Why the Newmont-Goldcorp blockbuster deal is in sharp contrast to the Barrick-Randgold merger – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – January 15, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Newmont has higher a dividend, safer locations than Barrick and will invest in Canada, but its stock still fell. Perhaps copper-gold mining will help it shine

As Newmont Mining Inc.’s chief executive Gary Goldberg hawked a proposed $10 billion all-stock purchase of Vancouver-based Goldcorp to his investors on Monday, he and his team emphasized massive gold production, a focus on mines in the safest jurisdictions in the world and continued investment in Canada.

That drew a stark contrast to chief rival Barrick Gold, which also recently completed a mega-merger, and has reduced its presence in Canada and grown in more risky jurisdictions. “This is not a deal we have to do, it’s a deal we want to do,” Goldberg told investors.

But while Barrick’s share price surged after announcing its deal, Newmont’s stock had declined 8.89 per cent to close at US$31.78 on Monday afternoon.

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Newmont Mining to buy Goldcorp – by Ian Bickis (Canadian Press/Timmins Daily Press – January 15, 2019)

https://www.timminspress.com/

Newmont Mining Corp. has struck a US$10-billion deal to take over Goldcorp Inc. in a move that will see the U.S.-based mining giant grow even larger while Canada’s mining industry loses a head office.

TORONTO — Newmont Mining Corp. has struck a US$10-billion deal to take over Goldcorp Inc. in a move that will see the U.S.-based mining giant grow even larger while Canada’s mining industry loses a head office.

Colorado-based Newmont will add Vancouver-based Goldcorp’s seven mines in North and South America to its global operations of 12 operating mines to create a company expected to rival or top Barrick Gold as the world’s largest gold producer. “This is not a deal we have to do, this is a deal that we want to do,” Newmont CEO Gary Goldberg told a conference call Monday.

The deal follows Barrick Gold’s US$6.1-billion all-stock takeover of Randgold Resources Ltd. that closed at the start of the year to create a company with a combined 2018 gold production guidance of between 5.8 million and 6.3 million ounces.

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Newmont Deal for Goldcorp Further Erodes Canada’s Gold Clout – by Danielle Bochove and Jacqueline Thorpe (Bloomberg News – January 14, 2019)

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Canada’s influence on the global mining industry appears to be shrinking by the day. Perhaps stung by the nationalistic backlash against Barrick Gold Corp.’s merger with Randgold Resources Ltd., Newmont Mining Corp. devoted a big chunk of its news release Monday explaining how its $10 billion offer for Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc. will help Canada.

But there’s no hiding the fact that the global head office of the world’s largest gold miner will be in Greenwood Village, Colorado, where Newmont is based. Like “New Barrick,” which no longer has its top executives in Canada, Newmont Goldcorp’s incoming chief executive officer and current chairwoman are expected to remain in the U.S.

While some jobs will flow from Nevada to the miner’s new regional base for North America in Vancouver, it’s hard to imagine the influence of that city not waning as a result of the deal.

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OPINION: Another one bites the dust: Goldcorp sale a further example of the hollowing-out of corporate Canada – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – January 14, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Toronto’s Barrick Gold always wanted to team up with Newmont Mining of Colorado. Merging the two giants, which have adjoining operations in gold-rich Nevada, would have created an unassailable industry leader and reduced costs by an estimated US$1-billion a year. On paper, it looked like a dream deal. But it never got off the ground, in good part because Barrick founder Peter Munk wanted the new company to stay in Toronto, not move to Denver.

Were he alive today, Mr. Munk – a Canadian patriot who believed in the value of head offices – would be distraught. In the autumn, Barrick bought Randgold Resources but handed management control to Randgold’s executives, who promptly gutted Barrick’s Toronto headquarters, leaving the world’s top producer with a mere 65 employees in its echo-chamber offices on Bay Street. The deal was, in effect, a reverse takeover. The new Barrick will be run from the Channel Islands.

On Monday, it was Newmont’s turn to accelerate what appears to be the second wave of the great hollowing-out story, a decade after Inco, Falconbridge, Alcan, Dofasco, Stelco and dozens of other industrial powerhouses were eradicated from the Canadian map.

