Sibanye Stillwater Limited (SBSW) 2026 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Okay. Good afternoon. Good morning, everybody. Charles, can I check we online? All good. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good morning, evening. Those joining us online, welcome. Just before we kick off with the formal part of the presentation today, please just take note that obviously, there are a lot of forward-looking statements, so please note the Safe Harbor statement.

Before we kick off, I would like to just invite George Coetzee, our Head of Safety, perhaps just to share a safety moment with us. It is how we start all of our meetings in Sibanye. So George, over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Richard. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everybody online and in person. Thanks for the opportunity. I think before we begin the formal session, Richard has asked me to do an opening safety moment, and I would like this opportunity to reflect on the recent Nepal flooding catastrophic incident that we have seen.

I was reading last night that as of yesterday, 950 people have passed, and there were still around 4,400 people missing. And we do extend our sincere condolences to all involved. An absolute tragedy. What started as an unexpected rock and ice collapse rapidly escalated into a devastating disaster, reminding us that catastrophic events often emerge from hazards that are unseen, poorly understood, or outside our current experience.

Within Sibanye, we have seen that approximately 90% of our fatal incidents are linked to our 18 group minimum standards. These are known fatal risks and reinforces the importance of rigorously applying our critical control management process, verifying critical controls, critical life-saving behaviors, and critical management routines every day. These are all included in this fatal elimination booklet that has been signed off by each and every person in the company and contractors committing themselves to these standards.

But there is also another important reality. Approximately 10% of our fatal incidents occur outside these known standards. These include both in-service and criminally related loss of life incidents, and we have seen that of late in the company. These are the events that challenge our assumptions, expose blind spots, and reminds us that not all catastrophic risks are visible on a risk register.

The lesson from Nepal is that managing known risks is not enough. Catastrophic events often develop from weak signals, changing conditions, and hazards that have not been fully recognized or understood.

So as leaders, our responsibility is twofold. Firstly, ensure our critical controls are effective for the risks that we know, and secondly, remain curious, vigilant, and courageous enough to ask, what are we missing? What has changed? And what could hurt us that we have not yet considered? Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks, George. Richard Stewart^ Awesome. Thank you very much, George, and a real reminder of the very volatile times we are living in. Once again, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us today. It is a real pleasure to be able to share our results with you. Just as a very brief introduction, in January of this year, we shared with the market our refreshed strategy. This was a strategy that spoke about how as a company, we were going to create a future-focused to high-performing, future-focused metals business.

Today is not about strategy, but what I would like to do is just a brief refresh of what we presented back in January, because what today is really about is how are we progressing on this journey. Just a quick soundbite. There are two or three parts to the strategy. The first one is the piece in the middle.

That actually describes not what we are doing, but who we are as our business. It is our purpose, it is our values, it is our stakeholder ethos. That has not changed. I dare say that part of the company supersedes any management changes or any external events. It is who we are. It is what makes us Sibanye-Stillwater. So that has not changed.

The left-hand side is what our short-term priorities are, and short-term, we said a couple of years. That is strengthening the business fundamentals. And if I could just try and summarize that very high level what we mean by strengthening the business fundamentals, it is getting our operating margins increased. We all know how we do that, costs and production. We do not control price, but that is how we drive revenue. That is our operational excellence strategy.

It is about improving our effectiveness and efficiencies through our operating model. It is about increasing our return on capital and enhancing management focus through simplifying our portfolio. Ultimately, we identify two enablers, looking at a systemic approach, a real enterprise thinking approach, and through, I guess, what is the glue of our company, our culture, our performance culture of care, caring for people. If we got all of that right, then it comes down to we should be generating a lot of cash, and how do we allocate that cash? Our capital allocation model. We shared with you we had three priorities, shareholder returns, our balance sheet, reducing our debt, and ultimately investing in the sustainability of the business.

And if we got those fundamentals right, I think as a company we have learnt the best way to grow is to be able to be agile and have flexibility with regards to time. You make your best growth decisions at the right time in the cycle, at the right assets where you can add value that requires flexibility. So if we get that right, we will have the flexibility to grow in a value-accretive manner, which is the key point there.

But we also highlighted that we had a portfolio of assets that we already have within our existing portfolio. We don't have to go out and join expensive M&A sales processes. We actually have a portfolio of assets ourselves, which we could develop that have significant value to us, and that was our focus.

So today, what we are going to touch on and really, I guess, hopefully show you is the three boxes we have highlighted specifically around operations and margins, capital allocation, and growth. How are we tracking on the strategy that we put out at the beginning of this year?

Let me apologize upfront. I do understand there was a delay with our results going out from the JSE. Unfortunately, there were some technical issues, so many of you may not have had a chance to digest the numbers yet. So I do apologize for that. Not much we could do, unfortunately, but glad it could get out, and we can at least be on time now.

Just to give you some of the real headline numbers, starting at the top with our first priority, safety. I do have a slide where I am going to unpack that a lot more, but we have had a great safety performance. Whether we benchmark it against our own history, against peers, how we are doing locally, we have actually had a great performance. However, we still lost colleagues in the second quarter of this year. And until we can eliminate fatals, we have not yet achieved our ultimate safety focus.

