Rochester Resources Ltd.
Rochester Resources Ltd. owns 100% of two mining properties in Nayarit state, Mexico, east of Tepic: Mina Real (11 mining concessions plus one mineral claim, ~21,367 hectares) and San Francisco (12 mining concessions, ~18,125 hectares). The company operates the Mina Real processing plant (~140 tonnes/day capacity), milling ore from its own Estanzuela Unit (in commercial production since June 1, 2007) and San Francisco Unit (in production since 2014), generating quarterly gold and silver sales revenue. No current NI 43-101 resource estimate has been published for either property. The company operates under a going-concern qualification and significant working-capital deficit.
Notable vs. Peers
- Financials score of 1/10 is weaker than the peer average of 6.5/10.
- Jurisdiction risk score of 6/10 is meaningfully riskier than the peer average of 7.8/10.
Lifecycle Milestones
Construction Milestones
5 of 5 reached- Jun 2006 · Environmental approval and permitting for the Mina Real processing plant, announced 21 Jun 2006: "environmental approval and permitting is now in place to commence site preparation and construction of a conventional cyanidation processing plant and related infrastructure at the Mina Real gold/silver property located in Nayarit State, Mexico" (news release furnished to the SEC on Form 6-K). Dated to the day from the release; the grant itself is on or shortly before that date. Independently corroborated by RCT's FY2007 20-F: "As of June 2006, environmental approval and permitting were in place...". Anchors RCT's stage=PRODUCTION claim per Task #580; see MetricSource(stage) on this row. · Source
- Reached — date not disclosed · Written UNDATED deliberately. The decision is evidenced as already taken by 21 Jun 2006 -- that day's release sets out a committed build (design capacity of at least 300 tpd with 200 tpd start-up, construction cost estimated at US$2.5M, a US$2.5M Participation Funding Facility agreed to finance the mill, start-up scheduled for late October 2006, and contract development mining already running at ~2,500 t/month since late April 2006 to build a pre-production stockpile) -- but no source pins the board sanction itself to a day, and a day-precision date will not be invented here. Same treatment as the HSLV undated rows (Task #537g) and the MKR precedent (Task #493). Note the FY2007 20-F is explicit that this decision was taken WITHOUT an independent feasibility study: "Rochester has not conducted an independent feasibility study on the Mina Real project which may increase the risk that the planned operations are not economically viable." · Source
- Reached — date not disclosed · Site preparation and construction of the 200 tpd conventional cyanidation processing plant and related infrastructure at Mina Real commenced in June 2006, immediately after permitting was received on 21 Jun 2006; construction was complete by the end of December 2006 (both per RCT's FY2007 20-F). Written undated: the source pins the month, not the day, and a fabricated day-precision date would be worse than an honest null (HSLV precedent, Task #537g). · Source
- Reached — date not disclosed · "In January 2007, the mill began production and the first gold and silver was delivered to the refinery in early February" -- RCT's FY2007 20-F, which elsewhere states "[c]ommissioning of the Mina Real mill began in January 2007 and the first gold and silver precipitate was delivered to the refinery in early February 2007." Written undated: the source pins first production to January 2007 and first refinery delivery to "early February 2007", neither to a day. The resulting output was real and was accounted for as pre-commercial -- CAD 890,487 of FY2007 revenue from the sale of gold and silver produced at Mina Real, credited against pre-production costs rather than booked as sales. · Source
- Jun 2007 · Commercial production declared effective 1 Jun 2007. Dated to the day from RCT's own FY2007 20-F: "commercial levels of production was declared, effective June 1, 2007, for the production of gold, silver and other minerals from its mining concessions in Mexico", restated as "commercial production was deemed to have been achieved on June 1, 2007" and "[s]ince May 31, 2007, the mill has been in commercial production and operating in a satisfactory manner with some disruptions in production being experienced." NOT marked disputed: per Task #516 a bare declaration would not be enough on its own, but this one is corroborated by ~19 subsequent years of audited annual revenue from gold/silver sales (FY2021-FY2025: CAD 13.02M/13.82M/13.63M/12.70M/13.29M) and by the mill still running today (TTM revenue to 28 Feb 2026: CAD 22.16M). This is also the date written to Miner.stageEnteredAt. · Source
Milestones are recorded only from a company's own dated disclosure. A milestone with no date shown is one we can confirm was reached but for which no date was disclosed — we don't estimate one. "Not yet reached" means exactly that, not that a date is missing. An "Expected" line likewise only ever reflects the company's own guidance (e.g. a study or permit decision targeted for a stated quarter) — most not-yet-reached milestones have none, and that absence means no such guidance has been disclosed, not that one is overdue.
