It's been a horrible hump day for the S&P/ASX 300 Index (ASX: XKO) and most ASX 300 shares so far this Wednesday. At present, the ASX 300 has tanked by a painful 1.19%, pulling the index down to just under 7,460 points. But one gold share is doing far worse than that today. Let's see what's going on.
The ASX 300 share in question is SSR Mining Inc (ASX: SSR). SSR shares are having just about the worst day than an ASX share can have.
Yesterday, this gold miner closed at $14.84 a share. But this morning, those same shares opened at just $7.58, and are down to $7.47 at the time of writing. That's a loss worth a shocking 50.1%.
It's not often that we see a share lose half of its market capitalisation in just a couple of hours of trading. So what on earth is going on here?
Why has this ASX 300 share just lost 50% of its value?
Well, this catastrophic share price loss seems to be a consequence of an announcement that SSR made this morning before market open.
The announcement was brief, but painful for investors:
SSR Mining Inc… announces a suspension of operations at the Çöpler mine as a result of a large slip on the heap leach pad. This event occurred in the morning of February 13, 2024 at approximately 6:30 am EST, and all operations at Çöpler have been suspended as a result.
The Çöpler mine is one of five profitable operations that SSR Mining runs. It is located in Turkey and produces both gold and copper ore. Over the three months ending 30 September 2023, Çöpler produced 56,768 ounces of gold at an all-in-sustaining cost (AISC) of US$1,378 per ounce.
However, Çöpler is not SSR Mining's most valuable gold asset. Over the same quarter, its Marigold mine, located in Nevada, USA, produced 83,272 ounces at an AISC of US$1,106 per ounce.
Even so, ASX 300 investors are certainly not appreciating the news coming out of SSR today regarding its Çöpler mine, if the share price performance is anything to go off.
SSR Mining share price snapshot
Even before today's calamitous share price drop, it had been a tough year for SSR Mining shares. As of yesterday's close, the miner had lost more than 28% of its value over the preceding 12 months. That figure now stands at 63.7%. The company is now also down more than 77% since April 2022.
