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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a positive 93-67-150 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose two points to 594. Adam Lundin and Dr. William Lamb's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) was among the gainers, as it added one cent to 46 cents on 1.73 million shares.

Lucara said late last week that it sold $44.3-million (U.S.) of rough diamonds from its Karowe mine in Botswana during the third quarter, the highest tally since the third quarter of 2023. Yes, that sounds encouraging but remember that the company did so by selling 116,221 carats through the summer quarter -- about 20,000 more carats than it mined. (Lucara had mined about 16,000 carats more than it sold in the second quarter, growing a bit of an inventory.)

Lucara's third quarter sales averaged $381 (U.S.) per carat. That was well below the $540 (U.S.) per carat that the company managed in its second quarter, but still in line with the $422 (U.S.) per carat that Lucara achieved in its first quarter -- and clearly better than the $325 (U.S.) per carat that the company's Karowe diamonds fetched in the final quarter of 2023. (Yes, but a year ago, Lucara's third quarter average was a respectable $504 (U.S.) per carat.)

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