Acacia Mining Plc’s tumultuous year doesn’t seem likely to ease up any time soon. The gold miner’s shares surged as much as 41 percent Thursday, after controlling shareholder Barrick Gold Corp. said it moved closer to resolving a crippling dispute with Tanzanian authorities.
Yet it seems Acacia itself — which must approve any deals Barrick negotiates with the government — was left out of the loop. Tanzania banned exports of unprocessed gold in March and hit Acacia with a $190 billion tax bill in July, claiming the company had under-declared export revenue since 2000.
The ban meant the London-based company was forced to stockpile output and curb mining at its flagship operation. Third-quarter earnings plunged 70 percent from a year ago, the company said Friday.
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) – Barrick Gold (ABX.TO) will give Tanzania a 16 percent stake in three gold mines, a 50 percent share of revenues from those mines and a one-off payment of $300 million (£227.8 million) to resolve a dispute that has hit its operations in the country, the two sides said.
The Canadian miner and the Tanzanian government have been in talks for months after the east African country banned the export of unprocessed minerals and enacted laws to raise state ownership of the nation’s mines.
The agreement announced on Thursday comes after the new laws and a crackdown on mining firms slowed fresh investment in what has long been seen as one of Africa’s brightest mining prospects.
VANCOUVER — The last five years have seen large-cap miners shelve — and often write-down — ambitious, greenfield development projects that carry significant development price tags and heightened risk.
The majors instead focused on stronger operating margins and lighter balance sheets, which were typically characterized by improved free cash flow generation and lower debt.
The last 18 months have marked a shift in sentiment for metal producers, however, as metal prices have strengthened and risk capital markets entered the nascent stages of recovery.
Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has accused Tanzanian President John Magufuli of implementing policies that are unfriendly to foreign investors.
Speaking at the Financial Times Summit in London on Monday, Dangote, 60, said Magufuli is nationalist in his thinking and is trying to seize a majority shareholding of companies in Tanzania that are owned by foreigners.
Earlier this year President Magufuli signed a new mining bill into law which allows the government to take as much as 16% of foreign-owned mining companies for free. “The Government is coming through the back door to seize the assets,” Dangote said.
A tax hike in Western Australia stands to lower the value of a massive gold deposit and further drive apart its owners: the world’s biggest producers of the metal who have spent the last two years debating what the mine is worth.
Newmont Mining Corp., the second-largest gold miner, has been interested in buying Barrick Gold Corp.’s 50 percent stake in the Kalgoorlie Super Pit since at least 2015. Newmont already owns the other half and operates the mine for Barrick, the No. 1 producer of the metal. The only reason a deal hasn’t been done, the two sides say, is price.
Now, the royalty increase could further the gap between how much the companies think the operation is worth. The higher tax “adversely” affects the value of Kalgoorlie, said Gary Goldberg, Newmont’s chief executive officer.
Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest producer of the precious metal, isn’t ruling out asset sales as it works on meeting its debt-reduction goal for 2018, according to President Kelvin Dushnisky.
The company is “nicely on track” to meet its debt-reduction target for 2017 and is planning to use some “combination of cash on the balance sheet, cash flow, potential divestments if they make sense” to meet its 2018 goal, Dushnisky said. Asked if next year’s target is achievable without selling another asset, he said: “We’ll see.”
Barrick has reduced debt by about $1.23 billion so far this year, and is on track for $1.45 billion in total by the end of 2017, Dushnisky said Monday in an interview on Bloomberg Television at the Denver Gold Forum, an annual industry conference being held in Colorado Springs.
Could take 50 years for site to blend into surrounding forest
It is considered to be one of the best gold mine camps in Canada, and the reclamation underway at the Hemlo Gold Camp near Marathon, Ont., could also make it one of the best mining cleanups in the country. The Hemlo camp was home to three mines, operating side by side, for nearly three decades. Now, the Golden Giant and David Bell Mines are empty fields.
The Gold Giant Mine operated until 2014, while the David Bell Mine ceased production in 2010. The Williams Mine, the furthest west of the three operations, at this point, could run its open pit and underground workings until 2031.
“To see [them] close down is definitely a hard thing to see, but we wanted to make sure it was done responsibly,” said Jeremy Dart, Barrick’s environmental superintendent. “A lot of the employees and people that worked here had some excellent training and skills they were able to take to other mining operations, or other career sets.”
Munk extolled Canadian graciousness he experienced when he emigrated here in the late 1940s. “You opened the door. You gave us everything,” he said, referring to Canada as “paradise.”
Peter Munk said his donation to a Toronto heart hospital is a “debt to repay” to Canada for taking in his family after the Second World War. On Tuesday, $100 million was contributed to the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, said to be the largest contribution to a Canadian hospital in history.
In a long, impassioned speech, Munk, founder and former chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation, extolled Canadian graciousness he experienced when he emigrated here in the late 1940s.
