BMONovember 15, 2021 | 19:52 ET | 19:52 ET~ Barrick Gold GOLD-NYSE ABX-TSX Rating Outperform Price: Nov-15 $20.90 Target $29.00 Total Rtn 40% Themes From the Road: Barrick Holds to Its Principles Bottom Line: We hosted virtual meetings in North America and in-person meetings in Europe and the U.K. with Barrick management. Common themes of the meetings were Barrick’s ESG record and approach to ESG, organic growth opportunities, M&A outlook, and capital returns strategy. Barrick offers a clear strategy to investors – exposure to Tier 1 gold mines and projects and a pursuit of high-quality and low-cost growth, with a focus on technical evaluation and execution. Our Outperform rating and our US$29.00 one-year target price are unchanged. Key Points Barrick’s investor meetings highlighted views of institutional resource and generalist investors, and equally the high conviction of management in its approaches to its portfolio and its business. While the company did provide updates on its operations, this level of granularity is not (and shouldn’t be) the key driver of an investment decision in Barrick, or of any industry leader in the mining space. Asset diversification makes the significance of any individual asset only incrementally meaningful. What investors should not lose sight of is the alignment between management and the investor on overall strategic direction and approach, and the investor’s confidence in management’s ability to execute that strategy. ESG matters in Europe, even more than in the U.K. or North America. This should not be a surprise, but we see increasingly that investors may choose, or be required, to exclude investments from funds because of this issue. Often it’s not a concern about the company’s ESG performance directly, but about the score assigned by independent ratings agencies. In our view, this presents an opportunity for Barrick to see significant improvement to scores, as these can significantly lag improvements that have already been made. See page 3 for more detailed discussion on Barrick’s ESG initiatives. Messaging on growth is now firmly organic/greenfields. Barrick management is emphasizing investment discipline, which now likely translates to fewer potential acquisition targets even as the market continues to expect that Barrick will be an active participant. We do not expect Barrick to announce a meaningfully sized growth transaction in the near term. Instead, we expect it will continue to pursue projects in its own portfolio and will acquire exploration properties in attractive gold fields globally. See pages 4-5 for more detailed discussion on Barrick’s growth strategy and page 5 for its outlook on future capital returns.