Midas - the "Ken Snyder Mine" (Company)

Midas - the "Ken Snyder Mine" (Company)

Newmont Mining (NEM:NYSE) announced this morning that it has signed a letter of intent to sell its Midas operations in Nevada to private equity firm, Waterton Global.  Midas has been a staple of Newmont’s Nevada operations as it is a high grade gold-silver and has been in production since 1999.  Many analysts already anticipated depletion and shut down of Midas by 2015-2017.  Midas has been significantly underutilized, processing 724tpd in the first half of 2013 versus the nameplate capacity of 1200tpd.

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Waterton has been very active in the resource space and has already acquired the Hollister mine in Nevada and the Esmeralda Mill where Hollister ore is processed.  They own a big stake in Gryphon Gold’s Borealis operations and also have been involved in Fire River, Scorpio Gold, Prophecy Coal and Huldra Silver.  Waterton scooped up many technical personnel from Barrick's capital allocation and evaluations team and have sent them on a mission to find quality, simple, mainly precious metals, assets.  They prefer, it appears, not to invest into the shares of the public company, but instead to own at the project level.

Here’s the release: Newmont Signs Letter of Intent to Sell Midas Operations in Nevada to Waterton Global