A relative ranking of how closely this company matches the profile of juniors that have actually been acquired — not a probability, and not a reason to buy. Acquisitions are rare: only a few dozen significant deals happen a year across a universe of thousands of juniors, so even a high score here describes a long shot. The strongest signal the underlying research identifies — whether a major already holds a JV, earn-in, or 5–19.9% strategic stake — isn't tracked yet and is absent from this score.
Your Rankings
Management Team
Chief Executive Officer and Director of Rochester Resources Ltd. since 2018, affiliated with DNN Investments Ltd. Rochester holds 100% interests in the Mina Real and San Francisco gold and silver properties in Nayarit, Mexico. The company's own corporate website is stale; role confirmed via mutually consistent third-party filings and market data.
Member of the Mexican Mining Hall of Fame with a career spanning roughly four decades, holding senior executive/board roles at Industrial Peñoles, Luismin, Goldcorp, Wheaton River Minerals, Alamos Gold, Primero Mining, and Dyna Resource. Played a key role in developing Mexico's San Dimas mine and previously served on the board of Wheaton Precious Metals. Former President of the Mexican Mining Chamber and former President of the Silver Institute. Joined Vizsla Silver's board as an independent director in November 2023 and was subsequently named Lead Director.
Insiders, Investors & Smart Money
Notable shareholders and insiders whose involvement is worth knowing about, plus what we're seeing from institutional/large-investor activity.
No smart-money tracking (institutional/large-investor activity) for this miner yet — this is a planned feature, not live data.
No notable insiders tracked for this miner yet.
Reports, Presentations & Documents
[Task #580 stage correction, 2026-08-24] RESOLVED 2026-08-24 (Task #580): raised stage GRASSROOTS -> PRODUCTION and set stageEnteredAt = 2007-06-01. Rochester has been a declared commercial producer since 1 June 2007 and is still milling and selling gold and silver today. PRIMARY SOURCE: RCT's own SEC Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended 31 May 2007 (filed 30 Nov 2007; the company later deregistered from the SEC via Form 15-12G on 27 Apr 2018, so this is its last SEC annual report) states that "commercial levels of production was declared, effective June 1, 2007, for the production of gold, silver and other minerals from its mining concessions in Mexico", restated in the same filing as "commercial production was deemed to have been achieved on June 1, 2007" and "[s]ince May 31, 2007, the mill has been in commercial production and operating in a satisfactory manner." The same filing dates the build: environmental approval and permitting in place June 2006, construction of the 200 tpd cyanidation plant completed end of December 2006, mill commissioning January 2007, first gold and silver delivered to the refinery early February 2007. TASK #516 STANDARD CLEARED ON BOTH LIMBS: that standard deliberately does NOT accept a formal "commercial production declared" milestone on its own, and requires real audited/contracted sales. RCT has both -- the 2007 declaration above, plus ~19 subsequent years of audited annual revenue from gold/silver sales (FY2021-FY2025, years ended 31 May: CAD 13.02M / 13.82M / 13.63M / 12.70M / 13.29M; trailing twelve months to 28 Feb 2026: CAD 22.16M revenue, CAD 1.84M operating income, CAD 0.60M free cash flow). The "not payable metal" style disclaimer that standard tests for is absent; RCT in fact applied that discipline in the opposite direction in 2007, crediting its CAD 890,487 of pre-commercial FY2007 revenue against pre-production costs rather than booking it as sales. STILL PRODUCING AS OF THE MOST RECENT AVAILABLE FILING (this was the open question in the reserving note, which could reach nothing newer than the Apr 2025 MD&A): RCT filed Q3 FY2026 interim financials and MD&A for the three and nine months