Sibanye restores dividend after precious metals rally

Sibanye Stillwater Ltd. will pay its first dividend since 2023, after gold and the other precious metals it produces rallied last year.

The South African miner announced a payout to shareholders of 3.7 billion rand ($229 million) on Friday, as higher prices boosted earnings and eased the impact of asset writedowns. Its shares rose as much as 3.7% in Johannesburg.

Gold soared to successive records last year as uncertainties over global trade, geopolitics and the US Federal Reserve’s independence drove demand for haven assets. Other precious metals recovered from May after a prolonged period of weak prices, with platinum more than doubling and palladium climbing almost 80%.

The firm’s gold and platinum-group-metals mines in South Africa “delivered substantial earnings uplift,” while palladium operations in the US returned to profitability following a restructuring initiated in 2024, the company said.

Sibanye’s headline earnings — which strip out one-time items such as asset writedowns — almost quadrupled to $387 million in 2025. Its annual net loss including impairments narrowed by almost a third to $288 million, according to an earnings report.

The company began life in 2013 as the owner of three aging gold mines in South Africa. It’s since expanded into platinum, palladium and battery metals. PGM mines in its home country accounted for almost half of revenue last year.

Sibanye is transitioning its gold business away from high-cost deep underground assets toward shallow and surface-level operations that provide bigger margins, chief executive officer Richard Stewart told reporters.

The company owns a majority stake in DRDGOLD Ltd., which extracts gold from mining waste in South Africa. It will also reach a decision before July on whether to resume development of the Burnstone project, the CEO said.

Stewart, who took the helm in October, has outlined a strategy focused on developing assets already in the company’s portfolio rather than the deal-making that characterized the firm’s growth under his predecessor.

A 7.8 billion-rand impairment at the company’s Keliber lithium mine in Finland — which will enter production soon — accounted for about half of the writedowns last year. That project will undergo a phased ramp-up, initially selling a concentrate before progressing to battery-grade products around 2028, Stewart said.

Despite the impairments and a $215 million payment to settle a dispute with Appian Capital Advisory Ltd., “operational financial performance reflected a significant and pleasing turnaround,” Sibanye said.

Copper “is a metal we would be interested in,” Stewart said after Sibanye completed a feasibility study late last year for the Mt Lyell project in Australia.

Mining executives around the world are looking to bulk up in copper, which is key to electrification and the broader energy transition. Prices for the metal have recently surged to record highs, while demand is expected to soar in the coming years.

(By William Clowes)