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Anglo American

Mining giants ride copper’s price wave – by Scott Patterson (Dow Jones/The Australian – February 20, 2017)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

Copper bulls are looking smart — for now. Some of the world’s biggest mining companies, which have giant copper portfolios, are now poised to reap the rewards, with Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Glencore set to report full- or half-year earnings this week.

The industrial metal has surged more than 30 per cent in the past year, providing rocket fuel for companies that were staring into the abyss a year ago. Shares in Anglo and Glencore have more than tripled in the past 12 months. BHP, which has faced headwinds from a fatal tailings-dam disaster at one of its mining operations in Brazil, is up 62 per cent.

Rio Tinto, which is focusing more on its copper business, offered a preview of how miners’ fortunes have flipped to the upside when it reported earnings earlier this month. The Anglo-Australian mining giant said it returned to a profit in 2016 with $US4.62 billion in earnings, increased its dividend and announced a $US500 million share buyback.

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[Anglo-American] Mining’s Octopus Regenerates – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – February 16, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

In its heyday, the business empire founded by Ernest Oppenheimer was likened to an octopus.The tangle of arms stretching from Anglo American Plc has at times embraced the world’s biggest miners of gold, platinum and diamonds; concrete plants; pulp and paper mills; banks; newspapers; car factories; a South African vineyard; and a stake in the brewer that eventually became SABMiller Plc.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Cutifani dramatically turned his back on that legacy last February. The still-sprawling business would get rid of 60 percent of its workforce and two-thirds of its mines and focus on a core of diamonds, platinum and copper, he told investors.

Operations in coal, iron ore, nickel, manganese, niobium and phosphates that collectively accounted for about 99.5 percent of the tonnage produced by the company would be put up for sale.The plan was wildly popular with investors, making Anglo American one of the five best-performing stocks in the Bloomberg World Mining Index during 2016 — but it’s now being mothballed.

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Anglo American urges South Africa to ‘stop the rot’ in mining – by Neil Hume and Joseph Cotterill (Financial Times – February 6, 2017)

https://www.ft.com/

Company calls for an investment-friendly law on black ownership of the sector

Cape Town – The chief executive of Anglo American has called on South Africa’s government to end a “20-year rot” in the country’s mining industry by issuing investment-friendly legislation about black ownership of the sector’s companies.

Mark Cutifani said the next three to four months would be the “most important for the South African mining industry in 150 years”, with the ruling African National Congress overhauling laws to redress economic inequality in the sector.

“We’ve had an industry [in South Africa] that’s been shrinking for 20 years. If we are going to stop the rot, we need a document and a framework that encourages investment,” Mr Cutifani told the Financial Times on the sidelines of a mining conference in Cape Town.

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Anglo sees incremental gains as trading unit hits cruising speed – by Clara Ferreira-Marques (Reuters U.S. – Janaury 23, 2017)

http://www.reuters.com/

Anglo American Plc (AAL.L), which broke with tradition when it set up a focused commercial unit, sees modest improvements ahead after an early boost to profits, as it gets closer to clients, even offering shelter from volatile markets with fixed-price contracts.

Anglo, like many miners, shied away from directly trading its own material for decades, selling instead largely through intermediaries such as established trading houses.

That changed in 2013 under Chief Executive Mark Cutifani, as Anglo sought a direct connection with customers to get more value from every tonne of material sold, a move which added more than $400 million to underlying operating profit in two years.

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Anglo American’s future may lie outside South Africa – by Gavin du Venage (The National – December 21, 2016)

http://www.thenational.ae/

Anglo American, the corporation that helped turn South Africa into the world’s gem and gold supplier, may finally be ready to quit the country it helped shape for about a century.

Anglo, as it is mostly called, was once a cradle-to-grave employer that owned not just vast diamond, gold and other mineral assets, but a cross-section of South African industries spanning most sectors. At its height in the 1980s, Anglo owned food producers, packaging companies and others.

So pervasive was its influence that in the media sector, it owned shares in rival newspaper firms, the paper mills they depended on and even the very forests these fed on. It was, however, minerals that ran through Anglo’s corporate culture, and which were its main focus.

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Why De Beers is Flooding a Subarctic Diamond Mine After 8 Years – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – December 16, 2016)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Anglo American Plc’s De Beers will flood a massive diamond mine located beneath a subarctic lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories after failing to find a buyer.

De Beers will begin inundating tunnels at its Snap Lake mine in early January, it said in a statement distributed late Thursday. In April, it put the site on care and maintenance, saying it would decide whether the mine could be made viable in the next year. The company hired Bank of Montreal as an adviser to sell it, but no agreement could be reached.

The rich diamond deposit beneath Snap Lake is in a remote area 220 kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Yellowknife. Since it opened in 2008, it has never turned a profit, plagued by engineering challenges related to keeping the site dry. It was originally expected to operate until 2028.

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Anglo Confronts Divorce in Miner’s South Africa Birthplace – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – December 8, 2016)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

In 1917, Ernest Oppenheimer met with South African general and soon-to-be prime minister Jan Smuts to seek his blessing for a new mining company called Anglo American. Smuts wanted one assurance — the company was there for the long haul.

Anglo, along with its sister company De Beers, made Oppenheimer a billionaire and his descendants one of Africa’s richest families. The company became South Africa’s biggest, a conglomerate once spanning brewing, publishing and gold mining. Now a century later, Anglo is trying to cut many of the ties with the country where it all began.

While South African mines were cash cows for decades, Anglo now wants to sell them next year to cut debt accumulated during the commodity boom, when it spent $14 billion on Brazil’s Minas-Rio. How to package the assets and which to include will be major choices for Anglo, and it faces opposition from a government pension fund that is also the biggest investor. With so much history and national identity wrapped up in the company, it will be a complicated divorce.

