Rubicon Minerals Corp., a Canadian gold explorer, rose the most in more than three years after saying part of its Phoenix Gold Project in Ontario may contain 4 million ounces of the metal.
Rubicon climbed C$1.27, or 28 percent, to C$5.87 at 1:32 p.m. in Toronto Stock Exchange trading. The shares earlier rose 34 percent to C$6.18, the biggest intraday gain since April 2007 and the highest price since the Vancouver-based company’s stock started trading in November 1997.
Rubicon is exploring near Goldcorp Inc.’s Red Lake mine in Canada. The F2 Gold System within the Phoenix project has an estimated inferred resource of 4 million ounces of gold, Rubicon said today in a statement. The results indicate a grade of 20.1 grams (0.59 ounce) of gold per ton of rock, the company said.
“This is very material for Rubicon,” Barry Allan, a Toronto-based analyst at Mackie Research Capital Corp., said in a telephone interview. “Expectations on the street were far below the inferred resource that Rubicon has come up with.” Allan said he expected about 3 million ounces.
Mining companies make inferred estimates based on data from test work such as drilling.
“This is a very high grade compared to other projects around the world,” Rubicon Chief Executive Officer David Adamson said today in a telephone interview. “This is a company-making asset.”
Rubicon plans to release the results of a bulk sample of ore from the deposit before the end of the first quarter, Adamson said.
“The current 4.01 million ounce inferred gold resource may be only a small part of the overall gold potential of the F2 Gold System,” Adamson said in the statement, citing analysis by Geoex Ltd., which assessed the latest exploration results.
The company’s latest exploration results are from drilling up to July 31, the company said in the statement.
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