Canaccord downgrades Petropavlovsk to 'hold'

Analysts at Canaccord Genuity lowered gold miner Petropavlovsk to 'hold' from 'speculative buy' on Thursday, stating uncertainty still remained around its future.

With changes at the group's board level in August, including the departure of former chief executive Dr Pavel Maslovskiy, Canaccord said the tenure of the rest of Petropavlovsk's executive management team still remained "unclear".

"There has been a void of public information available about who the new board appointees and permanent executive management might be, and what (if any) changes to the previous strategy might be implemented," said the analysts.

Canaccord also highlighted that interim CEO Maksim Meshach was supposedly facing "challenges" in getting co-operation from existing personnel.

"In the absence of any further clarity on the board, management team or strategy, we maintain our fundamental estimates, which are based on the previous board/management team's strategy, and which underpin our unchanged net present value-based 40.0p target price, " said Canaccord.

However, the Canadian bank stated that over the last month, Petropavlovsk's share price had moved up by around 20% and was now just 3% below its target price, leading to the downgrade.