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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a weak 53-103-154 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 518. Dr. William Lamb's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) closed unchanged at 35 cents on 158,000 shares. It seems improbable that a cash cow could lead its owner into financial difficulty -- at least not since Jack Spriggins sold the family cow for a handful of magic beans -- but Lucara investors may be wondering if the company has done just that. The company has extended the maturity date of a $50-million working capital facility and deferred the requirement to place nearly $53-million into a cost overrun account to mid-November.

The moves are further fallout from cost overruns and delays plaguing Lucara's big underground expansion of its Karowe mine in Botswana. Karowe was a good news story through the 2010s for Dr. Lamb and his crew: Lucara paid just $200-million (U.S.) to acquire the project from De Beers and build its open-pit mine. It was a runaway success, as by the mid-2010s, Lucara was generating over $200-million (U.S.) in annual revenue and at one point it declared a 44.5-cent special dividend.

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