The playbook — gold · October 9, 2026
McEwen sells two Timmins properties for US$55M, mostly in shares
A non-core asset sale near Timmins frees up cash to feed three growth projects — while the stock lags a surging sector.
On October 9, 2026, McEwen Inc. signed a deal to sell two properties near Timmins, Ontario — Fuller (about 210 hectares) and Paymaster (about 179 hectares) — to Discovery Mining for US$55 million. The price breaks down into US$5 million cash and US$50 million in Discovery shares. McEwen is also turning US$13.5 million of copper-related intercompany debt into cash, bringing the total liquidity from these moves to roughly US$68.5 million. This is a corporate transaction, not a drill result. There are no grades, no widths, no assays here — just two properties the company calls “non-core” so it can focus on Froome, Stock and Grey Fox. The copper piece ties back to Los Azules, the Argentine project we last covered when McEwen Copper landed a US$240 million loan.
Why it matters comes down to where the money goes. McEwen plans to spend the freed-up cash across three fronts: ramping up the Stock Mine at the Fox Complex, building the El Gallo mill (construction began September 2026), and surface work at Grey Fox and Tartan. The team is led by Rob McEwen, who built Goldcorp from roughly $50 million to over $8 billion and holds about 14% of MUX at a cost basis above US$290 million. On the operating side, President and CEO Michael Meding brings senior time at Newmont. Those prior Los Azules promises remain live: the EPCM contractor pick targeted for Q4 2026 and the Final Investment Decision and debt close targeted for mid-2027 are both still pending — this sale does not touch either.
Now the honest part. Only US$5 million of the US$55 million is cash — US$50 million is Discovery shares, whose value floats with Discovery’s TSX price at an undetermined closing date, and those shares carry a four-month-and-one-day hold period. The US$13.5 million copper-debt item came with the cancellation of incentive warrants McEwen held in McEwen Copper, and the net trade-off isn’t fully spelled out. Leverage has climbed too: MUX-level debt hit US$130 million after February’s convertible note, up from US$40 million a year earlier. The closing date and conditions — including TSX approval of the Discovery share issuance — are not stated. And the backdrop is unkind: over the past three months MUX slipped 1.8% while gold edged up 1.7% and the junior gold index jumped 14.2%, a mid-period rally to about 30 that fully reversed.