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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a ho-hum 74-84-152 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell five points to 628. Dermot Desmond and Mark Wall's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) was unchanged at 6.5 cents on 2,000 shares today. The company continues to trade near its all-time low of five cents despite -- or perhaps because of -- its 2024 financial results.

Mountain Province's report was long and brimming with good cheer, but veteran investors know to brace for disquieting news when the lead bullet trumpets a "60-per-cent improvement in key site safety," compared with the year before. Several promotional bullets followed, like those fired from a Gatling gun at the Siege of Petersburg, but none managed to rally the company's shareholders.

Yes, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were $90-million, but that was well below the $155-million logged in 2023, mainly because annual revenue fell to $267.7-million from $328.6-million the year before. The revenue dropped despite the company's 49-per-cent-owned Gahcho Kue mine managing a 12-per-cent increase in kimberlite processed -- in part because the grade was sharply lower -- but also because rough diamond prices were much weaker. And so, Mountain Province recorded a net loss of $80.8-million last year, compared with just $43.7-million a year earlier.

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