James R. Brown, Alan Hutchison
Jan 30, 2018
A turnaround year for the Canadian metals and mining sector included some “pretty significant” initial public offerings (IPOs), Osler Mining Group Co-Chair James Brown tells Financial Post. In his article, author Geoff Zochodne examines the recent “return to normalcy” for the sector, as Alan Hutchison, Co-Chair of Osler’s Mining Group, describes. The article discusses Stelco Holdings Inc., which successfully closed a $230-million IPO in November, as an example of the sector’s turnaround.
Last year also saw the “first meaningful step in much-anticipated consolidation,” Alan tells Financial Post, “especially in the junior and mid-tier corners of the industry.” Alan adds that “the consolidation helped to get institutional investors who had been sitting on the sidelines interested in the sector again.”
Alan tells Financial Post that “commodity prices improved, market sentiment and outlook improved slightly, and that was enough to trigger some of these consolidation plays to come together. With that consolidation, (investors) start to be able to identify the types of companies into which they want to put their capital.”
In terms of retail investors, James says other industries have been garnering the most media attention.
“I think when you’ve got retail investors with limited amounts of capital, certainly the investment opportunities that get the most marketing and the most press … I think that has drawn away from retail in the mining space,” James tells Financial Post.
For more information, read Geoff Zochodne’s article “The anatomy of Stelco’s long, strange road to market” in Financial Post.