Anglo American writes down De Beers value by | World Mining

Anglo American writes down De Beers value by – World Mining News

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Anglo American has written down the value of its De Beers diamond business for the second time in two years, because it races to finish a drastic restructuring by the tip of the yr.

The London-listed miner stated on Thursday it had booked an impairment charge of $2.9bn on the diamonds unit, which has been hit by a hunch within the market for the dear stones. That follows the $1.6bn writedown of De Beers that Anglo reported in its annual outcomes last yr.

Diamond costs have fallen over the previous decade, and the market has come beneath latest stress from the rise in reputation of cheaper lab-grown diamonds and the pullback in shopper spending in China.

Impairment fees helped to push Anglo to a $3.1bn internet loss in 2024, down from a $283mn revenue the earlier yr. Shares within the company, which have jumped more than 40 per cent over the previous 12 months, rose 4 per cent on Thursday.

The charge comes as Anglo races to execute an bold turnaround plan following last yr’s £39bn takeover attempt by rival BHP.

Anglo fended off the bid, promising as a substitute to overtake itself by offloading companies by the tip of 2025 as a way to give attention to copper and iron ore.

The FTSE 100 group has made progress on three of the 4 important components of its restructuring plan, promoting its steelmaking coal property and this week asserting the deliberate sale of its nickel business and preparations for the spin-off of its platinum arm.

But divesting De Beers has been more difficult. Anglo’s chief govt Duncan Wanblad stated on Thursday that situations within the diamonds market meant that “I’m really not expecting much traction or progress on [offloading De Beers] in the first half of this year”, although that might “pick up” within the second half.

Anglo is contemplating both promoting or itemizing De Beers, the carrying value of which is now about $4bn. That contains about $2bn value of stock, a comparable quantity to last yr.

Wanblad stated Anglo had acquired “a number of unsolicited inbounds” for De Beers. However, he stated the company had not but launched the formal sale course of as a result of it had solely this month finalised essential licensing agreements with the federal government of Botswana, which owns 15 per cent of De Beers.

The Botswanan president had “absolutely confirmed his intention to me directly to take an increased stake” in De Beers, although “didn’t say how much he wanted to take”, Wanblad stated.

Overall, Anglo’s turnaround can be “substantively complete this year”, he added.

He additionally insisted the group would stay listed in London, regardless of rumblings at rival miners Rio Tinto and Glencore over shifting away from the UK capital.

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“London’s been fine . . . It works for us . . . we can’t see a better jurisdiction for us right now. And we certainly can’t see that a different jurisdiction would make a material difference to the type of portfolio that we’ve got going forward,” he stated.

Separately, Anglo introduced on Thursday that it had agreed a deal with Chilean state-owned mining company Codelco to launch a joint plan for the businesses’ current, adjoining copper mines in Chile. It would “increase copper production with minimal additional capital required”, stated Anglo.

Nevertheless, Anglo forecast decrease copper manufacturing this yr than in 2024, with diamond manufacturing additionally anticipated to be decrease.

Asked whether or not there have been more such offers within the pipeline, Wanblad stated: “There are more that we’re looking at . . . there are some of these natural synergies that exist that can be exploited.”

John Meyer, a mining analyst at broker SP Angel, stated this week that Anglo’s slimming-down of the business and growing money pile from the gross sales of property equivalent to its nickel property “carries the risk of attracting interest from other potential predators”.

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