Gold miners increasingly making bite-sized developments that carry less risk

Article at Business Insider

The cautious approach will likely persist even if conditions improve, with miners increasingly teaming up on big, complex projects to share costs, expertise and risk, senior mining executives and industry watchers said.......To be sure, not all mines can be built in phases and bigger projects will find fresh appeal when gold rebounds from the current $1,175 an ounce. "The market is short-term focused," said Jeannes at Goldcorp. "If the gold price were $1,800 an ounce and the equity markets were wide open . . . our investors would be questioning us if we weren't going for the full, large, build-out." But miners have learned from the past five years, said Joseph Foster, portfolio manager at Van Eck, Barrick's biggest shareholder. "I don't think we'll see the capital cost blowouts and the margin squeezes going forward that we have in the past," Foster said. "They've learned a very hard lesson and I don't think they'll forget it."