Top Gold Stocks for July 2022

Gold has long been regarded as a safe haven in times of market turmoil. Many investors have gained exposure to the precious metal by buying stocks of companies engaged in exploration and mining. Some of the major players in the gold industry include Canada-based Franco-Nevada Corp., Newmont Corp., and Australia-based Newcrest Mining Ltd.

Gold stocks—as represented by an exchange-traded fund, the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX)—have underperformed the broader market over the past year. GDX has provided a total return of -12.7% over the past 12 months, below the -10.0% total return of the Russell 1000 Index. These market performance numbers, and all statistics in the tables below and company developments below, are as of June 27, 2022.

Here are the top five gold stocks with the best value, fastest growth, and most momentum.

Best Value Gold Stocks

Value investing is a factor-based investing strategy that involves picking stocks that you believe are trading for less than what they are intrinsically worth, usually by measuring the ratio of the stock’s price to one or more fundamental business metrics. A widely accepted value metric is the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Value investors believe that if a business is cheap compared to its intrinsic value—in this case, as measured by its P/E ratio—then the stock price may rise faster than that of others as the price comes back in line with the worth of the company.

These are the stocks with the lowest 12-month trailing P/E ratio.

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• Sibanye-Stillwater Ltd.: Sibanye-Stillwater is a South Africa-based producer of precious metals. The company develops and extracts mineral properties. Its diverse portfolio includes platinum metal operations in the United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe; gold operations and projects in South Africa; copper, gold, and platinum metal exploration properties in North and South America. The company also has a 30% stake in a lithium project in Finland. On June 11, the company signed a three-year wage agreement for its South African gold operations which is effective from July 1, 2021. The signing of the agreement, which includes an "inflation related" average 6.3% wage increase over three years, also lifts a months-long lockout of two unions.
• Equinox Gold Corp.: Equinox Gold is a Canada-based mining company that operates entirely within the Americas. The company has eight operating gold mines throughout Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil. It is poised to achieve annual gold production of more than 1 million ounces.
• Dundee Precious Metals Inc.: Dundee Precious Metals is a Canada-based international mining company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development, mining, and processing of precious metal properties. The company owns three principal subsidiaries: Chelopech, which owns and operates a gold, copper, and silver mine in Bulgaria; Krumovgrad, which is developing a gold property in Bulgaria; and Tsumeb, which owns and operates the company’s concentrate processing facility in Namibia. Dundee Precious Metals also has shares that trade over the counter (OTC) in the U.S. under the ticker symbol DPMLF. Dundee reported Q1 2022 earnings results on May 4. Net earnings attributable to common shareholders increased by 33.3% while revenue climbed by 11.4% year-over-year (YOY). Higher gold and copper production at the company's Chelopech operations contributed to this growth.
• Torex Gold Resources Inc.: Torex Gold Resources is a Canada-based intermediate gold producer. It engages in the exploration, development, and operation of its 100%-owned Morelos Gold Property, which is composed of 29,000 hectares in the Guerrero Gold Belt in Mexico. The company’s principal assets include the El Limón Guajes Mine Complex, composed of open pit and underground mines as well as a processing plant, and the Media Luna project, an advanced-stage development project. Torex also has shares that trade OTC in the U.S. under the ticker symbol TORXF.
  
• Calibre Mining Corp.: Calibre Mining is a Canada-based, mid-tier gold producer with operations in North and South America. The company operates several producing gold mines in Nicaragua: El Limόn, which covers an area of 12,000 hectares; La Libertad, which covers approximately 10,937 hectares; and Pavon, covering 31.5 square kilometers. It also operates the Pan Gold Mine, located in Nevada. In mid-June, Calibre announced that it had received a key environmental permit from the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources in Nicaragua to develop and produce the Pavon Central open-pit mine. The development is expected to drive an increase in gold production in 2023.

Fastest Growing Gold Stocks

These are the top gold stocks as ranked by a growth model that scores companies based on a 50/50 weighting of their most recent quarterly year-over-year (YOY) percentage revenue growth and most recent quarterly YOY earnings-per-share (EPS) growth. Both sales and earnings are critical factors in the success of a company. Therefore, ranking companies by only one growth metric makes a ranking susceptible to the accounting anomalies of that quarter (such as changes in tax law or restructuring costs) that may make one figure or the other unrepresentative of the business in general. Companies with quarterly EPS or revenue growth of more than 2,500% were excluded as outliers.

