SBSW - Sibanye Stillwater Limited (SBSW) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-03-05 17:37:16 ET

Sibanye Stillwater Limited (SBSW)

Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call

March 5, 2024 07:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Neal Froneman - Chief Executive Officer

Charl Keyter - Chief Financial Officer

Richard Stewart - Chief Regional Officer: Southern Africa

Charles Carter - Chief Regional Officer: Americas

Mika Seitovirta - Chief Regional Officer: Europe

Robert Van Niekerk - Chief Technical and Innovation Officer

Grant Stuart - Head of Recycling

James Wellsted - Executive Vice President: Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs

Conference Call Participants

Adrian Hammond - SVG

Arnold van Graan - Nedbank

Presentation

Neal Froneman

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our 2023 H2 and Year End Presentation. Please take note of the international piggyback. We gave considerable thought as to what would be the appropriate way to signal our focus on the balance sheet and we thought this was the most appropriate way to indicate our focus. For a challenging 2024, we are not trying to create a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

So let's move on. First of all, please take note of the safe harbor statement. There are lots of forward-looking statements, especially around what the markets may or may not do. What we intend to cover today is, I will go through the salient features of 2023. We want to start with it all starts and ends in the market. We really just want to focus on the PGM market. I think that is the priority.

We want to share with you our proactive focus and our protection of the balance sheet. That is definitely our priority for 2024. I will also discuss a concept that I introduced, at the last presentation, a little bit more on resource stewardship. I will then hand over to Charl Keita, our CFO, who will do the financial review. Charl will hand over to the Chief Regional Officers, Richard, Charles, Mika, and Robert for the operational review. And then I will pick up again to conclude today's presentation.

So let's, just look at the salient features, for the year ended 31 December, 2023. I think in terms of embedding ESG as the way we do business and work, we certainly can celebrate a record low serious injury frequency rate. Unfortunately, we did suffer regression in fatalities year-on-year, predominantly due to the Burnstone Conveyor contractor incidents -- incident, where we unfortunately lost four human lives.

We are pleased to say that we well advanced with our renewable energy projects with 267 megawatts in construction. We're also pleased to say that we achieved conformance, for our storage facilities -- tailing storage facilities according to GISTM. And in line with our capital allocation model, we established the Sibanye Stillwater Foundation and the first allocations for the benefit of social upliftment have been made. And Richard will cover that, in his section.

In terms of financial performance, earnings and cash flow were significantly impacted by steep, a steep decline in PGM process. We have been looking after our balance sheet not only recently, but for some time. And I'm pleased to say that we ended the year on a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 0.58x. We have a low risk and well stated -- staggered, I should say, debt maturity ladder. And of course, we applied our dividend policy. But due to the losses in the second half of the year, there is no final dividend.

In terms of the South African PGM operations, again, another really consistent and solid operational performance. We achieved industry leading cost control with only a 4% increase in our -- all in sustaining costs to approximately R20,000 per 40 ounce.

I want to point out, and Richard will do more of this, we -- with the significant revenue generated by our byproducts and in particularly Chrome. And I think that it's not well understood how much revenue comes from chrome. But in terms of byproduct, credits, R10.9 billion it was the impact.

Load curtailment was very well managed, and we ended up the year with effectively zero inventory, which is a good outcome considering what other, companies have had to report. We were proactive in restructuring many parts of our business. But in the South African PGM operations, we started just after mid-year results presentation, and that was -- that restructuring was completed in February of 2024....

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