Gold dropped 6.3 percent yesterday, its sharpest single-day fall since 2013, and the move lands hardest on miners already wobbling. Barrick’s share price now faces the same gravity as the metal because a year of production slips, legal rows and cost creep has left little shock absorber when bullion stumbles. Gold’s $300 slide wiped US$160 billion from global gold-equity value in hours as the US dollar firmed and traders cashed recent gains.
Strong Price, Weak Miner
Barrick keeps telling investors it is firing on all cylinders, yet the engine misfires. Q2 output came in 16 percent below last year as Mali, Nevada and Argentina all under-delivered. Management insists the trajectory is up: president and CEO Mark Bristow claimed “we’re growing production, lowering costs and advancing the industry’s most exciting pipeline of gold and copper projects,” per their August 11th results release.
His words sit awkwardly beside the numbers. All-in sustaining costs jumped 20 percent year over year, erasing most of the bullion windfall. Guidance still promises 3.15-3.50 million ounces for 2025, but the company must now lift second-half output by roughly 30 percent to hit even the low end. That acceleration looks heroic, not realistic, when the flagship Loulo-Gounkoto complex remains dark.
Mali Dispute Still Bleeds
The Malian military government seized three tonnes of Barrick gold by helicopter in January, then demanded C$7.5 billion in back taxes. In a terse letter the miner said the raid left it “obliged to temporarily suspend mining operations at the Loulo and Gounkoto mines,” a move analysts calculate could chop 11 percent off 2025 EBITDA.
Barrick later pledged a US$438 million settlement but Bamako has yet to sign, leaving 16 percent of group production hostage to politics. The standoff has knock-on effects in Nevada, where maintenance overruns already cut Carlin and Cortez output by double-digit percentages. Combine those hits with yesterday’’s bullion flush and Barrick’s margin cushion looks paper thin.
Gold’s sell-off will settle, but the episode exposes how little room Barrick has bought with a record price environment. Until Bristow secures hard guarantees in Mali and proves the promised back-half production surge, every tick in bullion will swing amplified through the share price. Investors counting on gold alone to bail out operational drift just saw what happens when the metal heads the other way.