“When you thank me for what I’ve done for Toronto, and you thank me for what I can do for this community, it doesn’t begin to express my immense gratitude for what this country has done for me and my family,” said Munk, who was born in Hungary. “You opened the door. You gave us everything,” he added, referring to Canada as “paradise.”
Toronto, ON (September 19, 2017) – University Health Network (UHN) announced today that The Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation is increasing its support to the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC) with a transformative gift of $100 million. This gift, which will bring the Munks’ support of UHN and the PMCC to more than $175 million since 1993, will primarily be used to develop a data-driven digital cardiovascular health platform that reduces costs, advances medical research, and improves the outcomes of patients with cardiac and vascular disease.
“This historic gift will enable the PMCC to continue to lead the future of cardiovascular care globally, and through our partnership with the Vector Institute will further advance Toronto’s and Canada’s leadership in the field of artificial intelligence,” said Dr. Peter Pisters, President and CEO of UHN, home to the PMCC. “This gift represents the largest commitment to a Canadian hospital in our country’s 150-year history and builds on Peter and Melanie’s extraordinary legacy of philanthropy.”
“Melanie and I are committed to the mission of the PMCC, which is to be the world’s leader in cardiac and vascular care,” said Peter Munk. “Since it opened, the PMCC has changed the way cardiovascular patients are treated in the Province of Ontario, across Canada, and around the world. Now, using the most innovative digital technologies, the PMCC will establish a new standard of care for patients and, ultimately, lead to a significant reduction in cardiac and vascular fatalities.”
Poverty is the hard reality for many people in the communities surrounding the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic
Isidro Felix and Bladimir Morillo did not have high expectations when they heard Barrick had acquired a majority interest in the Pueblo Viejo mine. Felix, who is from the town of El Maricao, just three miles from Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic’s Sanchez Ramirez province, sums up the prevailing view in his community at the time.
“Barrick will come, bring people from other countries to work at the mine, and forget about us.”
Morillo, who hails from El Naranjo, just two miles from the mine, says his community had similar sentiments. Today, however, 11 years after Barrick acquired its interest in Pueblo Viejo and 5 years after the mine entered production, perceptions have changed.
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) – The Tanzanian government and Barrick Gold have started talks to resolve a tax dispute involving the Canadian company’s subsidiary Acacia Mining, the president’s office said on Monday.
The government accuses Acacia, which is 63.9 percent owned by Barrick, of evading taxes for years by under-declaring exports and has banned exports of gold and copper concentrates.
Acacia denies the accusations, which have pummelled its share price, and said last week it had been hit with a $190 billion tax bill, which is equivalent to four times the East African country’s annual gross domestic product.
Canadian gold miners posted solid second-quarter profits driven by increasing efficiency at their operations rather than any stellar increase in the price of gold. Toronto-based miners Barrick Gold Corp. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. and Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc. all surprised analysts with earnings that beat expectations as they continue to drive down their cost of sales.
Historically, the performance of gold companies tends to move in tandem with bullion prices, but the miners better-than-expected year-over-year results came even as the price of gold during the quarter remained virtually flat — up just three per cent over the year before.
Gold companies have been focused on driving down cash costs and paring their portfolios to deal with a years-long decline in the commodities market and those moves during bust times appear to be paying off as the cycle begins to make a more positive shift.
Four of the world’s top gold companies were in full “beats” mode in the second quarter, wringing more value out of their mines amid tepid gold prices.
A day after Newmont Mining Corp. reported higher-than-expected adjusted profits by extracting more gold at lower costs, Canada-based Barrick Gold Corp., Goldcorp Inc. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. followed suit Wednesday.
“It’s the night of the beats,” Andrew Kaip, a Toronto-based analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said by telephone. “The read here is that their optimization programs are continuing to deliver and their capacity to improve their operational outlook continues to have momentum.”
Tanzanians are being cheated out of the country’s mineral wealth and should take more control of their natural resources, President John Magufuli said.
Investors in Tanzania’s mining industry have “stolen” from the country by failing to distribute a fair share of the revenue they generate from gold and other minerals, Magufuli said in a speech in the central region of Singida on Tuesday.
“We are surrounded by wealth; we have to stand up and protect it,” he said. “It shouldn’t happen that we have all this wealth, sit on it, while others come and benefit from it by cheating us.”
Tanzania sent Acacia Mining Plc a tax bill equal to almost two centuries worth of the gold producer’s revenue.
The government issued the company, which mines all of its gold in the African country, with a $40 billion tax bill and another $150 billion in interest and penalties, Acacia said in a statement Monday. The charge covers alleged under-declared export revenues from the Bulyanhulu and Buzwagi mines over periods between 2000 and 2017.
Acacia reiterated that it has fully declared all revenues. The stock sank as much as 17 percent on Tuesday to the lowest since December 2013. In just three days, the company has lost 42 percent of its value.
The giant tax bill is the latest twist in an increasingly ugly spat between the government and Acacia.
