Gold Turnaround King Follows Biggest Deal With Plan for More – by Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – December 12, 2016)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The mastermind behind the biggest overseas acquisition by a South African mining company for 15 years promises more to come. “There must be more expansion,” Sibanye Gold Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Neal Froneman, 56, said in an interview. “You can never get complacent and sit on your hands.”

That’s after Froneman agreed to pay $2.2 billion for Montana’s Stillwater Mining Co., and what he calls the world’s highest-grade platinum group metals deposit. It’s a step up for Sibanye, created just three years ago as a spinoff of Gold Fields Ltd.’s South African gold mines.

The miner previously agreed smaller deals to buy Aquarius Platinum Ltd. and three Anglo American Platinum Ltd. operations in its home country.

If approved by shareholders, the latest deal will be funded with $2.7 billion of borrowings, compared with a market value for Sibanye on Friday of about $1.6 billion, and drive its debt-to-earnings ratio up fourfold in the near term before it falls back later.

“They’re adding a lot of debt, which could become a challenge if platinum-group metals prices don’t improve or get worse,” said Arnold van Graan, a Johannesburg-based analyst at Nedbank Capital.

For the rest of this interview, click here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-12/gold-turnaround-king-follows-biggest-deal-yet-with-plan-for-more