Centamin's output forecast falls short

Cairo - Gold miner Centamin said on Thursday that it expected to produce 420 000 ounces of gold at its only operating mine in Egypt this year, missing some analyst expectations.

Shares in the company fell as much as 3.3%, making the stock one of the top percentage losers on the FTSE-250 Midcap Index.

"The focus today will be on 2015 guidance and we expect the market to be very disappointed with the 420 000 ounce expectation," Panmure Gordon analyst Alison Turner said in a note to clients.

The issue appears to be backlog in waste stripping, Turner said. Panmure's output forecast was 475 000 ounces.

Brokerage Peel Hunt was expecting the company to produce 445 000 ounces of gold from the mine.

Expansion of plant

While the forecast is an 11% jump from the 377 261 ounces it produced in 2014, it falls short of the expanded capacity of 450 000-500 000 ounces at the Sukari mine.

The company said at that time that it expected an annual production rate of 450 000 to 500 000 ounces one year after the expansion of its ore-processing plant. The expansion was completed in the third quarter.

Centamin cut its 2014 production forecast in November, citing lower-grade ore mined in the fourth quarter and reduced productivity in October.

The stock was down 2.4% at 63.3 pence just before lunch.