Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest producer of the precious metal, isn’t ruling out asset sales as it works on meeting its debt-reduction goal for 2018, according to President Kelvin Dushnisky.
The company is “nicely on track” to meet its debt-reduction target for 2017 and is planning to use some “combination of cash on the balance sheet, cash flow, potential divestments if they make sense” to meet its 2018 goal, Dushnisky said. Asked if next year’s target is achievable without selling another asset, he said: “We’ll see.”
Barrick has reduced debt by about $1.23 billion so far this year, and is on track for $1.45 billion in total by the end of 2017, Dushnisky said Monday in an interview on Bloomberg Television at the Denver Gold Forum, an annual industry conference being held in Colorado Springs.
Barrick is in the midst of a multiyear strategy to cut costs and sell assets to lower its debt. The gold miner is looking to end 2017 with $6.4 billion of debt, the lowest since early 2010, according to a report last month from Bloomberg Intelligence.
The company has set a goal of $5 billion in total debt by the end of 2018, a level that was last reached in 2008.”We’re not forced to do anything,” Dushnisky said, referring to asset sales. “If the situation arose where there was a strong price for something, we’d consider it.”
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