Updates on Newmont Mining, TransCanada Corp., and Telus

Article Excerpt

NEWMONT MINING $24.83 (New York symbol NEM; Shares outstanding: 497.9 million; Market cap: $12.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 0.4%; www.newmont.com) has broken off merger talks with Barrick Gold (Toronto symbol ABX) amid reports of personality conflicts and a failure to agree on key issues such as the location of a new head office and who would lead the combined company. Both Newmont and Barrick have large mining operations in Nevada, so a merger would have let them significantly cut their operating costs. That would have helped the combined firm cope with lower gold prices. Due to weak gold and copper prices, Newmont’s earnings fell 69.4% in the first quarter of 2014, to $108 million, or $0.22 a share. A year earlier, it earned $353 million, or $0.70 a share. Revenue declined 19.4%, to $1.8 billion from $2.2 billion. The company links its dividend to the price of gold. As a result, it has cut its quarterly payout by 87.5%, to $0.025…