The St Barbara Ltd (ASX: SBM) share price has almost doubled in the past year and there are signs it will keep heading up.
The miner produced 381,101 ounces of gold in financial year (FY) 2017, up from 377,452 ounces for the previous year.
While that only represents a slight increase of less than 1 per cent it offers optimism as the production rate outperformed expectations, it demonstrates a degree of sustainability in St Barbara's operations and looks better when stacked against lower costs.
St Barbara stated that production costs came to a record low of $907 per ounce, down 3 per cent on the prior year.
This allowed the gold miner to achieve a record cash flow from operating activities of $303 million for FY 2017.
As such, St Barbara was able to repay all its debt and as of 30 September 2017 the company had almost $200 million cash in the bank after paying its first dividend since 1995.
St Barbara has been increasing profits since FY 2014 when the company recorded a loss of about $33.5 million.
But for FY 2015 St Barbara turned that around, reporting a profit of almost $42 million which tripled in FY 2016, coming to $127 million.
For FY 2017 St Barbara reported a profit of about $160 million on revenues of $642 million.
St Barbara shares are now trading for about $3.48, a big jump on the 10 cents they were going for in late 2014.
St Barbara is not the only ASX gold company that has seen its share price almost double in the past year, with Northern Star Resources Ltd (ASX: NST) and Saracen Mineral Holdings Limited (ASX: SAR) shareholders enjoying similar returns.
But St Barbara's shares change hands for around 11x earnings, while Northern Star's shares trade for about 18x earnings and Saracen shares are going for around 45x trailing earnings.
As such, St Barbara is looking like the pick of that bunch of top performing gold shares.
