Newmont president and chief executive officer Tom Palmer has called the second quarter (Q2) a solid one for the company, producing 2.1 million gold equivalent ounces.
Other highlights from the quarter included the generation of $594 million in free cash flow and the reduction of nominal debt by $250 million.
“We continued to advance our divestiture program and, to date, have announced $527 million in proceeds this year,” Palmer said.
“With this momentum, we completed $250 million in share repurchases and repaid $250 million in debt. As we head into the second half of the year, we remain confident in our ability to continue executing on shareholder returns, meet our full year guidance and deliver on our commitments.”
Newmont produced 477,000 gold equivalent ounces from copper, silver, lead and zinc, including 38,000 tonnes of copper. The company is on track to deliver 2024 guidance for production, costs and capital spend.
Q2 also saw Newmont repurchase 5.7 million shares at an average price of $43.34 for a total cost of $250 million and deliver $539 million in total returns to shareholders.
Palmer has not been shy about speaking on the company’s copper aspirations, recently telling the Melbourne Mining Club in June that Newmont would be looking at ways to invest in copper in the future.
“How do we develop our project, in what order, at what pace and (which) communities (are we) working in,” he said. “If we’ve got the support of the permitting we’ve got, we’ve got a project here that’s going to deliver appropriate returns with that view on copper and copper pricing, and gold and gold pricing.
“So it’s looking at all those variables and making decisions about where we (should) invest our next dollar after the existing projects … it’s more about understanding how you develop that project pipeline successfully.”
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