Shares in Cornerstone Capital Resources (CVE:CGP) surged as much as 54% shortly after the open on Thursday in more than 10 times usual volumes after releasing results from drilling at its Cascabel project in northern Ecuador.
In afternoon trade the Newfoundland and Labrador-based junior had given up some of those gains, changing hands at $0.20, still 33% for the better on the Toronto Venture Exchange.
The small-cap was one of the most active counters on the TSX-V with 2.3 million shares in the $30 million company changing hands. Year to date the company is up a massive 123%.
Cornerstone’s spectacular high-grade porphyry copper-gold intersections from its Alpala prospect at Cascabel include:
Hole CSD-13-005, the fifth hole drilled at the project to date, intersected 324.3 metres grading 1.07% copper and 1.16 g/t gold from a depth of 870 metres. This includes a higher-grade component of 50 metres grading 1.80% copper and 2.26 g/t gold from a downhole depth of 1,096 metres.
Cornerstone said assays for the next 136 metres are expected within the next 7 days and noted that strong visual copper mineralization extends below the 1,194 metres of drilling assayed to date.
“Significant copper and gold are present over the entire length of the hole, increasing at depth within the potassic altered zone of the porphyry and probably extending further down,” the company said in a statement.
Brooke Macdonald, Cornerstone’s president and CEO stressed that the results that have been obtained in Ecuador took “less than 22 months of exploration from a regional stream sediment anomaly, including all permitting, licensing and social consultation processes:”
Cornerstone has been in Ecuador since 2005, believing that the chances of finding world class mineral deposits there are greater than in many other countries, due to under-exploration and a potentially unparalleled geological endowment, and our Cascabel joint venture with SolGold is proof of that.
The company feels so positive about Ecuador that it took the opportunity to market its three 100% owned properties available for joint venture in the country: “We believe we are a partner of choice for companies looking to hit the ground running there”.
Cornerstone has spent $13 million spent on exploration on its Shyri project in the south of the country since 2005 and its Miocene project is targeting epithermal gold-silver and porphyry gold-copper deposits in northern Chile.