Banro shareholders enjoy rare stock surge

Banro Corporation (TSE:BAA) shares jumped 6.6% on Monday after the company released a note to its preference shareholders pegging its dividend payable.

Despite the gains, the Toronto-based company producing gold in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is still trading down massively this year like its gold mining peers.

The stock closed up 6.6% at $1.13 on Monday affording it a $284 million market cap. Year to date the company has declined almost 60% and will fall out of the TSX/S&P Composite by close of trading Friday. This time last year Banro was still worth $1 billion.

Banro’s production level for the first quarter of 2013 was 6,534 ounces of gold per month, bringing its annual dividend yield to 10% and resulting in a dividend payable to its two sets of preference shareholders of $0.53 “if, as and when” dividends are declared.

Banro’s Twangiza oxide mine  near the town of Bukavu of the DRC, poured its first gold early in the fourth quarter of 2011 with targeted annual output of more than 100,000 ounces a year.

The company owns four additional licences along the same gold belt in the east of the country.

Apart from rich gold fields the DRC is home to the world’s largest cobalt resource and second globally in terms of copper deposits.

Image courtesy of the company.