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• OceanaGold Corp.: OceanaGold is an Australia-based gold producer engaged in the development, exploration, and operation of gold properties. The company also produces copper and silver. Its operations include the Didipio Mine in the Philippines; Macraes and Waihi operations in New Zealand; and the Haile Gold Mine in the U.S. The company employs over 2,300 people. OceanaGold also has shares that trade OTC in the U.S. under the ticker symbol OCANF. OceanaGold reported Q1 2022 earnings on April 28. Net profit grew nearly five-fold as revenue almost doubled YOY. Record quarterly gold production at the Haile mine and strong overall gold production helped to drive performance.
  
• AngloGold Ashanti Ltd.: AngloGold Ashanti is a South Africa-based gold mining company with operations, projects, and exploration activities spanning nine countries. The company also produces silver and sulfuric acid as by-products in South America. The company produced approximately 2.5 million ounces of gold and employed an average of nearly 31,000 people in 2021.
• Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd.: Wesdome Gold Mines is a Canada-based, mid-tier gold mining company with operations in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It operates the Eagle River Underground Mine in Ontario and is actively exploring its Kiena Complex in Quebec. Wesdome aims to produce more than 200,000 ounces from its two mining complexes. The company also has shares that trade OTC in the U.S. under the ticker WDOFF. For Q1 FY 2021, the company's reported a small decline in net income even as revenue rose sharply YOY. Revenue growth was driven primarily by the company's gold operations.
• Lundin Gold Inc.: Lundin Gold is a Canada-based mining company. It owns the Fruta del Norte gold mine in southeast Ecuador, a multimillion-ounce, high-grade gold property. Initial gold production at the mine began in November 2019, and the company expects to produce an average of 340,000 ounces of gold per year. The company also has shares that trade OTC in the U.S. under the ticker LUGDF. On June 28, Lundin announced that its shares had been upgraded to trading on the OTCQX Best Market after previously trading on the OTC Pink Market.
• Coeur Mining Inc.: Coeur Mining is a diversified precious metals producer with five operations and development projects throughout North America: the Palmarejo silver-gold complex in Mexico; the Rochester silver-gold mine in Nevada; the Kensington gold mine in Alaska; the Wharf gold mine in South Dakota; and the Silvertip silver-zinc-lead development project in Canada. The company also owns interests in a number of precious metals exploration projects.

Gold Stocks with the Most Momentum

Momentum investing is a factor-based investing strategy that involves investing in a stock whose price has risen faster than the market as a whole. Momentum investors believe that stocks that have outperformed the market will often continue to do so because the factors that caused them to outperform will not suddenly disappear. In addition, other investors, seeking to benefit from the stock’s outperformance, will often purchase the stock, further bidding its price higher and pushing the stock higher still.

These are the stocks that had the highest total return over the past 12 months.

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• Yamana Gold Inc.: Yamana Gold is a Canada-based precious metals producer. Its portfolio includes gold and silver producing properties in Canada, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. In 2021 it produced over 1 million gold-equivalent ounces. Gold equivalent production for the year was 88% of the company's total production and silver was 12%. On May 31, Yamana Gold announced that Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI) would acquire Yamana. The transaction is valued at $6.7 billion and is expected to close in the second half of 2022.
• SSR Mining Inc.: SSR Mining is an intermediate gold company operating four producing assets in the U.S., Turkey, Canada, and Argentina. It also has a global pipeline of development and exploration assets in the U.S., Turkey, Mexico, Peru, and Canada. In 2020, the company's four main assets achieved more than 711,000 gold-equivalent ounces of production. As of June 27, SSR Mining is now included in both the Russell 1000 index as well as the broad-market Russell 3000 index.
• Osisko Mining Inc.: Osisko Mining is a Canada-based mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of gold resource properties. The company’s primary assets, which are located in the Canadian province of Quebec, include the Windfall project, covering an area of 12,523 hectares; the Quévillon property, covering an area of 150,163 hectares; and the Urban Barry properties, covering an area of approximately 1000 square kilometers.
• Gold Fields Ltd.: Gold Fields is a South Africa-based mining company focusing on gold and copper projects. It has operations in Chile, Peru, Australia, South Africa, and Ghana. The company's has attributable gold-equivalent reserves of 52.1 million ounces. As mentioned above, Gold Fields has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Yamana Gold.
• OceanaGold Corp.: See above for company description.

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