ended 28 Feb 2026, released 29 Apr 2026. Quarterly revenue CAD 3.13M (Q3 FY2025) -> 4.74M (Q1 FY2026) -> 5.44M (Q2 FY2026) -> 8.42M (Q3 FY2026, +168.6% year over year, net income +CAD 0.97M, operating income +CAD 1.91M, positive operating cash flow, continued capex). Nine-month FY2026 revenue (~CAD 18.6M) already exceeds all of FY2025. Consistent with the 21 Mar 2025 processing-circuit modification recorded in this row's currentMilestoneLabel, installed to fix poor silver recovery from high-manganese ore. SEDAR+ is bot-walled (Radware/validate.perfdrive.com) and no primary RCT document newer than Apr 2025 could be opened, so those figures come from stockanalysis.com -- already this row's cited MetricSource for marketCapUsd and sharesOutstanding -- validated first against known primary data: its Q3 FY2025 revenue reproduces the Apr 2025 MD&A's CAD 3,134,337 exactly, and its 28 Feb 2025 current assets/liabilities reproduce that MD&A's ~CAD 15.3M working-capital deficit exactly. Two independent aggregators agree on the Q3 FY2026 figures and the 29 Apr 2026 release date. LISTING STATUS ACTIVE: TMX Money (the exchange operator's own site) shows RCT on the TSX Venture Exchange with a live two-sided quote, last trade 21 Aug 2026 at CAD 0.185, market cap CAD 8,888,164 -- not suspended, not delisted, not on NEX. A live two-sided quote is dispositive that no cease trade order is in effect (the CSA CTO database itself was unreachable this pass). WHY PRODUCTION DESPITE NO NI 43-101 RESOURCE AND NO FEASIBILITY STUDY: RCT never walked up the stage ladder -- its own FY2007 20-F states "[t]he Mina Real Property has no mineral resources or reserves which are compliant with the reporting requirements of NI 43-101 or Guide 7" and "[a]lthough the Company has declared commercial production, there are no proven reserves identified nor has there been any independent feasibility report prepared." It went from exploration straight to building a mill, skipping RESOURCE_DEFINITION/PEA/PFS/FEASIBILITY. That makes every intermediate stage strictly LESS supportable than PRODUCTION, not more: RESOURCE_DEFINITION would assert a resource the company says does not exist, and PEA/PFS/FS would assert studies never done. The only two candidates are the stored GRASSROOTS and PRODUCTION, and GRASSROOTS is refuted by nineteen years of audited metal sales -- wrong under every reading, the same shape as the HSLV correction (Task #537g, commit bf22b06). The Stage doc comment's "stage is a claim, not a label" constraint governs the STUDY-BACKED stages; PRODUCTION's evidence basis was ratified in Task #516 to be operating reality (real sales) precisely so a producer is classified by what it does rather than what it has published, and Task #493's reading of stage as CURRENT OPERATING REALITY points the same way. Financial distress is severe here but is NOT a stage question -- see the Task #583 flag below. businessModel deliberately LEFT AS OPERATOR and not changed to MERCHANT_PROCESSOR: that model (Task #541, Dynacor/DNG) is for a company that buys third-party ore and therefore structurally owns no deposit. RCT holds 100% of the Mina Real and San Francisco concessions and mills ore from its own Estanzuela and San Francisco units -- it owns its ore body, it just never sized it under NI 43-101 -- so the MERCHANT_PROCESSOR exemption from stage-construction-implies-deposit-data must not be borrowed here. Five MinerConstructionMilestone rows written alongside this change (the row previously had none, so raising stage without them would have left five live lifecycle-gate violations); dates asserted only where a source pins them to the day, the rest undated with explicit reasons rather than invented. None marked disputed -- each is corroborated downstream by the mill's continuing output. FLAGGED, NOT FIXED: Task #582 -- (a) `description` still calls these "two gold-silver EXPLORATION properties" and now contradicts stage=PRODUCTION (its NI 43-101 sentence is accurate and confirmed); the same stale framing