The Newmont-Goldcorp Deal Is Positive News for Gold Mining
Consolidation season has finally arrived in the goldfields, just as many experts and analysts have been predicting for some time now. With exploration budgets having been slashed since their 2012 peak, and because there are today fewer and fewer ounces of gold available to be mined, one way forward for producers of all sizes will be to ramp up mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity.
You might have heard that Newmont Mining will be buying Goldcorp in a massive $10 billion deal. The resultant company, to be headquartered in Denver, will be the world’s largest gold producer by number of ounces mined—larger even than what’s being called “New Barrick,” after the $6.5 billion merger of industry giants Barrick Gold and Randgold Resources, announced back in September. Whereas Barrick-Randgold produced a combined 6.6 million ounces of gold in 2017, Newmont-Goldcorp was responsible for as much as nearly 8 million ounces.
I see this news as positive overall for the metals and mining industry, which has long signaled the need for consolidation. As I explained in a Frank Talk Live segment back in October, it’s when an industry has found a bottom that you start to see big M&A deals. A couple of years ago, the very talented people at Visual Capitalist showed in an infographic that mining M&As peaked in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
A Positive Case Study in M&As: Domestic Airlines
This tacit rule applies not just to metals and mining but also to most other industries. Look at domestic airlines. It’s easy to forget now that between 2005 and 2008, more than two-thirds of U.S. airlines were operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A huge wave of consolidation followed, giving us the “big four” carriers—Delta, American, United and Southwest. Profits surged to new highs. This year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global airlines should see their 10th straight year of profitability, and fifth straight year where “airlines deliver a return on capital that exceeds the industry’s cost of capital, creating value for its investors.”