

Homerun has a beautiful baseball inspired logo and made most of its gains in the first part of the year.

Its focus is on two streams of the silica sands market, aiming to be both a miner and offtaker of the glassmaking commmodity.

Specifically Homerun wants to supply silica into industries like solar PV manufacturing and energy storage, utilising a supply agreement for high purity quartz silica from the mineral research and development company of the state of Bahia in Brazil, known as CBPM.

It also owns a project in British Columbia called, we kid you not, the Tatooine Silica Project.

“The Tatooine Silica Project is host to high-purity quartzite of the Middle to Upper Ordovician Mount Wilson Formation which forms multiple beds ranging from 60 to 170 metres thick, striking northwest and dipping steeply to the northeast. The quartzite is hard, massive, white, and medium to fine-grained,” the company said.

No mention of any Sandpeople. This one is down 18% over the past week and 36% over the past year.

Rome Resources (TSX-V:RMR)

UP: +644%
MC: C$29 million
$C: 0.335

Another one that ran hard earlier this year, Rome’s recent performance has been a little muted, understandably since the commodity it is searching for has been pretty stagnant.

Rome owns the Bisie North tin project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8km from Alphamin Resources’ Bisie tin mine.

Grading 4.5% Sn, Bisie is a global outlier as the highest grade tin deposit known anywhere in the world.

Find another one and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Rome has signed an agreement to earn 51% ownership of the Bisie North project, which boasts a ‘highly significant tin in soil anomaly’ straddling two tenements under its watch over 3000m of strike.

Drilling began in December last year, announcing on August 23 that its initial assay result results for three holes at its Kalayi prospect had confirmed ‘a significant tin discovery’.

It’s not Bisie yet though, not by a long shot.

Highlight hits from Bisie North’s Kalayi prospect included 12.5m at 1.06% Sn from 41.5m including 2.5m at 3.39% Sn from 50m and 0.5m at 11.7% Sn from 51.5m, and 2.5m at 2.6% Sn including 0.5m at 7.15% Sn.

Drilling at the Mont Agoma prospect also hit tin as well as copper and zinc, with best intersections including 41m at 3.52% Cu from 139m, including 13.15m at 7.8% Cu from 143.85m and 49m at 3.76% Zn from 76m, including 4m at 10.04% Zn.

Rome CEO and president Mark Gasson said the company remained confident of identifying further significant tin mineralisation at Bisie North, saying it was the same team who made the world-class Alphamin discovery carrying out the work.

“We are equally excited about drilling at deeper levels at Mont Agoma. The high-grade copper, zinc, lead and silver and associated anomalous tin clearly demonstrates that we are drilling at the upper levels within the mineralised system,” he said at the time.

“Typically, tin is deposited from high temperature hydrothermal fluids closer to the source at depth. Our focus is high grade tin mineralisation at depth, but significant near surface high grade copper mineralisation has the potential to materially enhance project economics.”

Q2 Metals (TSX-V:QTWO)

UP: +600%
MC: C$53 million
$C: 0.63

A Queensland gold explorer, Q2 Metals underwent a popular makeover last year when it picked up the Mia lithium project in, where else but the incredibly hot Jame Bay exploration district in Quebec.

Explored at least as early as 1959 when few people really cared much about lithium discoveries at all, old timers walking over the 8.3km trend claimed to have found pegmatite dykes there as much as 30.5m wide with crystals of spodumene up to 0.61m in length.

Quebec Govt geos sent rock samples from Mia assaying grades of 0.47% Li2O and 2.27% Li2O in 1997 from Mia-Li1 and Mia-Li2 respectively, with more recent outcrop samples grading up to 2.65% Li2O.

The past year has been spent conducting early exploration and outlining the scale of the targets at Mia, where an inaugural drilling program began last week after the acquisition of 100% of the project was completed earlier this month.

Located 62km east of Wemindji Community in the Eeyou Itschee Territory of James Bay, Mia is now contains some 9.7km of mineralised trend including the Mia Zone and Carte Zone adjacent to Ophir Gold’s Radis Property, to the east of Winsome Resources’ (ASX:WR1) Cancet and Adina and Patriot Battery Metals’ (ASX:PMT) Corvette lithium discoveries.

TSX and TSX.V Winners & Losers

Here’s how TSX and TSX.V-listed mining and exploration stocks performed last week:

Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort. Best viewed on a laptop.

Stocks missing from this list? Email [email protected]