Browsing: Sibanye Stillwater

When commodity prices began to soften in later years it seemed more of a blunder to have diversified the metals portfolio of the business than it appears a stroke of genius today.

With softening metal prices came the need to conserve cash and so dividend flows dried up. The company did not cease its expansion plans going so far as to pile on large amounts of United States dollar-denominated debt purchasing US-based platinum miner Stillwater and swallowed up Lonmin in the process. The share price then cratered when news broke that the company had experienced fatalities at its South African mines. In some circles of the investment community, others joked that they would not invest in Sibanye Stillwater as a matter of moral principle.

The share price went down reaching an all-time low of around R 7.…

Since then the company has pursued a highly aggressive growth strategy constituting of both organic and acquisitive growth. Sibanye in a very short space of time acquired the Cooke operations from Gold One International in 2013 and the Burnstone project from Wits Gold the following year. The aim of this aggressive growth strategy was to produce more sustainable gold operations. 

The story of growth did not stop there. 

Soon the company set its sights on the platinum sector and began to snap up various interests and operations in that space. In 2016 Sibanye acquired the Aquarius Platinum’s Rustenburg operations namely Kroondal mine as well as the Platinum Mile treatment facility in South Africa and in Zimbabwe it took over the Mimosa joint venture with Impala Platinum. Later that year the company also bought the Rustenburg operations of Anglo Platinum.…