David Garofalo never reached have a honeymoon period.
He became leader of Goldcorp Inc. on Feb. 29. Just four days earlier, the Vancouver-based company cut its dividend and slashed its production outlook for the next three years. The stock dropped 13 percent.
Now Garofalo has the challenging job of rebuilding investor confidence in the company. He did observe that meetings with institutional shareholders have gone well to date.
“[The stock sell-off] was humbling, however it was corresponding to the performance recently,” he explained inside a roundtable with reporters. “And we take responsibility for your and we’ll take responsibility for ensuring it does not happen again.”
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Garofalo also discussed M&A. Goldcorp is a very active acquirer through the past decade, but he earned it clear the company sees more quality in its organic growth projects at this time than external ones.
“I would state that our best opportunities are the ones we already own,” he said.
He added that Goldcorp wants shovel-ready projects with 5 million ounces of reserves or more, and people “just don’t exist in the jurisdictions we’re interested in.”
Garofalo’s prior employers, HudBay Minerals Inc. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., both invested in junior companies to obtain early exposure to good gold projects. He plans to apply the same strategy at Goldcorp.
