Barrick Mining's Cash Strength: Can Shareholder Rewards Keep Rising?

Barrick Mining Corporation B is capitalizing on its strong cash generation and healthy balance sheet to deliver value to its shareholders, underscoring its identity as a capital return-driven gold producer. It generated strong operating cash flows of roughly $4.5 billion in 2024, with a significant portion funneled back to investors. Barrick returned about $1.2 billion to its shareholders last year through dividends and repurchases. 

In February 2025, Barrick’s board approved a new program for the repurchase of up to $1 billion of its outstanding common shares. It repurchased shares worth $411 million under this program during the first half of 2025. The company’s commitment to a sustainable base dividend, bolstered by performance-linked distributions, also reflects a disciplined approach to capital allocation. The performance-linked dividend policy enhances shareholder returns when its liquidity is strong. Barrick offers a dividend yield of 1.8% at the current stock price with a payout ratio of 25%. A ratio below 60% is a good indicator that the dividend will be sustainable. 

B ended the second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of around $4.8 billion. It generated strong operating cash flows of roughly $1.3 billion in the quarter, up 15% year over year. Free cash flow rose to around $395 million from $340 million in the prior-year quarter. With its strong liquidity and steady cash generation, Barrick is well-positioned to seize attractive exploration and development opportunities, while maintaining capital returns and funding organic growth.

Among its major peers, Newmont Corporation NEM has delivered roughly $2 billion to its shareholders through dividends and share repurchases since the beginning of 2025. Newmont has also doubled its share repurchase authorization to $6 billion with an additional $3 billion share repurchase program. Newmont has already repurchased shares worth $2.8 billion under this authorization since February 2024, including $1.5 billion in the first half of 2025.  

Agnico Eagle Mines Limited AEM is capitalizing on strong free cash flow to aggressively enhance shareholder value. Agnico Eagle delivered record shareholder returns totaling roughly $300 million in the second quarter, bringing the cumulative return to $550 million for the first half. Agnico Eagle returned around one-third of its free cash flow through dividends and buybacks in the same time frame.

B’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Barrick’s shares have surged 119.6% year to date compared with the Zacks Mining – Gold industry’s rise of 121.7%, courtesy of the gold price rally.

From a valuation standpoint, B is currently trading at a forward 12-month earnings multiple of 14.35, a roughly 13.4% discount when stacked up with the industry average of 16.57X. It carries a Value Score of A.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for B’s 2025 and 2026 earnings implies a year-over-year rise of 65.9% and 17.8%, respectively. The EPS estimates for 2025 and 2026 have been trending higher over the past 60 days.

B stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). 

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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