There is no prize for guessing that iron ore companies have plunged to the bottom of the resources component of this year’s TSR survey; but what is interesting is the rise of uranium hopefuls, despite few signs of an imminent increase in the uranium price.
Stonehenge Metals, a local company with uranium exploration interests in South Korea, has been an exceptional performer, rating ninth overall in a 750-company survey with a one-year TSR of 785 per cent.
Vimy Resources, a local uranium explorer with strong financial backing from iron ore leader Andrew Forrest, ranked 24th with a TSR of 373 per cent, well ahead of his better-known business, Fortescue Metals Group, which ranked 590th thanks to it negative 54 per cent TSR.
Gold producers also moved closer to the top of the TSR table, thanks to increasing interest in gold as a defensive investment and the beneficial effects of the falling Australian dollar, which is boosting returns on conversion from US dollar gold sales to the local currency.
St Barbara, a gold company that fell out of favour with investors over the past few years thanks to ill-timed investments, came in at 23rd. Rand Mining was 28th.
Other commodity specialists to rate well, perhaps because so many other resources stocks rated badly, were Red River Resources, a zinc project developer (42nd), and Mirabela Nickel, a nickel recovery situation (43rd).
At the other end of the rankings was a bashed and battered line-up of once high-flying iron ore stocks, which have been hammered flat by the collapse in the iron ore price, and forecasts of more falls to come.
Worst iron ore stock was Northern Iron, a business based on a deposit of magnetite ore in the far north of Norway. It’s 93 per cent share price plunge from 14 cents to less than 1 cent ranked the stock at 748th in terms of TSR, fractionally worse than Mindax, a local iron ore explorer which ranked 747th with a 92 per cent value decline.
Bigger iron ore names such as BC Iron and Atlas Iron were also in the basement at 740th and 715th respectively with one-year value declines as measured in TSR terms of 90 per cent for BC and 80 per cent for Atlas.
