Our top mining pick
Morningstar Analyst Jon Mills on his top pick.
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Jon Mills: I think they're rising because investors are expecting lower real interest rates. And that's because the Federal Reserve, the world's biggest central bank, is still indicating that they intend to lower official interest rates, even though inflation remains higher than their target. So that means lower real interest rates, hence a lower opportunity cost to hold gold, and that's generally bullish for gold prices.
Well, gold miners are notorious destroyers of capital, at least they have been in the past. And look, it depends on the miner in question. But yeah, look, there has been a lag between high gold prices and the share prices of gold miners in general. I would expect that lag to reduce if the gold price keeps going up, because for every dollar the gold price goes up, whether it's in US dollars or Australian dollars or what have you, most of that will flow through to the bottom line for these miners.
Yes, so Newmont is still one of our best ideas. It's materially undervalued, as it has been for a while. The problem with Newmont is that it's kept disappointing in terms of production and guidance. So gold production and gold sales have been lower than they really should be, because it's had problems at various mines, and that has led to higher costs and hence lower margins. We think at some stage production will improve, and that should reduce unit costs and hence improve margins and hopefully flow through to a higher share price.
It's similar to the last pulse we released three months ago. I guess the major themes are, number one, that the miners still have strong balance sheets and elevated commodity prices are finally incentivizing them to move more towards growth from purely concentrating on shareholder returns. And that growth is both M&A. So, you've had Whitehaven buy a couple of BHP's coal mines, for example, and another example is Newmont has bought the Aussie gold miner, Newcrest. But it's also internal growth, and that internal growth is concentrating on minerals such as nickel and copper that are perceived to benefit from decarbonization and electrification.
I guess one other theme is that, at least when it comes to the iron ore miners and the coal miners, yields are still pretty decent. Speaking of coal miners, we still think, well, Whitehaven, it was a predominantly thermal coal miner. It's now around 50-50 thermal and met coal after buying two of BHP's met coal mines. We also think it's fellow thermal coal miner, New Hope, is materially undervalued.