appears in third-party profiles (TMX Money still describes RCT as "a mineral exploration and development company" earning revenue "from mineral exploration activity"), which is very likely where GRASSROOTS came from; and (b) this change activates stage-construction-implies-deposit-data, which RCT now FAILS with ouncesFound/dcfNpvUsd/mineLifeYears all null. That failure is TRUE and left standing deliberately -- there is no honest number to write, and #582 owes a decision on how to represent "real producer, no resource ever defined," a shape the gate was not written for. MetricStatus rows for those three fields are written as RESEARCHED_UNKNOWN / NOT_DISCLOSED so they read as confirmed-absent rather than never-checked. Task #583 -- current liabilities went CAD 20.16M (28 Feb 2025) -> 44.85M -> 47.13M -> 48.92M (28 Feb 2026), +CAD 24.7M in two quarters; working-capital deficit widened from ~15.3M to ~38.6M and shareholders' equity is roughly -CAD 37.1M against CAD 0.57M cash. Given the Nayarit historical-extraction dispute in this row's currentMilestoneLabel a recognized judgment/provision is the obvious candidate, but no primary document confirming the cause could be opened, so it is flagged and not asserted. Sources: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1099957/000114066107000386/form20f.txt ; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1099957/000114066106000203/rct0621b.txt ; https://stockanalysis.com/quote/tsxv/RCT/financials/?p=quarterly ; https://stockanalysis.com/quote/tsxv/RCT/financials/ ; https://money.tmx.com/en/quote/RCT ; RCT MD&A for the nine months ended 28 Feb 2025 (prepared 17 Apr 2025, SEDAR+). Full reasoning: scripts/correct-rct-stage-task580.ts. [Task #583 resolution, 2026-08-24] RESOLVED 2026-08-24 (Task #583), and it CORRECTS the Task #583 flag recorded above: the hypothesis named there -- a recognized judgment or provision from the Nayarit historical-extraction dispute -- is REFUTED, not merely unproven. The +CAD 24.7M is a BALANCE-SHEET RECLASSIFICATION of long-standing non-current borrowing into current liabilities at the fiscal year end of 31 May 2025. It is not a judgment, not a provision, and not new money at that scale. PROOF 1, the non-current/current split (total liabilities minus current liabilities, CAD M): 22.87 (28 Feb 2025) -> 2.38 (31 May 2025) -> 2.23 (31 Aug 2025) -> 2.27 (30 Nov 2025) -> 2.26 (28 Feb 2026). In the quarter ended 31 May 2025 current liabilities rose CAD 22.36M while TOTAL liabilities rose only CAD 1.87M -- the money changed buckets rather than appearing. Across the full window originally cited (28 Feb 2025 -> 28 Feb 2026): current +28.76M, non-current -20.61M, total liabilities only +8.15M. Note also that the original framing mis-timed the event: the jump falls in Q4 FY2025 (quarter ended 31 May 2025), not across FY2026 Q1-Q3. The 31 May 2025 balance-sheet date was skipped, which is what made a single reclassification look like two quarters of deterioration. PROOF 2, the accumulated-deficit tie-out: a judgment or provision must run through profit or loss. Accumulated deficit moved from -CAD 90.72M (28 Feb 2025) to -CAD 91.94M (28 Feb 2026), i.e. -1.22M; summed quarterly net income over exactly those four quarters is -0.44 -0.84 -0.91 +0.97 = -1.22M, an EXACT tie-out. Ordinary trading explains every dollar of the change, leaving no room for a material charge of any size, let alone CAD 24.7M. Corroborating: total debt is nearly flat over the window, CAD 22.90M -> 23.86M (+0.96M), while the reported long-term debt line goes CAD 19.97M -> zero at 31 May 2025 and short-term debt goes CAD 2.20M -> 20.78M. THE DEBT IS OLD. Annual balance sheets (years ended 31 May) show the block sitting in non-current for years first: long-term debt CAD 17.79M (FY2023) -> 18.67M (FY2024) -> zero (FY2025); non-current liabilities 20.71M -> 21.50M -> 2.38M. Negative equity is likewise long-standing rather than a 2025 event: -CAD 28.97M (FY2023) -> -34.12M (FY2024) -> -36.54M (FY2025) -> -37.09M (28 