- Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM -4.5%) is sharply lower after falling well short of Q4 earnings expectations and announcing plans for at least $1.2B in spending to build a gold mine in Canada's Arctic and expand another.
- AEM's board approves building the Meliadine project and the Amaruq deposit, which is a satellite deposit of the company's existing Meadowbank mine, for expected capital costs of $900M and $330M, respectively.
- NEM now expects both projects to begin production in Q3 2019, meaning output at Meliadine is now forecast to start about a year earlier than previously expected.
- The two projects would help expand AEM's gold production to an estimated 2M oz. in 2020 from expected annual production of ~1.55M oz. during 2017-19.