Aussie gold miners have an appetite for deals

Few have been more active than Ramelius Resources, which is onto its seventh deal in six years, including two this year - the acquisitions of Breaker Resources and Musgrave Minerals, the latter still in progress."I think just generally there's an appetite for consolidation - we're playing our part in that," Ramelius boss Mark Zepter said on the sidelines of Diggers & Dealers this week."The reality is that we don't necessarily go looking for opportunities. We know what good looks like."Zeptner said the timing of the Musgrave deal was driven by Westgold Resources' hostile offer, which Ramelius has since trumped."We always are mindful of having quite a strong balance sheet and a match fit team ready to go because what you can't do - they say time kills deals - you can't dilly dally around, you've got to be ready to go at a moment's notice and there's no better illustration of that than the ink was hardly dry on the Breaker deal and then we moved on to Musgrave."Ramelius still has an appetite for more and would prefer a third asset rather than another bolt-on acquisition."But if it's a bolt-on that makes money for shareholders, it makes sense and it's 40km away, I just have to do it," Zeptner said."But I don't get to choose when opportunities become available or the price becomes realistic."Gold Fields executive vice president Australasia Stuart Mathews said M&A was currently expensive."But for the right asset, a deal's worth doing - we would still consider M&A in Australia, absolutely," he said.LeonoraGenesis Minerals has also been active this year, closing the takeover of Dacian Gold (at an 80% interest) and more recently, acquiring St Barbara's Leonora assets, adjacent to its own.Managing director Raleigh Finlayson admitted Genesis had to do the St Barbara deal in order to achieve its five-year vision."There's still opportunities in the air … we're going to still look for things but it has to be sensible, logical and accretive, but most importantly, be chock-full of synergies because if it's synergies, then you can actually get a scenario where you get win-win," he told reporters."We'll continue to hunt those things and if they present themselves, we'll do it but we don't need to."The most obvious deal for Genesis to do is to mop up the 20% of Dacian it doesn't already own."That will be the goal, to try and bring them all together," Finlayson said.Newmont-NewcrestOf course, the biggest deal announced this year is Newmont Corporation's takeover of Newcrest Mining."I think that the takeover of Newcrest will likely present some opportunities for gold companies," Evolution Mining executive chairman Jake Klein said."I think we've always said we want 6-8 assets, but we want to buy them wholesale and convert them into retail assets so we're not going to do something stupid."Klein said Evolution had organic growth opportunities and didn't need to acquire but the organisation could manage a "couple more assets"."But frankly, we've had a challenging 12 months operationally so just delivering predictable, reliable, consistent performance would be good for us from a shareholder perspective," he said."That said, you know, you never know when an opportunity is going to come up and we've always been up to at least looking at opportunities but only on the basis that it's accretive to our shareholders and improves the quality of our portfolio."Evolution's operational woes at Red Lake in Canada saw its share price trade at five-year lows in the second half of last year but Klein said there were no opportunistic approaches."I was surprised that when our stock was being beaten up and investors weren't happy that someone didn't knock on the door, but I was happy - maybe my phone was turned off," he said.HavieronOne asset that could be divested by Newmont is Newcrest's 70%-owned Havieron development project and the nearby 100%-owned Telfer mine.Klein said a number of Evolution's employees worked at Newcrest and had exposure to Telfer pre-Havieron."Generally, their recollection of the experience that they had at Newcrest wasn't that positive on those assets," he said.Klein said the company would still be open to looking at Telfer/Havieron or any other assets Newmont decided to sell.The 30% partner in Havieron is Greatland Gold, which would be a willing buyer if Newmont was a seller."We think Havieron-Telfer is in a tier one jurisdiction, high-quality, good grade orebody and we think Newmont understands and sees the attraction of it," Greatland managing director Shaun Day said."But equally, if there is opportunity, we hold a last right of refusal and with the shareholder base we have, the strategic investor in Wyloo [Metals], the management team we have, we think we represent a really credible counterparty to Newmont, both as a joint venture operating partner or as a potential financial counterparty."HemiThe scale of De Grey Mining's 10 million ounce Hemi discovery has positioned the company as a takeover target and there is often speculation about potential buyers.Even Gold Fields' Mathews told reporters it looked like De Grey was "looking for a deal"."I think in some ways, [speculation has] got to be expected simply because of the scale and quality of the asset - this is the best gold development project in the world," De Grey managing director Glenn Jardine said."There's no question about that in terms of its scale, capital intensity, location, operating costs, so it's to be expected that there would be speculation but that's certainly all that it is."Jardine said the company was not running a formal process and wasn't looking for a buy-out."There hasn't been any logical, serious approaches in that direction," he said.

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