Our roundup of Canadian small-caps of between $100-million and $2.5-billion in market capitalization making news and on the move today.
Cott Corp. (COT-N; BCB-T) announced that its Eden Springs subsidiary has acquired Viteau International B.V, a supplier of bottled water and point-of-use filtration services in the Netherlands. The price wasn’t disclosed in the release.
"This acquisition strengthens our commercial customer base and further leverages our leading market position in the region," Antonio Alarcon, president of Eden Springs Continental Europe said in a release.
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Rogers Sugar Inc. (RSI-T) reported revenue of $207.6-million in the fourth quarter down from $211.8-million a year ago and ahead of expectations of $200.5-million.
Its net loss was $40-million or 38 cents per share versus a profit of $9.6-million or 9 cents a year ago.
The company also said it recorded adjusted EBITDA of $22.2-million for its fourth quarter versus $26.3-million for the comparable period last year.
“While we made progress against our core strategies and have positioned ourselves well for the future, 2019 presented a number of challenges and our results did not meet our expectations,” said John Holliday, CEO Rogers and Lantic Inc. said in a release.
“In the last half of the year, we experienced continued competitive pressure in the maple segment; however, we remain focused on optimization and cost improvement to maintain and improve our competitive advantage. Market conditions remain positive in our sugar business with the fifth straight year of volume increases. We remain confident in our long-term strategy and are well-positioned for the future.”
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Waterloo Brewing Ltd. (WBR-T) announced that it has been subject to a “social engineering cyberattack” that the company says was done “by a sophisticated third party that resulted in a wire transfer of the company’s funds to a fraudulent third party account.” The company said the incident occurred in early November and involved creditor employee impersonation and fraudulent wire transfer requests.
The company said it became aware of the incident this week and started an analysis of all other transaction activity across all of its bank accounts and its internal systems and controls, including its computer networks. It has also hired a third-party IT services provider to do an independent investigation of the company's systems "and is working with its auditors and bank to ensure that appropriate steps have been taken to mitigate the chance of any future occurrences of similar cyberattacks." The company said that "at this time," it doesn't believe that its systems were breached or that any personal information of its customers is at risk.
The company said it hasn't recovered any of the approximately $2.1-million wired to the fraudulent third-party account and doesn't expect this incident to "have a material impact on its business going forward or otherwise impact its near-term liquidity requirements or its ongoing operations."
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Real Matters Inc. (REAL-T) reported revenue of $107.3-million in its fourth-quarter ended Sept. 30, up from revenue of $68-million for the same quarter a year ago and ahead of expectations of $86-million.
Net income was $8-million or 9 cents per share versus a loss of $2.5-million or 3 cents a year ago. Adjusted earnings were 11 cents, which beat expectations and compared to 2 cents a year earlier.
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Calibre Mining Corp. (CXB-T) announced the temporary suspension of blasting activities at its Jabali underground mine at La Libertad in Nicaragua. The company said the suspension is related to “surface instability issues caused by localized artisanal mining.” The company said it expects to resume blasting and full mining activities before year-end and that mining at the open-pit remains unaffected.
The company reaffirmed its fourth-quarter consolidated guidance of 32,000 to 35,000 ounces of gold production at an all-in sustaining cost of US$950 to US$980 per gold ounce sold. "La Libertad is, however, now expecting gold production towards the lower end of its guidance range," the company stated.
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iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. (IAN-C) reported revenues of US$22.3-million in the third quarter up from US$939,000 a year ago and below expectations of US$25.5-million. Its net loss was US$15.3-million or 9 cents US per share versus a loss of US$10-million or 15 cents a year ago. Analysts were expecting a loss of 8 cents.
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Endeavour Silver Corp. (EXK-N; EDR-T) announced it will suspend operations at the El Cubo underground mine in Guanajuato, Mexico. It said the decision is based on an updated review of the reserves and resources, “which are now exhausted.” Mining operations will cease on Nov. 30, the company said, and milling operations will continue for approximately one week until the ore stockpile has been processed and the mill cleaned of concentrates.
The company said suspension costs are estimated to be approximately $3.5-million to $4-million, primarily in the fourth quarter, including final severance payments for all employees.
“El Cubo was a good mine for us but our exploration programs in recent years failed to replace reserves and find new resources," said CEO Bradford Cooke. "We reduced the plant throughput this year in order to explore for new reserves but without success. As forecasted, grades and throughput have been declining all year, which resulted in declining economics of the mine in recent months.”