TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX-listed Copper Mountain on Wednesday reported production for the first three months of the year, saying copper concentrate shipments rose 9% from the fourth quarter to 39 000 wet metric tonnes.

This, however, was less than what Laurentian Bank Securities metals and mining analyst Christopher Chang expected, owing to lower-than-expected mill throughput of 2.6-million tonnes, which was partially offset by higher copper grades of 0.39%.

The shipments contained about 19.7-million pounds of copper, 6 500 oz of gold, and 98 600 oz of silver, generating about $69.6-million in gross revenue. A group of eight TSX analysts had expected the company to report revenue of $74.81-million.

In March, the operation experienced unscheduled downtime resulting from another ball mill transformer failure, which resulted in a mill availability rate of 91%, against the target rate of 92%.

The semi-autogenous grinding mill’s throughput was improved during the quarter as a result of adding the third portable crusher late last year.

“Although the increased powder factor and short-term portable crushing strategy remains, overall, effective, we believe operating consistency could likely remain an issue until the company’s permanent secondary crusher commissions. While the company continues to target a third-quarter start-up, we remain conservative in our estimates and have assumed a first-quarter 2015 start-up.

“In our view, we believe the operation could be approaching a bottleneck at a mill throughput rate of roughly 30 000 t/d on a sustainable basis,” Chang said in a note to clients.

Copper Mountain said that mining activities continued to shift towards Pit 3 during the quarter and mining in the Pit 2 area shifted more towards the south-west end of the pit.

During the quarter a total of 13.6-million tonnes of material was mined, including 4.1-million tonnes of ore and 9.5-million tonnes of waste. The projected life-of-mine strip ratio is 2:1, but higher in the early years. The mine moved an average of about 160 000 t/d of material.

Chang maintained a ‘buy’ rating, supported by the company’s compelling valuation and operational turnaround.

Copper Mountain’s TSX-listed stock rose 11.26% on Wednesday to C$2.47 apiece.