South Africa's Northam Platinum said on Friday it
would skip a dividend payout this year despite a 67% jump in its
half-year profit, as the miner focuses on its plans to acquire
Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) .
Higher platinum group metal (PGM) production drove Northam's
headline earnings per share - the profit measure commonly used
in South Africa - to 16.09 rand ($0.8890) in the six months
ended Dec. 31, from 9.62 rand a year ago.
Northam last year countered bigger rival Impala Platinum's bid to acquire the mid-tier RBPlat, triggering a
bidding war that has gone on for more than a year.
The company said it would not pay a dividend this year,
similar to 2022, as its growth strategy was at a "critical
juncture".
The company seeks to add RBPlat's large, shallow,
high-quality assets to its portfolio as it targets annual output
of 1 million PGM ounces by 2027.
Northam has grown from a single mine operation 30 years ago through the acquisition of the greefield Booysendal asset and the brownfield Eland mine in 2018.
The company produced 393,303 refined PGM ounces from its
own operations during the first half, an 11.9% increase from the
same period of the previous financial year.
The miner said it expects to produce between 790,000 and
820,000 PGM ounces for the full year.
($1=18.0980 rand)
(Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Clarence Fernandez,
Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Sonia Cheema)
