The St Barbara Ltd (ASX: SBM) share price has sunk deep into the red on Thursday.
In morning trade, the gold miner's shares are down almost 53% to 26.5 cents.
What's going on with the St Barbara share price?
The good news is that the decline in the St Barbara share price today has nothing to do with a poor update, a broker downgrade, or a collapse in the gold price.
The decline is entirely attributable to the company's shares going ex-distribution this morning.
This relates to the in-specie distribution of all of the 205 million Genesis Minerals Ltd (ASX: GMD) shares that the company received as part consideration for the sale of its Leonora assets.
Yesterday was the final trading day to acquire St Barbara shares on market to be on its share register in time for the record date for the distribution.
This means that anyone buying the gold miner's shares today will not be eligible to receive the Genesis Minerals shares when the company distributes them on 11 July.
In light of this, the St Barbara share price has dropped to reflect this on Thursday. After all, if you were buying its shares, you wouldn't want to pay for something you're not going to receive.
What's left?
Following the Leonora asset sale and the distribution of the Genesis Minerals shares, St Barbara is left with its Atlantic and Simberi operations and a sizeable cash balance of $294 million.
The latter is actually more than its current market capitalisation, which has dropped to approximately $240 million following the St Barbara share price decline on Thursday.
Whether this makes it a bargain buy at current levels, time will tell.
