Endeavour stock slides, Semafo soars, after $1-billion buyout announced – by Dan Healing (BNN/Bloomberg/Canadian Press – March 23, 2020)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

MONTREAL — A $1-billion deal to combine two Quebec companies with West African gold mining operations was met with sharply divergent reactions from their shareholders on Monday.

Stock in Montreal-based Endeavour Mining Corp. fell by as much as $4.15 or 19.2 per cent to $17.50 on the Toronto Stock Exchange after it announced the deal to acquire Semafo Inc. In contrast, Montreal-based Semafo rose by as much as 32 per cent or 64 cents to $2.63.

The acquisition includes Semafo’s Boungou gold mine in Burkina Faso which was shut down in November after gunmen attacked a bus convoy of 241 workers on the road to the operation, killing 39 people and injuring at least 60 others.

Work to process stockpiles at the Boungou plant was restarted in February with employees and contractors transported by air and lodged onsite, but a plan to return to mining in the fourth quarter is conditional on improvements to security on the public road and in the surrounding region.

Meanwhile, Endeavour CEO Sebastien de Montessus reported on a Monday morning conference call, his company has had two cases of the COVID-19 virus, leading to quarantine of those people and anyone they had come in contact with.

For the rest of this article: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/endeavour-mining-corp-to-acquire-semafo-inc-in-all-stock-deal-1.1410762