Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Iamgold Corp (IAG) Will Take Risks to Grow

With the gold miner building up a strong cash position, Iamgold Corp (NYSE:IAG) is ready to engage in some risk to build out the company, which has a market cap just under $8 billion.

Its cash holdings are approaching the $1.5 billion mark and are expected to surpass it in the near future.

Chief Executive Officer Stephen Letwin recently said to Reuters, "I find that the mining side is not as integrated as I would like it to be. The exploration team and the production community tend to be too silo-like in structure... One thing I'm going to work on is making it more fluid, so that we work more in unison and bring production onstream sooner."

The goal of Letwin is to boost production to about a million ounces of gold in 2011 and 1.8 million ounces within five years.

Letwin says the company will eventually spin off its niobium mine in Quebec.

Future acquisitions will probably be located in South America or Canada, and Letwin said they would be in the range of $300 million to $500 million.

Iamgold was trading at $20.88, gaining $0.28, or 1.36 percent, as of 1:21 PM EDT.

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