Impact: Positive
Yesterday morning, Aris Gold and GCM Mining announced that they entered into a definitive agreement whereby GCM is expected to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Aris it does not already hold. The new company would be named Aris Gold Corp. and would be led by Ian Telfer as Chair and Neil Woodyer as CEO and Director. Under the terms of the agreement, all outstanding shares of Aris not already owned by GCM would be exchanged at a ratio of 0.5 of a common share of GCM for each common share of Aris. GCM would own ~74% (considers the 44.3% of Aris that GCM already holds) and Aris Gold would own ~26% of the new company on a diluted ITM basis. The transaction would require approval of at least 66.67% of Aris shareholders and 50% of GCM shareholders. Shareholder meetings are scheduled to take place in mid-Sep/22. The closing of the transaction is expected shortly thereafter. All the directors and officers of GCM and Aris have entered into binding voting support agreements. We view this transaction positively for both GCM Mining and Aris Gold as the larger, combined company should be in a stronger position to advance its projects in the face of the current market environment and offer more opportunity over the long run for investors to realize a potential re-rating. For GCM Mining, we maintain our BUY rating and slightly lower our price target to C$16.75/sh (was C$17.00/sh). For Aris Gold, we move our rating to Tender (was BUY) and lower our price target to C$4.50/sh (was C$5.75/sh).