I was sticking in the data from the June production month numbers for mining in Peru (thanks to the MEM website…by the way Toromocho doing well) and updating charts, when the combo of these three below got me thinking about wider things. Not just Peru.
We see that since 2010, gold production in Peru has steadily dropped in the country:
But there was a big surge in revenues from the highs in gold prices, which reverted once the big drop happened in early 2013:
But this also shows how there was a big surge in Year-Over-Year revenues, then a corresponding drop, and now things have basically flattened out:
As as I stared at that last one, then considered that the costs inputs in US Dollar terms for gold miners have dropped significantly in the last year and a half (and very much so this year, oil and forex leading the charge), it began to dawn on me that the worst really is over for the producing gold miner sector of the industry. Unless you’re talking about a stock saddled with heavy debt that sucks away all free cash flow from ops, the relative neutrality of revenues over (nearly) the last year suggests that if your gold miner hasn’t gone to the wall already, it’s not going to.