Production Costs Could Push Gold to $2,200: AngloAshanti CEO
Monday's global stock sell-off put a spotlight on gold, whose price soared as investors sought safe-haven investments.
A day later, with the market changing course, "We are starting to see the fundamentals reassert themselves," Anglogold Ashanti CEO Mark Cutifani told CNBC. "I don’t think there’s a bubble [in gold] yet. There's plenty of upside."
Cutifani said Goldman Sachs' prediction earlier this week that gold would reach $1,860 an ounce in 2011 is "quite reasonable," but he said "we’ll test longtime highs of $2,200" in the next couple of years.
Tuesday, shares of miners Nemont Mining , Barrick Gold and Goldcorp were higher, as the price of gold jumped to a new high before pulling back as the U.S. stock market rebounded.
Cutifani said mining companies are "under pressure" as the increasing cost of getting the gold out of the ground contributes to the rising price.
The industry is struggling to boost worldwide gold production, which he said has been flat for seven years and running about 30 percent behind demand.
"It’s getting harder to find, harder to produce" because it is found in deeper, more difficult places to mine, Cutifani said, which means higher costs for the miners and, in turn, contributes to the higher cost of gold.
The company, with a market cap of $16.2 billion, is only trading at about 5.5 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the CEO said.
______________________________
CNBC Data Pages:
