Mark Bristow: Yes. Thank you. So again, as I pointed out earlier, one of the things, if you go back through my career and most of my career has been with Graham and we have a very clear outlook on how we manage our balance sheet, is that you need to have a capital allocation strategy and a policy, and we have got one. We worked to one win right out the blocks in 2019, and then we built one and shared it with you 18-months ago. And today, it stands that we pay a base dividend of $0.10 a quarter anytime because our long-term business strategy delivers that base dividend no matter what the gold price is or what the most foreseeable gold price or minimum gold price is. And then once we get a net positive cash position, we add to that $0.10.
Now the way we can manage that is and we won that because we are in the growth phase. And I have proven before, and I am determined to prove it again. If you keep investing into profitable assets, ultimately, you make more money than you need to reinvest in your future. And that is what happened in Randgold after 10-years, and we had 1three-years of growing dividends no matter what the gold price was. And so, the way we can manage that, buyback relative to dividend is when we see the trajectory going above net cash, we have a choice. Buyback the stock or let it go past that point. And then at the end of the quarter, if we have got net cash, we it triggers our dividend policy. So that, as management, we can manage that and we never put the balance sheet at risk.
And I have always said, the one thing you need to know in mining is that when the market goes against you, you have no friends. And when you ask for money at that time, you get slaughtered. All the stock buying will never help you. So I have always, worked to be independent of the market and shareholders like that. They might not like that in time and hot times. We have just been through a very hot time. But look how suddenly the base metal companies have started having to cut back on expenditure, reduce staff, defer capital, lots of things, because everyone thought that commodity prices continue to go up and up and never come down, and that is not the case. So for us, that is the way we manage share buybacks. And at the time, as you know, we had a lot of cash flow.
We were able to choose. We had to balance our returns to our shareholders. We have done that. But we also saw a significant weakness in our stock price. And more importantly, a relative weakness, relative to the rest of the gold industry, which itself is weak. And so we felt that taking some of that extra cash coming off our P&L and buying shares is the right thing to do. I have always felt as a mining industry and Barrick is in a particular place, has got a lot of outstanding shares. It is hard to make a dent on them, but we will continue to do that. When we have an opportunity and we got free cash, we will buy the stock back. If it goes too low, we will buy it back as well. I believe, we passed that real tough part in rebuilding Barrick. We have set a solid foundation.
We have built a strong team. We know where we are going, we are not going to regret any of the decisions we have made because they have been well made and we can afford our growth and there are not many mining companies that can show 30% organic growth ahead of them. And I think we are well positioned to benefit from the long-term bullish output on put on copper. And right now, I can’t see much downside risk on gold, just because of the chaotic global environment we find ourselves in, whether it is the global economy or just the geopolitical risk and everything else that goes with it.
John Tumazos: So basically, the growth from RekoDiq is more valuable than buying back shares in your opinion.
Mark Bristow: Yes. In the short-term. Because, if you get caught in the market without money, for a big project like RekoDiq, then you hurt the overall long-term reserves. And so that it is the choice of capital allocation. And we are we are not going to issue new stock. We are not going to put our shareholders at risk at all in the next five-years, we can see it, it is banked. And ultimately, our share price will go up naturally, because we are going to show people we have got the discipline. You know, people are still thinking we are going to do some crazy M&A transaction, that is not the case. We have demonstrated that should the opportunity arise to create value through acquisitions will take it, even if we have to be aggressive. But right now, we are in good shape and we don’t have any regrets if you look back five-years.
John Tumazos: Mark, I know this wasn’t on your watch, but from 94 to 98, the stock was much higher than today. And even through the dog years when the Swiss were selling out their gold reserves, 98, 99. And I know all the gold stocks are cheap today. The market gives no credit for all your successes in Tanzania, PNG, Pakistan, etcetera. So I guess we are just going to be patient and wait for the earnings to come in and for the market to recognize all the good things you are doing.
Mark Bristow: Yes. I think, John, I don’t have to lecture you on this. It takes one bad decision to damage a reputation. It takes years to rebuild it. And we literally had to rebuild the Barrick portfolio, I mean, piece by piece, as I pointed out earlier in the presentation. So and, the 90s you are talking about, remember 90, I modelled Randgold on the 90s barrack. And that was a different company to what transpired in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, where effectively, the company wrote down, $20 billion of investments, and they were all U.S. dollar investments. On top of that, there was the equity issues. So there was a, it was in a very stressed situation, at the time of our merger.
Operator: There are currently no more questions from the conference call.
Mark Bristow: Well, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, both on the call and here in London, it is great to be back in London. Nice to make sure to reinforce the fact that the weather hasn’t changed one bit. And, I look forward to continuing to catch up with you virtually until we meet again in person in a year’s time. Thank you very much.
