RE:What!Thanks for highlighting that - hadn't spotted it in the announcement. However, I can see the sense. The company says:
In order to protect Endeavour against gold price volatility during its upcoming construction phase...
The key point is that over this quarter, the Company is likely to announce a significant CAPEX programme, for (at least) Fetekro and Sab-Mas Phase 2. As the announcement says, whilst the gold price remains at or around current levels they can both fund that and continue to make substantial shareholder returns from cashflows. However, were the gold price to fall substantially without any hedging, the company would either have to curtail its shareholder distributions or run into net debt, neither of which it wants to do.
In my fairly long experience of mining investments, "better safe than sorry" is a good policy, so I support this move by Endeavour, whilst they have a major CAPEX programme underway.
Cheers,
Mark