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Newmont to buy Goldcorp in US$10B mega mining deal – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Elena Mazneva (BNN/Bloomberg News – January 14, 2019)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ Newmont Mining Corp. will buy rival Goldcorp Inc. in a deal valued at US$10 billion, creating the world’s largest gold miner and cementing a return of M&A to the industry. The transaction comes just three months after Barrick Gold Corp.’s move to buy Randgold Resources Ltd. in a US$5.4 billion transaction, which instantly spurred …

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Canada’s Goldcorp to be swallowed by Newmont in $10-billion all-stock deal – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – January 14, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canada’s Goldcorp Inc. is being swallowed by United States gold major Newmont Mining Corporation in a friendly all-stock acquisition valued at $10-billion. This is the second huge M&A deal in the global gold sector in the past few months. Barrick Gold Corp. closed its US$6-billion acquisition of Randgold Resources Ltd only a few weeks ago.

The Globe and Mail reported on Friday that Goldcorp was in talks with Newmont as it explored strategic options with its stock trading at a 17-year low. Goldcorp also talked to Australian gold major Newcrest Mining before Christmas about a deal but those talks fell apart.

Goldcorp shareholders will receive 0.328 of a Newmont share for their stock. The 17-per-cent premium being paid is low compared to similar sized acquisitions on a historical basis. When the gold price was trading at much higher levels, takeover premiums in the 30 to 40 per cent range were common in the industry.

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Miners aim to rebuild global reputation – by Nelson Bennett (Business in Vancouver – December 12, 2018)

https://biv.com/

Canadian companies working to improve industry’s image

Over the years, Canadian mining companies operating overseas in developing countries have earned a bad reputation for their treatment of the environment, workers and local indigenous people.

There have been recent high-profile cases of Canadian mining companies being sued in Canadian courts for alleged violence against protests in Guatemala and alleged use of slave labour in Eritrea. Less frequently in the headlines are the positive things some Canadian miners are doing in the countries where they operate.

B2Gold Corp. (TSX:BTO), for example, has won a number of awards for its corporate responsibility efforts in Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Namibia, and NexGen Energy Ltd. (TSX:NXE), a Vancouver uranium mine developer, recently won an award from the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada for social development programs it has initiated in La Loche, Saskatchewan.

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Indigenous Partnerships in Powerful Alignment at Goldcorp’s Musselwhite (Goldcorp.com Blog – November 27, 2018)

Between 2012 and 2015, Goldcorp’s Musselwhite mine partnered with surrounding First Nations communities and provided early funding to create a joint-venture called Wataynikaneyap (Watay) Power, to bring electrical grid connection into the northwest region of Ontario, Canada, and potentially provide power to Musselwhite.

Musselwhite, a fly-in, fly-out operation located approximately 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, operates in a region where 25 remote First Nations communities rely on high-cost diesel generation as their sole source of electricity, burning approximately 25 million litres of diesel fuel a year to get electricity into their homes and businesses – enough diesel to fill 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

With additional fuel delivery challenges and environmental disadvantages, this has limited the growth of the communities and their access to economic opportunities. Similarly, Musselwhite has also been significantly constrained by limited transmission grid capacity in the area, resulting in a heavy reliance on diesel generation.

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Goldcorp’s Musselwhite Mine automates to keep miners from heading underground – by Jeff Walters (CBC News Thunder Bay – November 23, 2018)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/

In a nondescript office building in the middle of Thunder Bay, Ont., four workers get ready to move thousands of tonnes of rock, hundreds of kilometres away.

Musselwhite Mine, about 500 km north of the building, is where the rock breakers, loaders, conveyor belts and soon, trucks operate, although those behind the controls sit in an air-conditioned office.

The mine, owned and operated by Goldcorp, is a fly-in operation, north of the city. The mine has been working on automating some of its processes, keeping workers away from the mine site, closer to home in Thunder Bay.

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Eight-year-old becomes miner for a day at Goldcorp’s Porcupine mines – by Kelsey Rolfe (CIM Magazine – November 1 2018)

Aliesha underground with Goldcorp’s Hoyle Pond miners. (Goldcorp Photo)

http://magazine.cim.org/en/

At Goldcorp’s Porcupine Gold Mines in Timmins, it is company practice to call out “fire in the hole” in the 90 seconds before a blast is detonated. But last week the mine manager allowed an exception to the rule for eight-year-old Aliesha, whose enthusiastic cry of “dynamite!” went out over the radio at the Hollinger open-pit mine in the seconds before the blast went off.

