TD Cowen: Gold’s surge to $2,000 a boon to miners’ cash flow, despite op costs

Gold’s sudden breakout to $2,000 an ounce will help boost free cash flow for miners, alleviating higher operating costs, TD Cowen said in a research note Tuesday.

“Although operating cost inflation remains an issue for gold producers in 2023 (most companies are expecting costs to increase 3-5% y/y), higher-than-
anticipated gold prices will improve FCF generation,” the unit of TD Securities said in a note, referring to free cash flow.

“We have run a sensitivity on FCF yields (after all capex) across our producer coverage list, assuming 2024 average gold prices of $1,750/oz, $1,850/oz, $2,000/oz, and $2,250/oz,” TD Cowen said.

Not unexpectedly, higher cost producers provide the best leverage to higher gold prices, the note added.

”Within our coverage universe, at $2,250/oz gold, among the larger producers, Kinross generates a 14.5% FCF yield vs. 4.2% at $1,750/oz, a 3.5x increase.”

Gold prices experienced one of their biggest surges for a year after the U.S. banking crisis erupted nearly two weeks ago with the takeover of two mid-sized lenders — Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank — by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp as depositors yanked billions of dollars from them after fearing about their solvency. Silicon Valley later filed for bankruptcy protection. A third bank, First Republic Bank (NYSE:FRC), also waded into trouble despite receiving a $30 billion cash infusion from a consortium of U.S. banks.

The banking crisis spread to Europe, with Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), one of the preeminent names in global investment banking, having to seek help from Switzerland’s central bank and put itself up for sale.

Even so, the investor stampede towards safe havens cooled over the past 24 hours with Swiss investment bank UBS (NYSE:UBS) agreeing to buy beleaguered peer Credit Suisse. Top U.S. banking group JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) also appeared to make progress in the rescue plan for First Republic.

That calm saw the front-month April gold futures contract on New York’s Comex hit an intraday low of $1,943.30 on Tuesday. That was nearly $60 below the previous session’s one-year high of $2,014.90.

The spot price of gold, more closely followed than futures by some traders, sank to a session bottom of $1,936.91 Tuesday, versus the previous day’s peak of $2,009.84.