10:36 AM EDT, 10/16/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Iamgold(IAG) has maintained its stock rating and price target at both National Bank of Canada and RBC Capital Markets, according to notes published Tuesday.
The miner kept its Outperform rating, Risk Rating Speculative, and C$11 price target at National Bank of Canada while retaining a Sector Perform rating and US$6 price target at RBC.
This comes after IAMGOLD(IAG) overnight reported Q3 2024 operating results for the Cote gold mine and exploration results at Gosselin ahead of the company hosted site tour on October 16.
Iamgold (IAG) reported attributable gold production of 41,000 ounces in the third quarter, which missed National Bank and RBC's estimates.
But National Bank expects the market to be more focused on the path forward which shows better than its expectations and supports its recent upgrade of IAMGOLD(IAG) to Outperform, which is based on the incremental de-risking of the Cote gold mine ramp-up and the "consistently strong" performance of the company's portfolio of assets.
In RBC's view, it expected a relatively neutral reaction from IAG shares following the Q3 update at Cote, which continues to ramp up following a planned maintenance shutdown in the quarter and a step change in throughput through the first two weeks of Q4. Production of 68 Koz was modestly below RBC's estimate of 73 Koz on lower tonnage, and the bank said management has worked to address frontend crushing capacity, currently seen as the bottleneck, with planned installation of an additional secondary crusher in the second half of 2025 at an incremental cost of $20M. RBC noted mobile crushing capacity has been added in the interim, and throughput since October 2 has averaged 30 Ktpd, representing 83% of design capacity. Lastly, RBC noted, an exploration update was provided at Gosselin, which "continues to demonstrate continuity of mineralization adjacent to Cote, supporting potential for a larger future operation". Overall, RBC expect investors to focus on: ramp-up of Cote to 90% capacity by year end; balance sheet delevering; and advancement of Gosselin.
Iamgold's (IAG) share price was up more than 3% at last look to near $7.00 on the TSX.
Price: 7.00, Change: +0.22, Percent Change: +3.24