Hulamin: Bloated and battling
Hulamin sells aluminium in 50 countries, but as its share price shows, that’s been an unforgiving segment for ages
Aluminium extraction specialist Hulamin — which was unbundled from Tongaat Hulett in 2007 — came under fire at last week’s AGM for not "setting the tone at the top" in terms of its much-hyped cost-cutting endeavours. You can see why Hulamin would be looking to slim down — its share price has dropped 28% over the past year (and 39.8% over three years) as it changed the valuation of assets and recorded a R950m operating loss. At R3.25 it is some way below the R40 at which it traded when it first split from Tongaat. So Hulamin probably wasn’t expecting an easy ride at the AGM anyway. But then shareholder activist Chris Logan, who has locked horns with Tongaat before, pitched up. Logan’s first point was that Hulamin’s 14-strong board was excessive for a company with a market capitalisation of less than R1.2bn. He pointed out that mining conglomerate Anglo American (with a market capitalisation of more than R500bn) had 12 directors, while investment behemoth Remgro (market capitalisation...
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