Defiant McEwen fails to meet NYSE share price threshold

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Growing gold and silver producer McEwen Mining’s plans to regain compliance with the NYSE’s minimum share price requirement have been scuppered, with the company failing to meet the bourse’s requirement that the average closing price of a listed company's stock remain above $1 a share over a 30-day trading period.

“We’ve made good progress in a difficult market. This year, we strengthened our balance sheet, increased production and decreased our costs. I’m not going to take this lying down; I have no intention of being delisted from the world’s premier stock exchange,” commented chief owner Rob McEwen.
 
Expanding on efforts to boost the group’s share price, he reported that the company had delivered four consecutive quarters of record production and three quarters of positive cash flow and had implemented a yearly return of capital distribution of $0.01 apiece paid semi-yearly, with the second payment expected in February.
 
McEwen would, meanwhile, continue to market itself to raise awareness of its asset base, growing profitable production, expanding treasury and optionality to gold, silver and copper.
 
“We will also continue to evaluate potential merger and acquisition transactions that will add share value and we plan to initiate a share buy-back programme, whereby we can repurchase up to 5% of common stock over the next 12 months,” he outlined.
 
Should these initiatives not result in achieving compliance with the minimum price requirement by the new year, McEwen would consider a reverse split, or share consolidation, of its stock, which would require shareholder approval at the next annual general meeting (AGM) in June 2016.
 
McEwen’s stock would, meanwhile, continue to trade on the NYSE, subject to compliance with all other NYSE requirements, provided that the company obtained the shareholder approval by no later than its next AGM and implemented the action promptly thereafter.

The price condition would be deemed cured if the price promptly exceeded $1 a share and remained above that level for at least the following 30 trading days, otherwise the company’s stock would be delisted from the NYSE. 

McEwen Mining's principal assets were the 49%-owned San José mine, in Santa Cruz, Argentina; the El Gallo 1 and El Gallo 2 projects in Sinaloa, Mexico; the Gold Bar project, in Nevada, in the US; and the Los Azules copper project, in San Juan, Argentina.