Evy Hambro, BlackRock’s global head of thematic and sector investing, told the FT Mining Summit this week that gold producers have poured capital into share repurchases with far less discipline than they apply to building new mines.

BlackRock is calling out major gold miners for treating buybacks like free money while underinvesting in future ounces. The firm’s case rests on a simple bet: government debt and chronic deficits keep eroding paper currencies, so real assets, and gold above all, still have room to run.

Kitco News reported that Hambro framed the last 18 months or so as a stretch of reckless capital allocation across the gold sector, with enormous sums spent on buybacks “without any real process.”

Four of the largest names, Barrick Mining, Newmont, AngloGold Ashanti, and Gold Fields, have announced repurchase programmes worth roughly $12 billion combined. BlackRock is not a bystander. It owns about 12% of Newmont, 10% of AngloGold Ashanti, and 6% of Gold Fields.

That stake gives the criticism weight. When the world’s largest asset manager says miners are misallocating cash, the boardroom math is under review.

Buybacks without the homework of a mine build

Hambro’s core complaint was process, not the idea of returning capital in the abstract. He argued that a $1 billion decision to build a mine gets far more analytical work than a $1 billion decision to repurchase stock.

Related Posts
JPMorgan: Bitcoin could outrun gold if hedges unwind

“One of the things we’ve been really dismayed about in the last 18 months or so has been the reckless capital allocation towards share buybacks in gold companies, where we’ve seen enormous amounts of money deployed on buybacks without any real process,”

He pressed the point further on timing. Companies, he said, announce big programmes when share prices sit near peaks, then halt the programmes when bullion retreats and equity prices are cheaper.

“We’re very dismayed when companies announce big share buyback plans when share prices are at their peak, and then when the gold price falls back to $4,000 an ounce they stop buying back shares, and the shares are 40% cheaper,”

“Where was the maths in making those decisions in the first place?” he asked. That line lands because it isolates the incentive problem: management often looks disciplined when cash is flooding in, then turns cautious exactly when repurchases would buy more ounces of equity per dollar.

For long-term holders, the practical issue is simple. Cash spent at the top of the cycle is cash that cannot fund new production when prices later reward supply growth. Readers tracking how miners flood shareholders with cash near high bullion prices already know this tension. Returning capital can support valuations in the short run. It does less for reserve life if the next cycle needs fresh feed.

Why BlackRock still wants more gold exposure, not less

Hambro did not argue that gold’s run is finished. He argued the opposite. In his view, miners and shareholders would be better served putting capital into new production because gold prices are likely to move higher over time.

The mechanism he described was monetary, not geological. Governments carry heavy debt loads and run large ongoing deficits. He said he sees no serious plan to fix that beyond more of the same. The result, in his framing, is ongoing depreciation in the purchasing power of paper currencies.

“The outcome is that real assets rise in price, and gold is probably one of the biggest beneficiaries of that.”

He allowed for shorter-term volatility. He also said the trend remains the investor’s friend. That combination matters for metals portfolios: path noise can be sharp even when the structural case is intact.

Miner equities do not move one-for-one with bullion. Operating leverage, jurisdictional risk, cost inflation, and capital allocation all sit between the metal and the stock. Periods when top miners lose hundreds of billions as gold and lithium slide show how quickly that transmission can break. A firm that buys back stock at the peak and freezes when prices fall is telling the market it may not be a reliable compounder of per-share ounces.

March backdrop: debt, deficits, and portfolio ballast

Back in March, as gold prices began a months-long slide after the start of the Iran war, BlackRock’s Kristy Akullian, head of iShares investment strategy for the Americas, said the firm still believed the bull market was far from over. Her catalysts lined up with Hambro’s later remarks: government debt, geopolitical demand for perceived safe-haven assets, and silver’s industrial pull.

Akullian put hard numbers on the fiscal backdrop. U.S. federal debt, she said, now exceeds 120% of GDP, with annual fiscal deficits still near 6, 7% of GDP. She added that global debt has surpassed 100% of GDP for major developed economies including Japan, the U.K., France, and Canada.

