Monsters of Rock: A gold miner clears a bar, another survives an attempted coup

Ramelius hits marks in “neutral” quarterly report
Ten Sixty Four board wins out in attempted board coup
Market darlings Whitehaven and PLS dive, as coal miner begins mega buyback after AGM

Outside of the sector’s current shining star, Perseus Mining (ASX:PRU), gold reports so far have been underwhelming, stuffed with front-loaded capex, skills shortages, high costs and promises of better days to come.

If you can be underwhelmed and overwhelmed can you ever just be whelmed?

I think you can in Europe and in ASX reporting season.

Today’s candidate is Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS), which lifted 4.8% on a September quarterly report that could best be described as a scoreless draw.

Ramelius, long a consistent operator in the WA gold space but one which has been hampered by Covid and labour shortages this year, delivered 61,244oz at an all in sustaining cost of $1930/oz in the September quarter at its Mt Magnet and Edna May gold projects.

That was within its guidance range of 240,000-280,000oz at $1750-1950/oz for the full financial year, which is expected to stronger in the second half as the ultra-high grade Penny ore starts to be fed into the Mt Magnet mill in larger quantities.

An 858% increase in resources at the Bartus Group in the Mt Magnet region to 230,000oz was also a bonus, with RMS increasing its cash and gold on hand by $4.3m to $177.2m.

RBC’s Alex Barkley described the result, unsurprisingly and in the spirit of Futurama, as neutral.

“RMS had already softened expectations around costs heading into the result, the slight cost miss is offset by exploration progress,” he said.

“Overall, we see this as a neutral outcome for the stock.”

It does make a nice change from some rough reports so far this quarterly season in the gold space.

Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS) share price today:

Ten (Sixty) Four, good buddy

Over in the weird land of small cap gold miners a boardroom brawl had been brewing at Ten Sixty Four (ASX:X64), owner of the Co-O underground mine in the Philippines, scheduled to produce 84,000-89,000oz at reasonable all in sustaining costs of US$1320-1370/oz this financial year.

But its focus has been closer to home in recent months, with the Jeff McGlinn led board forced to defend itself against a spill led by short-lived MD Ryan Welker.

Welker was removed after, according to the company, he engaged it with a drilling services provider called Ranger Equipment in which he had an interest.

A group of shareholders led by Welker’s company Vitrinite then sought to remove the incumbents and replace them with a trio of directors including IGO NED Debra Bakker in a stoush what played out on lobbying websites and investor forums.

That meeting was today, the votes are in and the old board led by exec chair and backed by the main proxy firms, saw off the challengers.

What happens next? Back to mining we guess.

Ten Sixty Four (ASX:X64) share price today:

And oooooon the markets?

Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) was smashed along with the rest of the coal business despite the promise of continued returns from the cashed up coal miner.

Whitehaven received approval from shareholders at its AGM today to undertake a 25% share buy back on market of up to 240 million shares, potentially returning over $2 billion to investors at current prices over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) tumbled over 7% just one day after its quarterly, which revealed the incredible amounts of cash flying through the door in the September quarter with lithium prices at record highs.

The materials sector in general finished up 0.28%, with IGO (ASX:IGO), MinRes, Northern Star (ASX:NST), OZ Minerals (ASX:OZL) and BlueScope all in the winners’ column.