Shares of Barrick Gold Corp. GOLD,
-1.10%
ABX,
-0.85%
rose 0.8% in premarket trading on Wednesday, after the gold miner announced fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, established a $1.0 billion share buyback program and increased its dividend. Net income rose to $726 million, or 41 cents per share, from $685 million, or 39 cents per share, reported a year ago. Excluding one-time items, adjusted earnings per share of 35 cents beat the FactSet consensus of 30 cents. Revenue rose 0.9% to $3.31 billion, beating the FactSet consensus of $3.20 billion, while cost of sales rose 5.0% to $1.91 billion. The realized gold price per ounce was $1,793, down from $1,871 a year ago, while gold production in thousands of ounces slipped to 1,203 from 1,206. copper production in millions of pounds increased from 119 to 126. Separately, Barrick raised its quarterly dividend from 9 cents to 10 cents per share, but also implemented a performance dividend policy in which an additional dividend will be related to net cash on the balance sheet. The new $1.0 billion share buyback program represents 2.7% of Barrick’s market capitalization of $36.80 billion as of Tuesday’s close. The stock is up 0.4% in the past three months through Tuesday, while the S&P 500 SPX,
-0.93%
lost 4.9%.