eBusiness Weekly
Enacy Mapakame
The world’s leading primary producer of platinum, Anglo American Platinum — parent company for Unki Mine — has issued a cautionary for the half year to June 30, 2019 ahead of release of its financial results showing strong profitability.
The mining group, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), expects to release its financials for the six months period on July 22.
According to Anglo, earnings per share for the period are expected to jump 180 percent above the prior period comparative.
The group’s basic earnings for the period are likely to increase to a profit of between R7,055 billion and R7,485 billion, representing an increase of between 224 percent and 244 percent compared to the comparative period figure of a R2,179 billion.
Headline earnings are seen surging to between R7 billion and R7,6 billion, representing an increase of between 108 percent and 128 percent compared to the comparative period’s R3,36 billion.
Anglo attributed the expected increase in headline and basic earnings per share to higher rand PGMs basket price and stock count adjustment gain of R1 billion in the period compared to a stock count adjustment loss of R0,5 billion in the same period last year.
“Shareholders are advised that headline earnings for the period is likely to increase to between R7,005 billion and R7,670 billion (an increase of between 108 percent and 128 percent compared to the comparative period figure of R3,363 billion).
On the production front, management anticipates total group production for 2019 to be between 4,2 million and 4,5 million ounces, including platinum production of between 2 million and 2,1 million ounces as well as palladium output of 1,3 million to 1,4 million ounces.
Production guidance is forecast to be down on 2018 due to the transfer of Sibanye-Stillwater material to a tolling arrangement instead of its concentrate purchased by Anglo American Platinum.
During the first quarter of 2019, the group’s total platinum group metals (PGM) production decreased 6 percent to 998 900 ounces.
Platinum and palladium production went down 5 percent to 471 900 ounces and 6 percent to 326 600 ounces. This came after normalisation of the transition of Sibanye-Stillwater material to a tolling arrangement from January 01, 2019 which equated to 115 700 platinum ounces and 58 100 palladium ounces in the 2018 first quarter.
Total production was 3 percent lower compared to the previous quarter which recorded 1 million ounces of total PMG.
Local unit, Unki Mine PGMs production declined 5 percent to 43 300 ounces during the quarter to March 31, 2019 mainly due to additional 2018 first quarter production mined from ore stockpiles. Normalising for this impact, production at Unki was flat.
Platinum production fell 6 percent to 19 300 ounces while palladium was 4 percent lower to 17 000 ounces.