Feb 2026), a move of only -1.19M across the five quarters at issue, and an IMPROVEMENT of +1.01M in the most recent one. WHY THE NAYARIT HYPOTHESIS IS AFFIRMATIVELY WRONG: beyond Proof 2, the dispute is three orders of magnitude too small. This row's currentMilestoneLabel records RCT paying US$270,000 on 8 Apr 2025 toward resolving it, and the MD&A for the nine months ended 28 Feb 2025 puts the assessed amount at $690,000 with $210,000 already lodged as a cash deposit. A sub-million-dollar state tax matter being settled in cash cannot produce a CAD 24.7M move. STILL UNCONFIRMED, DELIBERATELY NOT ASSERTED: WHY the reclassification happened. Under IFRS a borrowing is current whenever the issuer lacks an unconditional right to defer settlement at least twelve months, so the candidates are contractual maturity inside twelve months, a covenant breach or event of default making it callable, or debt repayable on demand. Separating these requires the notes to the financial statements, which exist only in the SEDAR+ filing -- still bot-walled (every request 302-redirects to validate.perfdrive.com; those validation URLs were deliberately not followed). The best circumstantial fit, recorded as plausible and NOT claimed: this row's currentMilestoneLabel already documents operations funded by "advances from Chairman Eduardo Luna and DNN Investments Ltd., an entity affiliated with CEO Nick DeMare", and related-party advances carrying no written term are classically demand-repayable and therefore current. MATERIALITY. stage=PRODUCTION (Task #580) stands and is reinforced -- revenue nearly tripled to CAD 8.42M in Q3 FY2026 with the first positive net income, while total liabilities grew only CAD 8.15M over five quarters, driven by ordinary payables and accruals scaling with that revenue (accounts payable CAD 11.66M -> 16.35M) alongside current assets more than doubling (CAD 4.83M -> 10.29M). smartMoneyScore is NOT affected: per its schema doc comment it is a holder-register/13F-derived signal, not balance-sheet-derived; it is null here and stays null. pendingCorporateAction DELIBERATELY NOT WRITTEN: the enum offers only PENDING_ACQUISITION/PENDING_MERGER/PENDING_NAME_CHANGE/PENDING_DELISTING/OTHER and is scoped by its doc comment to "something corporate is in flight"; nothing is in flight (TMX Money shows a live two-sided TSXV quote, acquisitionStatus NONE), and tagging OTHER to mean "financially distressed" would overload a field that means something else. The honest finding is that this schema currently has NO going-concern/financial-distress flag, so the condition is recorded here in prose rather than forced into the wrong field. WHAT A READER SHOULD TAKE FROM THIS ROW: the distress is real but it is OLD and STRUCTURAL -- deeply negative equity and a large related-party-funded debt load carried for years -- not a sudden 2025 collapse, and the reclassification is a non-cash, non-P&L event. Any downstream metric keyed to working capital or the current ratio will read a step-change at 31 May 2025 that is a change in PRESENTATION, not an economic deterioration of that magnitude. Working-capital deficit CAD 15.33M (28 Feb 2025) -> 38.63M (28 Feb 2026) is arithmetically correct but must be read with that caveat. Sources: https://stockanalysis.com/quote/tsxv/RCT/financials/balance-sheet/?p=quarterly ; https://stockanalysis.com/quote/tsxv/RCT/financials/balance-sheet/ ; https://stockanalysis.com/quote/tsxv/RCT/financials/?p=quarterly ; https://money.tmx.com/en/quote/RCT ; RCT MD&A for the nine months ended 28 Feb 2025 (prepared 17 Apr 2025, SEDAR+) for the $690,000 / $210,000 Nayarit assessment figures. Aggregator figures were accepted only after the internal consistency check that all six reported current-liability components sum to the reported subtotal exactly in all five quarters, and after a third-party source independently reproduced total assets CAD 11.31M / total liabilities CAD 49.40M at 30 Nov 2025. Full reasoning: scripts/resolve-rct-balance-sheet-task583.ts.