On February 16, 2022

Why patience could be a virtue when it comes to the gold space

Source: Star Wars, Lucasfilm

Gold miners and explorers have been battered from pillar to post over the past 12 months, but a mining analyst says it is worth keeping patience with the sector.

Successful explorers aren’t built in a day

Evidence from recent years suggests that outside of Rio Tinto's (ASX:RIO) Winu copper-gold discovery, most major finds were being made by junior companies whose main aim is greenfields exploration.

“If you actually look at who the companies are making these discoveries, half the time they’re all juniors with the exception of Winu from Rio in 2019,” Howard said.

“Perhaps they’re the only major that makes discoveries because they take exploration seriously, or perhaps the majors are more interested growing through M&A because it does take a long time from discovery to be making a dollar out of that, so if you want a quick turnaround, inorganic growth could be a different way to go.”