Chairman of Pan American Silver (NYSE:PAAN,TSX:PAAN) and Equinox Gold (TSX:EQX,NYSE:EQXGF) Ross Beaty is a man in a hurry.
Speaking with the Investing News Network (INN) at the Sprott Natural Resource Symposium in Vancouver last week, Beaty said that he wanted his current project company, Equinox Gold, to be ready for the next gold run.
“Gold, like all metals, is cyclical. It will have runs, it’ll have corrections, that’s the way metals are. Right now, we’re in a down cycle, it’s going to turn, and when it has its next run, I want to be ready with Equinox Gold with a fabulous asset base that gives investors great leverage to higher price, so we’ll be the go-to stock for institutional or retail investors,” he said.
Beaty described Equinox Gold as a something he would probably “bookend my career on” as his first company was called Equinox, and that he had great hopes for the company.
“I don’t want to wait another 10 years to do this, and I think I can do it more quickly, and I want to take advantage of today’s weak market in gold.”
Besides being a succesful businessman, Beaty is also an avowed environmentalist, and shared about his talk on a panel at the Resources for Future Generations conference in Vancouver in June, when he spoke about his take on the future of a society currently dependent on growth.
Beaty said that limits and barriers to growth were being hit everywhere, and it was high-time the world transitioned to a circular economy as the current situation was unsustainable, particularly mining, which played a role but ultimately needed to be reigned in.
“We need metals to do any kind of industrial society, whether it’s a slow growth or a rapid growth economy, we need metals. Particularly, metals that fuel the transition, the transition to the electrical revolution that’s going on right now. We’re removing from fossil fuel based energy to renewable energy. The digital revolution, which is, of course, part of the sustainability answer at which is full of metal use, you know. So, metals are all part of that, but we just don’t need to consume them like we’re doing right now. So, I see a future where there will be less growth for most metals and it will be more. It’ll be better for longer even though it won’t be better in the short term.
“I think exploration-wise, there will always be a need for great deposits, there will always be success for exploration, but I think if we reduce our demand they will be less needed and therefore there will be fewer of those exploration projects that will be ultimately successful.”
Watch the full interview in the video above, or read the full transcript below.
INN: So, you’ve just finished your talk: ‘I love gold equities’. Can you tell me a little about what you spoke about?
Ross Beaty: Sure. How do I start? Well, I think I’ll start at the beginning. I’ve had a long career in the mining industry, and my first company was a gold mining company that I had built from 1985 to 1994, and sold it. It was a happy ending for all shareholders. We had a couple of producing gold mines and a big gold discovery. And, that’s really when I really became in love with gold. Now, since then, between then and now, I’ve had a whole bunch of other companies; silver, lots of copper companies. And yet, last year, I also had a clean energy company that I ran for about 9 years called Alterra Power (now part of Innergex, TSX:INE), and I just sold that this year in February. And, after having sold that main business of mine, I sort of tried to figure out what do I do next, and do I have another company in me, and what should it be. And, I decided I would build, I’ll try to build a big gold mining company because I do love gold. I love it for all kinds of reasons, and I thought it would be a relatively straightforward manner to take a couple of assets, put them together, and then build this new company, and very much named after my first company. Equinox Gold (TSX:EQX) is something that I probably will bookend my career on, and I have great ambitions for it. I love gold for all kinds of reasons that maybe we can get into, but that’s what I’m doing now.
INN: Well, during your chat, you said that you were trying to build Equinox Gold quickly. I guess you might have just answered the question, but why the rush?
RB: I’m a very impatient person, generally speaking. I don’t want to wait another 10 years to do this, and I think I can do it more quickly, and I want to take advantage of today’s weak market in gold because when you’re trying to build something, you know, if you’re trying to do it through a merger and acquisition strategy, which really is what we’re doing, which is the way to do it quickly, by the way, you know, you want to be buying other companies or other businesses when the price of the commodity is low and when the market’s beat up, which is right now. The buyer’s market right now, we’re buyers, we want to try to accumulate several projects together into one company, create a mid-tier or even larger gold producer that pays great dividends, has a tremendous capital gain potential through rerating and then to the extent that the gold price runs, that’s going to be the real kicker for shareholders. So, for all those reasons.
INN: And speaking of gold price, I’m sure there’s plenty of theories around, but why is gold …read more
From:: Investing News Network