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Hooded protesters shut down Los Bronces copper mine in Chile again – by Fabian Cambero (Reuters U.K – November 26, 2016)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LIMA – Global miner Anglo American Plc (AAL.L) halted all activity at its Los Bronces mine in Chile after hooded protesters seized installations early on Saturday in the second illegal occupation of the copper deposit this month, the company told Reuters.

Anglo said it was not certain who the protesters were. The latest seizure immediately followed what Anglo called an agreement between companies it uses to provide services at the mine and the Federation of Contract Workers union.

But the union indicated that it was not satisfied, and would continue to demand better contracts for workers, blaming Anglo American for an “insufficient” offer given the rise in the company’s shares, which spiked with the price of copper after Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month.

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Anglo American puts disposal programme on hold – by Neil Hume (Financial Times – November 21, 2016)

https://www.ft.com/

Anglo American on Monday signalled that the mining company was willing to puts its disposal programme on hold following a dramatic rebound in commodity prices this year.

Anglo told analysts during a visit to platinum and diamond mines in South Africa and Botswana that it was prepared to hang on to assets previously deemed non-core, and run them for cash — unless it receives the “right” offers.

Hit by the natural resources crash, and burdened by large borrowings, Anglo in February put its coal, iron ore, manganese and nickel assets up for sale as part of a “shrink to survive” strategy, leaving the company to focus on just three core commodities — copper, diamonds and platinum.

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Major mining assets change hands after commodity rout (Reuters U.s. – November 8, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

Major miners are selling assets after a global commodities rout last year left them with high levels of debt. A recovery in raw materials prices has taken away some of the pressure to sell, however, and deals have slowed.

China, whose stimulus package spurred this year’s commodities rally, is the biggest potential buyer. Following is a list of the main mining companies, some of the biggest sales so far and what assets are on offer:

BHP BILLITON LIMITED

Market capitalization: 72.7 billion pounds ($90.3 billion)(Reuters data)

Net debt: $26.1 billion (company reported in August)

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A 300% Rally That Has Investors Questioning Anglo’s Plan to Sell – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – October 26, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

When a company quadruples in value over nine months, it’s unusual for the biggest investors to say management has the wrong strategy. But that’s exactly what’s happening with Anglo American Plc, the mining company that is the U.K.’s best-performing blue-chip stock this year.

In February, Anglo was reeling from a broad slump in commodities that sent its shares to an all-time low and compounded a mountain of debt. To stanch the bleeding, the company proposed selling more than half its assets, including coal and iron-ore mines that had plunged in value. Almost as soon as the plan was announced, prices began recovering, so much so that investors including top shareholder Public Investment Corp. urged executives to reconsider.

“The desperation levels are not there anymore,” said Hanre Rossouw, a Cape Town-based fund manager at Investec Asset Management, whose investments include Anglo shares.

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Invasion of AngloGold’s Ghana Mine Persists, Says Illegal Miner – by Ekow Dontoh Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – October 13, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Illegal miners who invaded AngloGold Ashanti Ltd.’s Obuasi operation in Ghana are unmoved by a government order to vacate the site and continue to extract gold from the property, according to one of the mine’s unlawful occupants.

The world’s third-biggest gold producer lost control of Obuasi, one of the oldest mines in the world which has been in operation since the 19th century, after informal miners invaded the property in January.

The Johannesburg-based company has repeatedly asked the West African nation to act and registered a case at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in May because of the government’s failure to do so.

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Anglo’s Top Shareholder Wants More South African Control – by Janice Kew and Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – October 6, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Anglo American Plc’s biggest shareholder wants South African investors to follow its lead and increase their holdings in the century-old miner as it pushes for the creation of a domestic commodities “champion.”

“Our role is to make Anglo more South African-owned and controlled,” Public Investment Corp. Chief Executive Officer Dan Matjila said in an interview on Tuesday in the capital, Pretoria. “We have been vocal and when the price was low we almost doubled our stake. So we have booked a seat at the table.”

Anglo unveiled a turnaround plan in February to cut debt that involved selling more than half its mines and exiting commodities including coal and iron ore to focus on more profitable platinum, diamonds and copper.

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Anglo Above 10 Pounds as Century-Old Miner Back From Brink – by Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – October 4, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

A rally in Anglo American Plc pushed its stock above 10 pounds for the first time in more than a year after a rebound in commodity prices and cuts in its debt brought the century-old mining company back from the brink.

Anglo gained as much as 3.4 percent to 1,029 pence a share, the highest since June 2015. The stock has more than tripled this year, the best performer in the U.K.’s benchmark FTSE 100 Index.

The stock hit a record-low 215.55 pence in January. Since then, the company has unveiled a turnaround plan that would see it sell half its mines, and exit coal and iron ore to focus on more profitable diamond, platinum and copper operations. The producer has reduced its debt to $10.3 billion, putting it within touching distance of its goal to cut borrowings below $10 billion by the end of the year.

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De Beers sees tough outlook as critical holiday sales approach – by Farah Master and Donny Kwok (Reuters U.S. – September 14, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

HONG KONG – Anglo American owned De Beers, one of the world’s largest diamond producers, expects some growth in the consumer market next year but its chief executive warned the overall sales environment is likely to remain tough

Bruce Cleaver, who was appointed to head De Beers in May, said prices had stabilized for rough diamonds, while the polished diamond market looked set to be flat

“We think there will be some growth in the consumer market next year, but probably not hugely significant given some of the economic factors and political factors in the world,” said Cleaver. De Beers is heading into the important holiday sales period for diamond jewelry including the Diwali festival in India, Christmas and then Chinese New Year.

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