By Divya Rajagopal and Pooja Menon (Reuters) -Barrick Mining on Monday raised its dividend and expanded its share buyback program after reporting an adjusted quarterly profit that beat estimates, as stronger gold prices helped offset a decline in production. The Canadian miner’s interim CEO Mark Hill told Reuters that its focus in the future will […]
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Barrick hikes dividend, shifts focus to North America as gold prices bolster profit
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By Divya Rajagopal and Pooja Menon
(Reuters) -Barrick Mining on Monday raised its dividend and expanded its share buyback program after reporting an adjusted quarterly profit that beat estimates, as stronger gold prices helped offset a decline in production.
The Canadian miner’s interim CEO Mark Hill told Reuters that its focus in the future will be “firmly on North America … because it is our next growth area and it is the next growth in gold as well, so that is what we are focused on going forward.”
The miner jointly owns Nevada Gold Mines with Newmont and is also looking to develop the Fourmile gold mine in Nevada. Barrick shares rose nearly 6% in early trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
COMPANY SEEKS TO RESOLVE MALI ISSUES
Barrick, the third-largest gold miner by production, has had a volatile year, marked by the loss of control of its gold mine in Mali, which led to a $1 billion write-off of the asset, and the exit of Mark Bristow as its chief executive officer.
The Barrick board’s search committee, led by independent director Brett Harvey, is working to find a new president and CEO, the company said in a statement.
In Mali, four of Barrick’s employees are in jail over a dispute with the company over the country’s new mining tax code.
Hill said his main focus is to get those employees out of jail, adding that the company has to change some of the ways it is approaching the issue. Barrick also filed for arbitration against Mali, though the recent hearings over the company’s request for an urgent hearing over the dispute were rejected by the World Bank’s dispute tribunal.
“We agree that arbitration, while an option, it is probably not a preferred option and is not going to resolve (the problem of) the people who are incarcerated in the short term,” Hill said.
Barrick has been locked in a long-running standoff with Mali’s military-led government since it was forced to suspend operations in mid-January. That move followed the government’s decision to block Barrick’s exports for two months, detain some of its executives and seize three tons of bullion.
Gold prices, which are sensitive to geopolitical and financial uncertainty, averaged $3,574.95 per ounce in the third quarter, more than 16% higher than the preceding quarter and 43% above the levels seen a year earlier.
Prices of the precious metal were buoyed by safe-haven demand as uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans and geopolitical tensions stoked inflation concerns.
Barrick said its average realized gold price rose to $3,457 per ounce during the third quarter from $2,494 per ounce a year earlier.
Its quarterly production decreased to 829,000 ounces from 943,000 ounces last year.
The company’s all-in sustaining costs for gold, an industry metric reflecting total expenses, rose to $1,538 per ounce from $1,507 per ounce during the third quarter.
Barrick declared a 25% rise in its quarterly dividend to $1.25 per share and announced that its board had approved a $500 million increase to the existing share repurchase program.
The company earned 58 cents per share on an adjusted basis in the third quarter, compared with analysts’ average expectation of 57 cents per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
(Reporting by Pooja Menon in Bengaluru, Divya Rajagopal in Toronto; Editing by Shreya Biswas and Paul Simao)