MINING STRATEGY
Reducing debt now Sibanye’s primary focus
Sibanye-Stillwater, a platinum group metals (PGMs) and gold miner, will give itself a three-year breather to reduce debt and lift its share price so that it can once again look seriously for growth after a heady spell of expansion in PGMs that make it one of the world’s leading players in the metals. Sibanye, which will vault into second place of global platinum producers once it has completed the all-share takeover of Lonmin, the world number three platinum miner, has stretched its balance sheet to the maximum, loading it with debt to fund the $2.2bn cash purchase of the US’s Stillwater Mining, a palladium and platinum miner. While its shares have outperformed those of its South African gold and platinum peers, Sibanye’s market capitalisation is half of the firm’s enterprise value, something that will change as it repays debt and restores its balance sheet, CE Neal Froneman said on the sidelines of the African Mining Indaba in Cape Town. "We can’t use cash to do mergers or acquisit...
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