By Ryan Dezember

IPO-crazed investors have gobbled up stock offerings from a data-center buyer, AI provider, chip maker, automotive-software developer and geothermal power producer. The latest bonanza surrounds a historic silver mine in Idaho that hasn't been fully operational for a quarter century.

Billionaire Thomas S. Kaplan -- who made his fortune in natural gas and precious metals and his name as an art collector with an affinity for Rembrandt -- plans to restart the Sunshine mine, once America's most prolific source of silver.

Sunshine Silver Mining & Refining, which Kaplan's Electrum Group controls, raised $270 million in an initial public offering that values the company at $1.9 billion.

The shares jumped 27% in their debut Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sunshine plans to use the proceeds to fund the feasibility studies necessary to restart the mine and get processing plants up and running, as well as pay for equipment, infrastructure, drilling and further exploration. Sunshine aims to start production in 2028 and ultimately boost U.S. silver output by more than 15%.

Sunshine's listing adds to what is shaping up to be the hottest market for new stock offerings in years.

The first quarter's 35 initial public offerings raised $9.9 billion, the best start to a year since 2021, according to listing-tracker Renaissance Capital. That doesn't include Sunshine's deal or the IPOs being teed up by SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI, which are expected to be among the largest ever.

Investors have been even more enthused by the rookie class than the broader market, where the artificial-intelligence boom has pushed major indexes to records. Renaissance's U.S. IPO exchange-traded fund, which tracks the performance of new listings, is up 24% in 2026, compared with an 11% gain in the S&P 500.

Sunshine's IPO also follows the biggest-ever run-up in silver prices. At about $74 a troy ounce, benchmark silver futures are still more than twice the price of a year ago, despite falling 36% from late January's all-time high.

Analysts expect silver prices to remain higher than historical levels because of demand from data centers and other high-tech applications, which use the highly conductive metal for electrical contacts and solder. Demand is also strong among solar-panel makers and investors worried about currencies and inflation.

"We're not chasing a short-term price spike," Sunshine Chief Executive Heather White said on a mining podcast in October, not long after silver prices surged past a 45-year-old record. "We're positioning Sunshine as a long-term strategic supplier of key minerals that underpin modern industry and defense."

The Sunshine mine dates back to 1884, when two homesteading brothers spotted an outcropping and staked claim. They mined with hand tools when they weren't growing vegetables and, a few years later, used horses to haul 20 tons of ore to Montana for processing.

"They didn't even know what they had," Sunshine general manager Tom Henderson last year told the Coeur d'Alene Regional Chamber, which posted a video of his presentation online. "Months later they got a check for $40,000."

That is more than $1 million in today's dollars. Sunshine eventually became the most prolific silver mine in the U.S. and among the world's top deposits. It has produced an estimated 365 million ounces of silver as well as meaningful quantities of copper, lead and antimony.

Tragedy struck in 1972 when fire broke out deep underground and 91 miners died. It was one of America's deadliest mining accidents and inspired the Federal Mine Safety & Health Act of 1977.

Around then, the mine became a target of the Hunt brothers. The inflation-fearing heirs to Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt sought control of the mine as part of their effort to corner the silver market. Shareholders balked, though, and their plan fell apart.

The Hunts' broader silver gambit -- which drove up prices for the precious metal -- was unraveled by regulators in 1980 and silver prices crashed.

Losses mounted at Sunshine. Production was suspended in 1982. The mine's then-owner said it would be "economic folly" to keep depleting the ore at such low prices. Three stop-start decades followed as silver prices languished. Electrum Group paid $24 million for Sunshine in a 2010 bankruptcy auction, about a decade after it had last run at full production.

The current owners say they have spent about $208 million maintaining and modernizing the mine and added thousands of hectares of land and mineral rights.

The company is planning to restart an existing silver and copper refinery and is studying a potential facility to process antimony, a byproduct produced mostly in China but needed for fire retardants, computer chips, night vision and armor-piercing munitions, among other applications.

Sunshine executives say they have key permits in hand, giving the restart an advantage over many domestic mining projects, which often wait years for permits.

Write to Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 04, 2026 16:41 ET (20:41 GMT)

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