Kirkland Lake Gold (TSX, NYSE: KL) (ASX:KLA) is divesting the company’s holdings in Canadian miners by selling its stake in Osisko Mining (TSX: OSK) and reducing its interest in Novo Resources (TSXV: NVO).
Earlier this week, the company sold about 32.62 million shares in Quebec-focused Osisko — representing its entire holdings and 9.57% of those outstanding — at a price of C$4.45 per share for total consideration of C$145.2 million.
Kirkland Lake also sold 538,700 common shares of Novo at an average price of C$3.52 over the past week for a total consideration of C$1.89 million. In June, the company sold 210,000 Novo shares at an average price of C$3.28 for a total of C$689,024. Together, these sales have resulted in a 0.4% decrease in its holdings in Novo to 15.41% on a non-diluted basis.
“The sale of Osisko and Novo shares further enhances our already industry-leading financial strength, which will support our efforts as we pursue our key strategic priorities, including investing in our three cornerstone assets and returning capital to shareholders, ” Kirkland Lake president and CEO Tony Makuch commented in a press release.
“Macassa, Detour Lake and Fosterville are three highly-profitable, cash-flow generating operations, each of which has outstanding exploration upside. There remains significant value creation potential at all three of these assets and unlocking that value is our overriding priority,” he added.
Meanwhile, Kirkland Lake has repurchased 863,500 of its common shares for cancellation. To date in 2020, the miner has purchased a total of 11.9 million common shares for a total of $388.4 million.