Great Bear comments on trading activity
By Peter Kennedy
Great Bear Resources Ltd. [GBR-TSXV] issued a statement Friday October 5 saying the company’s management is unaware of any material change in its operations that would account for the recent increase in the stock market activity.
The statement, issued at the request of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), follows a sharp increase in Great Bear’s stock price during the past couple of days from a low of $1.76 on October 3, 2018 to a high of $2.50 on October 4, 2018.
On Friday, the share price fell 9.41% or 24 cents to $2.31 on light volume of 149,324, leaving Great Bear with a market cap of $87 million based on 34 million shares outstanding.
Great Bear is attracting interest from major players, including Bay Street gold bug Rob McEwen, in part because its properties are located in a northwestern Ontario mining camp that has already produced about 30 million ounces of gold.
Geologists often say that the best place to make new discoveries is in the vicinity of existing deposits.
Its properties are located about 28 km from Goldcorp.‘s [G-TSX; GG-NYSE] Red Lake Gold Mine, which has been in production since the late 1940s. That mine is expected to produce 235,000 ounces of gold this year at an all-in-sustaining cost of $1,000 an ounce.
Great Bear was in the news on September 27, 2018, when it reported a new high-grade gold discovery at its Dixie Project in the Red Lake District.
The company said the South Limb Zone (SLZ) discovery features some of the highest grade assays reported at Dixie to date, at a vertical depth of 75 metres. The best intercept returned 1.75 metres of 101.05 g/t gold, including 346.79 g/t gold over 0.5 metres within a vein zone of 10.35 metres of 18.23 g/t gold in drill hole DSL-004.
The SLZ is a large target with potential for several kilometres of strike length, the company said in a press release.
News of the high-grade discovery comes just weeks after Great Bear said it was raising $10 million via a private placement financing led by an investment from Rob McEwen and his company, McEwen Mining Inc. [MUX-TSX].
It said the private placement financing is comprised of units priced at $1.45. Rob McEwen and McEwen Mining committed to purchasing $5.7 million of the financing. As a result, they collectively own 16.3% of Great Bear on a partially diluted basis.
Prior to the financing deal with McEwen, Great Bear shares rallied on news of a high-grade gold discovery in the Dixie Project’s Hinge Zone.
Highlights included drill hole DHZ-003, which returned 16.35 metres of 26.91 g/t gold, including separate intervals of 5.05 m of 51.39 g/t gold and 1.0 m of 112.63 g/t.
The company said the newly reported intercepts from the Hinge Zone are shallow, occurring above 110 metres vertical depth and are open in all directions.
Discoveries in the SLZ and Hinge Zone occur along the axis of a multi-kilometre scale, largely untested regional D2 fold, the company said.
D2 folding is also a key gold control at Goldcorp’s Red Lake Gold Mine.
Three drill holes completed along 220 metres of strike length of the new SLZ target all intersected gold within a well-developed quartz vein system.
Meanwhile, Great Bear said the Dixie Lake Limb Zone (DLZ), extending north of the SLZ and Hinge Zone, continues to yield gold results in all (100%) of the 32 drill holes completed to date along the 2.3 km of strike length. The target is defined as having over 10 km of potential strike length.
In July, 2017, Great Bear acquired Newmont Mining Corp.‘s [NEM-NYSE] 33% stake in the Dixie Lake project for $80,000 in total cash payments over four years. Three months later, the company acquired an additional 26 claims at Dixie Lake, which now covers 13,000 hectares.
Through the purchase of Newmont’s interest, Great Bear said it will have a 100% stake in the expanded project and all royalties to these claims.