Read it and weep boys and girls If this doesn't spur shareholders to flood IR with phone calls and emails, nothing will. News from the mine has gone dark.
THE BOTTOM FIVE
On the other side of the equation, most of the worst performances to date this year share the same underlying problem: weak commodity prices.
Natural gas prices fell over 40 per cent in mid-2014, leaving Peyto Exploration & Development Corp. (down 32.7 per cent) in the lurch. Despite slashing its dividend in January, the company has continued to miss analyst estimates.
New Gold Inc. (down 33.1 per cent) has suffered both from the decline in gold prices — down to US$1,270 from 2012 highs around US$1,800 — as well as the poor performance of its Rainy River mine in Ontario.
Copper prices have actually recovered to fiveyear highs, but that won’t help Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (down 34.2 per cent), whose Kamoa-Kakula project in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been thrown into limbo after the government there reneged on a royalty agreement.
The last two underperformers have indigestion issues. Element Fleet Management Corp. (down 32.7 per cent) bit off more than it could chew when it acquired GE’s fleet management business in 2015. A botched integration proved disastrous when clients started heading for the doors.
And for Canada’s worstperforming stock, Corus Entertainment Inc. (down 44.9 per cent), the acquisition of Shaw Media has been a disappointment. The company is now the owner of a TV and radio empire that, in the age of Netflix, is in rapid decline.