South Africa鈥檚 Sibanye Gold (JSE:SGL) (NYSE:SBGL) is actively considering acquisitions as the miner and the weakness of most competitors.
The company鈥檚 shares have performed exceptionally so far this year. They are up 55% in Johannesburg and 46% in New York, after hitting a record intraday high on Jan. 28, helped in part by a weak rand that has helped Sibanye to reduce costs.
The miner, soon to be called Sibanye Resources, wants to expand its portfolio聽to include more platinum, coal and uranium mines.
The miner, which will soon change its name to Sibanye Resources, is not only looking at buying gold assets, but also at platinum, coal and uranium mines, while also looking to expand to聽the聽base metals market.
鈥淔or us to make an entry into another commodity, we鈥檇 have to look at where it is in the cycle and how close it is to a bull run. Base metals will be more of a focus initially than bulk commodities,鈥� chief executive officer Neal Froneman said.
鈥淭here are some seriously distressed companies out there. I don鈥檛 think we鈥檒l be going to Australia or North America. We are sub-and southern-African focused when we talk of outside South Africa, and we鈥檇 want to buy producers,鈥� Froneman added.
Source: Google Finance.
The executive, who has been at the helm of Sibanye , said the potential acquisitions would be in addition to the purchases of Aquarius Platinum Ltd. and mines, which were agreed last year and are currently awaiting regulatory approvals.
The company, South Africa鈥檚 largest gold producer, said output for 2016 would be about 1.61 million ounces, slightly higher than the 1.54 million ounces it generated during 2015, a target adjusted downwards following poor production figures earlier in the year, mainly in the March quarter. Sibanye had forecast 1.67 million ounces in 2015.
All-in sustaining costs will be about 425,000 rand a kilogram, or $880 an ounce.