B.C. mining towns bounce back – by Scott Simpson (Western Investor – May 30, 2017)

http://www.westerninvestor.com/

Mining companies are proving pundits wrong as Kootenays and Cariboo industries regain their glitter

One year ago, the share price for B.C.’s largest mining company, Teck Resources Ltd., had fallen below $4, and some analysts were predicting it would follow more than a dozen American coal mining companies into bankruptcy. One analyst predicted the company’s stock would drop to $1 per share.

One year later, the company’s stock has moved back above $30, and Teck CEO Don Lindsay stood in front of his industry peers and cheerily dished out some crow for those analysts at the Association for Mineral Exploration BC’s (AME BC) Roundup 2017 conference in Vancouver.

“We had analysts and prognosticators telling us that we would never recover and that the industry was doomed,” Lindsay said. “Next time you see that, buy Teck.” For the first time in four years, there was a sense of optimism at the annual conference that the mining and exploration sectors have survived one of the worst downturns ever and have good prospects ahead.

“There is a palpable sense that a turnaround is real,” says AME BC CEO Gavin Dirom. The mood was similarly upbeat at the Cambridge House International Resource Investment Conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre West.

Mickey Fulp, publisher of the Mercenary Geologist and one of the Cambridge House conference speakers, points to the performance of the TSX Venture Exchange – which bottomed in January 2016 at 474 and is now around 809– as an indicator of the returning investor confidence.

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