Barisan Gold Corporation (TSXV: BG) shares had
a stellar 2013, ending the year with a 205% gain even as the price of gold lost
about 28% in what the precious metal’s worse annual decline in more than a
generation. The stock was the fourth-best performer in Ubika Research’s 15 Best
Performing Penny Stocks of 2013 (see the complete list here).
What’s
even more impressive is had an investor purchased the shares at the end of
September, 2013, the three-month return would have been more than 380%, presuming
they had sold at year’s end.
Barisan
Gold currently owns and operates two gold and gold-copper properties in
Indonesia’s Aceh Province on the northern tip of Sumatra Island – Barisan
gold-copper porphyry belt and the Abong epithermal gold project.
On
November 5, 2013, the company reported drill results that included a 262-metre
interval grading 0.81 g/t gold + 0.49% copper (or 1.0% copper equivalent),
prompting its CEO Alex Granger to say, “we have validated one of the
highest-grade porphyry discoveries anywhere in the world of the past decade.
There are very few new porphyry discoveries that have returned intercepts of 1%
copper equivalent over more than 250 metres.”
Its
stock price, though, pulled back somewhat early in the New Year after the
company announced more drill results on January 9, 2014. Intersections included
202 metres of 0.7 g/t gold + 0.4% copper + 0.01% molybdenum.
Market
expectations here were likely too high and as with any exploration drilling
location is at best an educated guess. The company said as much in its news
release stating “the results appear to indicate that the high grade zone
is going much further to the west than our geological models predicted.”
Barisan’s
share price success in 2013 can also attributed to the fact that it has just 45.2
million fully-diluted shares outstanding. As well, the company’s Board of
Directors includes Ed Rochette, who is also the CEO of East Asia Minerals Corp.
(TSXV: EAS), and is the man who acquired the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project for
Robert Friedland and Ivanhoe Mines (Source: Financial Post)
Institutional
shareholders of this company have included CEF (Capital Markets) Ltd., which is
50% owned by Mr. Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man (Source: Morningstar).
The
most recent pullback in Barisan’s stock price has prompted some company
insiders to purchase more stock, which is always an encouraging sign for
shareholders. Nonetheless, more good drill results will likely be needed to
power its share price higher.