Aliesha visited Hollinger, Dome and Hoyle Pond in Timmins last week thanks to the Toronto and Central Ontario Make-A-Wish Foundation. The foundation asked her for three wishes, and her first pick was to visit a mine.

“That’s the one thing everyone’s blown away by,” said her father Dave. The family’s surname is not being published for reasons of privacy. “It’s been a little over three years now that she’s been fully obsessed with mining. The school projects that she does, somehow she makes them revolve around mining.”

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Feds kick in $5M for ‘innovative’ all-electric Borden Mine – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – October 29, 2018)

https://www.timminspress.com/

With Goldcorp betting hundreds of millions of dollars on the future of its new Borden Lake gold mine project near Chapleau, the federal government has chipped in with $5 million to show its faith in the project and others like it.

CHAPLEAU – With Goldcorp betting hundreds of millions of dollars on the future of its new Borden Lake gold mine project near Chapleau, the federal government has chipped in with $5 million to show its faith in the project and others like it.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi toured the new mine facility on Monday with Goldcorp officials and technical representatives of the mining equipment manufacturers who are working to make it the first all-electric underground mine in Canada, which is considered a major environmental improvement for the mining industry.

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‘Another failed gold company’: Goldcorp and other miners face investor fury amid tepid gold prices – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – October 26, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Investors are increasingly showing impatience with mining companies, as Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc. learned on Thursday

As gold prices have stagnated in the second half of 2018, never matching the US$1,300 per ounce price that dominated the first six months of the year, investors have increasingly shown impatience with mining companies, as Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc. learned on Thursday.

With a $101 million loss in the third quarter, compared to $111 million profit the previous year, the company’s stock fell 18.40 per cent to $11.09 Thursday — a price it hasn’t closed at since 2001.

The first 30 minutes of Goldcorp Inc.’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday proceeded without mention of the stock trouble until one analyst suddenly unleashed on the company’s management.

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Goldcorp’s ‘Miserable Quarter’ Sends Shares to 16-Year Low – by Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – October 25, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Goldcorp Inc. tumbled to the lowest since 2002, the steepest decline among senior gold producers, a day after reporting a bigger-than-expected third-quarter loss.

The Vancouver-based miner posted a net loss of 12 cents a share, wider than the average analyst estimate for a loss of 10 cents. Operating results were hurt by lower output of all metals from the company’s Peñasquito mine, while costs climbed.

The results were a “clear disappointment” and the company will have to deliver on its fourth-quarter guidance of 620,000 ounces to prove to investors it is at an inflection point, Andrew Kaip, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note.

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Editorial: Gold majors jostle for attention in Denver – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – October 9, 2018)

Northern Miner

The pecking order within the global gold mining industry is never more on display each year than at the Denver Gold Forum in September, with miners and developers of all sizes converging to capture the attention of big investors.

After a tough several years that saw the near wholesale changeover amongst execs of the top gold miners, the presidents and CEOs that presented were a familiar bunch.

In its presentation this year, Newmont Mining, the world’s largest gold mining company — at least for now — highlighted that it is already five years into its sweeping, companywide plan to create long-term value.

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[Yukon Mining] Coffee Gold project prepares for 2021, with support of Tr’ondek Hwech’in – by Philippe Morin (CBC News Canada North – September 13, 2018)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

First Nation says Coffee Gold owner Goldcorp is hearing its concerns

Leaders from Yukon’s Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation got a tour of Goldcorp’s Coffee Gold project near Dawson City this week — and so far, they like what they’ve seen. The exploration camp at Coffee Creek, about 130 kilometres south of Dawson City, is a busy place these days, with crews already working in shifts 24-hours a day.

In a few years, it could be even busier — Goldcorp is proposing to open a large-scale gold mine by 2021, employing hundreds of people. The project is still under review by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB).

The Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation is now on board with the project. Last April, it signed a “collaboration agreement” with Goldcorp, which includes a number of benefits for the First Nation — such as jobs, contracts, and training for First Nation citizens.

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