That is the balance-sheet context behind the “real assets rise” claim. When official debt stocks stay elevated and deficits remain large, markets often reprice the long-run credibility of fiat claims. Gold does not need a perfect forecast of the next CPI print to function as insurance against that process.

Akullian also framed metals as portfolio tools rather than pure panic hedges. Since 2020, she said, in months when the S&P 500 fell more than 5%, gold delivered an average return of 2%, while the U.S. Aggregate Bond Index was closer to flat. That asymmetry is why gold can matter when traditional stock-bond pairings disappoint.

Silver, in her telling, behaves as a higher-beta extension of the same theme, with pricing shaped by both investment flows and industrial demand. Over the past 20 years, she noted, silver’s annualized volatility has been up to twice that of gold. About 60% of annual silver consumption is tied to electronics, solar panels, and semiconductors, with electronics alone near 445 million ounces a year. Data-center buildout, AI power demand, and electrification add a growth-sensitive layer on top of the monetary bid.

Together, she argued, the metals can offer differentiated roles: gold as strategic diversifier and store of value; silver as a higher-volatility metal with meaningful industrial demand. Sizing still matters. Given silver’s swings, positions have often been smaller than gold allocations. That is risk management, not a dismissal of the metal.

What capital allocation means for miner shareholders

Hambro’s critique sits inside a familiar cycle for the sector. When bullion runs, free cash flow expands. Boards face three broad choices: build or buy ounces, repair the balance sheet, or return cash through dividends and buybacks.

Buybacks can raise earnings per share and support the stock when management times them well. They can also shrink the equity base just as the firm most needs optionality on future production. The “process” gap Hambro described is the gap between a multi-year mine decision and a board authorization that can be announced quickly when the share price feels strong.

Investors who watch fund flows into the space already see how sentiment can flip. Coverage of how mutual funds load up on gold miners sits beside stretches when equities lag bullion or reverse hard. Capital returns do not erase that beta. They can amplify disappointment if the firm later needs equity or debt to restart growth.

None of this requires pretending every repurchase is a mistake. Some firms return excess cash after fixing leverage and funding sustaining capital. The BlackRock objection is narrower and sharper: large programmes approved with thin analysis, launched near peaks, and abandoned when prices are lower and the shares are cheaper.

That pattern is the opposite of value discipline. It is also the opposite of a production-first strategy in a world Hambro says still favors higher gold over time.

Volatility, trend, and how to read the signal

Hambro’s own language separated noise from direction. Near-term volatility, in his view, is real. The longer trend, he said, remains constructive because fiscal trajectories have not turned.

That is useful framing for capital-preservation readers. Gold can grind higher on monetary stress and still suffer sharp interim drawdowns when positioning, real yields, the dollar, or geopolitical headlines shift. Miner stocks can amplify both legs.

Recent history in the complex already shows how violent those swings can be. Rallies that produce the best week for gold miners in 18 years can sit next to months of underperformance when cost inflation, operational misses, or capital missteps dominate the tape. The metal’s monetary case and the equity’s capital-allocation case are related. They are not identical.

For portfolio construction, the practical questions are straightforward:

  • Does the miner’s free cash flow fund sustaining capital and growth before aggressive buybacks?
  • Are repurchase authorizations timed with valuation discipline, or with peak cash flow optics?
  • Is the equity offering leverage to ounces in the ground, or mainly financial engineering around the share count?
  • How large should gold and silver be relative to each other given silver’s higher volatility and industrial mix?

BlackRock’s public answers lean toward more production investment, a still-bullish gold path driven by debt and deficits, and a view of precious metals as stabilizers that can help when equity drawdowns hit and bond hedges fail to carry the load.

Whether individual boards change course is a separate matter. Shareholders can still demand clearer repurchase frameworks, harder NPV tests against growth projects, and more transparent rules for when programmes pause. Process is measurable even when forecasts are not.

In a managed credit-money system that keeps choosing large deficits over repair, the metal’s job is to hold purchasing power when paper claims stretch. Miners only deliver that exposure if they grow ounces with discipline instead of buying their own stock at the top and freezing when the tape gets cheaper.