Top Performer for Thursday

Compania de Minas Buenaventura S.A.A. (BVN - Snapshot Report) may not be operating in the most appealing environment right now, given the drop in commodity prices; but that hasn't stopped this precious metals mining company from securing a spot on the Zacks #1 Rank Top Performers List for Thursday.

Shares of this Peruvian company have gained almost 16% today, while the Dow moves toward the noon hour approximately 100 points in the red. BVN is the top-performing Zacks #1 Rank on the list with volume over 1 million.

The past month has seen a sharp increase in earnings estimates for BVN, despite its fourth-quarter performance being impacted by soft commodity prices. Expectations for this year are up 43% in the past 30 days, while estimates for next year moved higher by 48%. Analysts currently expect next year's profit to advance more than 4% from this year.

In its fourth quarter, BVN announced year-over-year declines in EPS and net sales, which the company said were explained by "silver and lower base metal prices, which reduced not only the by-product contribution at the company's direct operations, but also had a significant negative effect at (copper producer) Cerro Verde."

However, estimates for the first quarter have moved to 46 cents per share from 22 cents over the past month.

There are currently 2 other mining stocks on the Zacks #1 Rank List, which includes 193 companies today. Those stocks include Anglogold Ltd. (AU - Snapshot Report) in the Mining-Gold industry and Mag Silver Corporation (MVG - Snapshot Report) in the Mining-Silver industry, which is also the industry of BVN.