By Rupert Hargreaves
Daily Finance
As the gold price continues to decline, gold miners are struggling to remain profitable. Indeed, as I write the price of gold is nearing three-year lows of $1,200 per ounce. During the second quarter of this year, about 25% of 67 gold-producing companies, representing roughly 44% of worldwide gold output, were losing money on a cash-flow basis.
This has led to deep cost cutting throughout the gold industry. The question remains, however, how much further can these cost cuts go? To find out, I have been digging through the numbers of Barrick Gold, Goldcorp, and Newmont Mining.
In theory, each gold mine has its own production costs; some are higher and some are lower, depending of course on things like the quality of reserves and location of the mine. As the price of gold continues to decline, it is likely that gold miners will start to mothball expensive mines. So based on that theory, I have analyzed the mine portfolios of these three companies in an attempt to establish what production costs would look like if high-cost mines were shut down.