Speaking at last week’s Noosa Mining Conference, Austex’s Rob Murdoch said there was no doubt about one thing.
Australian gold miners have a lot of cash in their accounts after the gold price’s accelerated run over the last two years.
The gold price may have pulled back, Murdoch added, but the margins are still good.
That would likely lead to one outcome: more mergers and acquisitions in the gold sector. There’s more than enough money for the bigger stocks to pay up.
Murdoch also presented the following chart, showing that precious metal companies raised the most money in the mining sector in the first quarter.
Market support for the sector is there.
Murdoch pointed to the recent Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD) deal to acquire Vault Minerals (ASX:VAU) to prove his point. The deal could result in creating the third-largest gold miner on the ASX.
One name often cited as a potential acquisition target is Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY). The company’s Minyari Dome Project in Western Australia is located approximately 35km north of Greatland Resources’ (ASX:GGP) Telfer Gold Mine.
Antipa Minerals has a market cap of around $390 million at $0.59 per share. Greatland already owns 6% of Antipa.
Antipa Managing Director Roger Mason made the point in his speech that AZY’s Minyari Project is one of the top three or four gold development projects at scale not already in the hands of a producer.
That said, if no bid for AZY comes along, it doesn’t matter to him anyway.
Mason and his team are getting on with building out the resource at Minyari. Minyari has a 2.9-million-ounce mineral resource. Mason told Noosa attendees that he expects the figure to be larger by the end of the year.
The company had $48 million in cash at the end of March, which is more than enough for the moment to fund its 2026 drilling campaign.
Hedley Widdup, a resource fund manager also in attendance at the conference, commented:
“A lot of people do focus on the proximity to Greatland but look at the scale of standalone development projects that have been acquired in the last five years. A project with over 2 million ounces probably features in the curiosity of many producers that want a growth project.”
Write to Callum Newman at Mining.com.au
Images: Antipa Minerals
