{"id":814636,"date":"2025-02-28T08:49:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T06:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=814636"},"modified":"2025-02-28T08:49:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T06:49:48","slug":"another-major-mining-company-takes-a-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/814636\/another-major-mining-company-takes-a-hit\/","title":{"rendered":"Another major mining company takes a hit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Northam Platinum is the latest platinum group metal (PGM) miner to see a drop in profit amidst a troubled environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the six months ended 31 December 2024, Northam saw its sales revenue drop by 3.1% to R14.5 billion, while its operating profit declined by 55.2% to R1 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group’s headline earnings per share declined by 49.7% to 61.1 cents per share, while basic earnings per share dropped by 54.9% to 61.5%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the group’s dividend policy of paying out 25% of headline earnings, the company declared an interim dividend of 15.0 cents. This was a massive 85% decline from the prior comparable period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northam is not the only PGM miner to feel the pain. Miners in the sector are experiencing extreme price pressures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PGM prices are severely depressed due to a global economic slowdown and concerns related to the shift to electric vehicles, which don’t need PGMs to reduce emissions via a catalytic converter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, 27 February 2025, Impala Platinum<\/a> said that its results were severely affected by the drop in PGM prices, which offset the group’s cost-cutting measures, including thousands of retrenchments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impala Platinum, also known as Implats, did not declare a dividend for the six months ended 31 December 2024 due to the uncertain macroeconomic environment and low PGM prices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) also saw its headline earnings drop by 40% throughout the whole of 2024, while revenue fell by 13% to R19 billion on the back of the rand-basket per ounce price dropping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amplats<\/a> struggles have seen its largest shareholder, Anglo American, leaving the South African-based miner to fend for itself, with a demerger planned for June. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hefty dividend payout also leaves Amplats with only R1 billion in cash, which is in contrast with Implats, who are trying to keep every piece of cash possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northam’s results for the period can be found below: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financials<\/strong><\/td>H1 2023<\/strong><\/td>H1 2024<\/strong><\/td>% Change<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Sales revenue (R’000)<\/td>14 994 577<\/td>14 534 271<\/td>-3.1%<\/td><\/tr>
Operating profit (R’000)<\/td>2 417 200<\/td>1 083 226<\/td>-55.2%<\/td><\/tr>
Profit for the period (R’000)<\/td>532 620<\/td>239 874<\/td>-54.97%<\/td><\/tr>
EBITDA (R’000)<\/td>3 170 829<\/td>1 761 810<\/td>-44.4%<\/td><\/tr>
Basic earnings per share (cents)<\/td>136.5<\/td>61.5<\/td>-54.9%<\/td><\/tr>
Headline earnings per share (cents)<\/td>121.4<\/td>61.1<\/td>-49.7%<\/td><\/tr>
Dividends per share (cents)<\/td>100.0<\/td>15.0<\/td>-85.0%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northam Platinum is the latest PGM miner to see a massive decline in earnings, with it massively slashed its dividend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":814642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[19405,16874,21857],"class_list":["post-814636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-amplats","tag-implats","tag-northam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814636"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814645,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814636\/revisions\/814645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}