David Garofalo never got to enjoy a honeymoon period.

He became chief executive of Goldcorp Inc. on Feb. 29. Just four days earlier, the Vancouver-based company cut its dividend and slashed its production outlook for the next three years. The stock dropped 13 per cent.

Now Garofalo has the challenging job of rebuilding investor confidence in the company. He did note that meetings with institutional shareholders have gone well so far.

“[The stock sell-off] was humbling, but it was commensurate with the performance recently,” he said in a roundtable with reporters. “And we take responsibility for that and we’ll take responsibility for ensuring it doesn’t happen again.”

Garofalo also discussed M&A. Goldcorp has been a very active acquirer throughout the past decade, but he made it clear that the company sees more value in its organic growth projects right now than external ones.

“I would say that our best opportunities are the ones we already own,” he said.

He added that Goldcorp wants shovel-ready projects with five million ounces of reserves or more, and those “just don’t exist in the jurisdictions we’re interested in.”

Garofalo’s prior employers, HudBay Minerals Inc. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., both invested in junior companies to get early exposure to good gold projects. He plans to apply the same strategy at Goldcorp.