Barrick pushes up quarterly dividend ahead of yearly meeting
The globe's largest generator of gold on Wednesday increased its quarterly dividend by 33 percent, according to Mining Weekly.
Prior to conducting its annual general meeting later in the day on Wednesday, Barrick responded to calls for increases by pushing up its quarterly dividend to 20 per share. The meeting is scheduled to be held in Toronto.
Citing better earnings and a more uplifting outlook for gold price prospects, the mining firm rewarded shareholders with the increase. The firm has increased the quarterly dividend by more than 260 percent since 2006.
The firm's top-level officials have fallen under stiff pressure from investors to boost capital returns to shareholders in dividends as that would drive share prices higher.
Wednesday's uptick comes after the company boosted the dividend by 25 percent in December of last year.
The operator of mines in Canada, the U.S., South America and Australia, Barrick noted first quarter profits gained 3 percent during the first quarter of the year. Though increased prices helped drive profits to $1.03 billion and $1.03 per share, production of the yellowish metal fell to 1.88 million ounces.
The company also saw an increase in adjusted earnings of 8 percent to $1.09 billion, which is equivalent to $1.09 per share. That falls short of the $1.11 that analysts had forecast.
Barrick remains on pace to produce as many as 7.8 million ounces of gold this year.
Bloomberg reports the company plans to boost production to 9 million ounces of the yellowish metal by 2016, which would see mine optimisation increase.