We have had a spectacular run of commodity prices, absolutely. It has been a very volatile but a high-price environment for the first half, but also full credit to our teams with a solid operational underpin, highest revenue ever for the company for a six-month period. That is very pleasing.

Our EBITDA more than doubled. I think what is relevant to point out there, last year this time we actually had a big EBITDA kick because we, in the US, recognized two years' worth of Section 45X. If we normalize for that, EBITDA was up 200%, almost 3 times. But the one that matters to us, and if you saw that strategy, it was about cash and margins. That is what we can control and drive. Record net operating cash, a great achievement, and solid margins.

Whether we look at EBITDA margins, whether we look at all-in sustaining cost margins, you will see later we are happy with where we are competing within our business, and that has led to the value. So we are declaring a dividend today. Charles will share that in detail. When we look at the yields of that, it is certainly one of the highest yields in the industry amongst our peers. We have had a significant impact on our debt, which was one of our big objectives at the beginning of the year. We have also managed to fund organic growth, and today we will share with you two new projects that our board has recently approved in Burnstonnee and Mt Lyell. A very exciting pipeline of projects that we have got coming through.

But all in all, I think a six-month period for which we are very proud and has certainly helped us progress our strategy, I dare say, a lot further than I imagined we would 12 months ago when we put that together.

I do just want to touch on safety. There is a reason safety features in the introduction and not the operational sections, because this is our number 1 priority. Why? Number one, it's people. We are a people's business. Safety is all about people.

The second reason is, for me, if there's one measure to tell you how well your business is doing, that's safety. To get safety right, you got to have your infrastructure working. You got to have your people working according to plan, processes, and delivering, and you need people to feel like they belong and are contributing to the safety culture.

To get this right, you got three metrics you can see in one. And I think this is why that continued downward trend when we look at our lagging indicators is so pleasing. We've been on a definite safety journey for the last five years. We can see it's reducing risk. We can see it's having an impact. We do still have a way to go, of course. But certainly, in terms of our historical performances and a lot of the improvements around us, we are very proud of this. Nevertheless, we had a fatal incident at our PGM operations in the second quarter, and we had one in our gold operations also in the second quarter of this year.

So having gone a quarter fatal-free, tragically the second quarter, we lost three colleagues, and our sincere condolences go to the families and friends of those colleagues, [Kanyelo, Tebogo, and Khulisa].

A question we often ask, and we were actually asked this at a big industry safety day yesterday, is do we believe fatal incidents are preventable? And I put one point on that slide that I'd just like to unpack because last week, we celebrated a significant event. Our Driefontein operations went one year fatal-free. The reason I raise that, Driefontein is the second deepest mine in the world, slightly shallower than Mponeng. That means it's got intense seismicity, it's got intense heat, it's got intense water.

We put 7,000 people underground through more than 50-year-old infrastructure every day through three shaft systems. Arguably, on an inherent risk basis, that is probably the most dangerous mine in the world, if you want to look at inherent risk. But we've got the controls. We've got the methods, and we've got the people to prevent fatals in that environment.

If we can do it at Driefontein, we can do it anywhere else in our business. If we've got other mines that go for five or six years fatal-free, we can do it across our business. Fatal incidents are preventable in the South African mining environment. We believe that as a company, and this demonstrates it.

I think the last point I just want to make is, you would notice, and George did mention it, we've lost three colleagues to safety incidents in our mines. We've also lost three colleagues to crime, crime directly related to work. A loss of life is a loss of life. That is also preventable.

Today, I want us to acknowledge those loss of lives, and I want us to appeal to all stakeholders. These are preventable. That's not something we can do alone, but we're committed to preventing it, and we're appealing to all stakeholders to work with us in addressing this epidemic in South Africa of crime. It must stop. Enough is enough.

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, I'm going to hand over to the team who will take you through the results and pick it up towards the end. Thank you very much. Kleantha?

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Good to see all of you again. I'm just going to talk through three very quick slides today. We'll cover macros, the precious metals, and then of course, lithium, which has been quite an exciting market in the last couple of weeks.

On the macros, I mean, the war in Iran has really resulted in downgrades to global growth forecasts for the year, and of course, the longer it takes to resolve the conflict, the greater the potential economic consequences. There's been limited flows of oil and other key industrial supplies like sulfur, aluminum, and helium out of the Strait of Hormuz, and this, of course, increases the risk of shortages, leads to higher inflation, and then of course, impacts on spend and growth.

Tariffs and sanctions, as you may have seen in the last few weeks, are back on the agenda. And that, again, impacts investment confidence and adds risk to the forecasts. It also possibly pushes out risk into 2027 as well, so we could see some further downgrades. Global growth for this year is forecast at 2.5%. The US is proving to be fairly resilient at 2.3%, China easing a little bit, and the Eurozone, unfortunately, remaining lackluster.

Looking on at the precious metals, prices have consolidated after the massive speculative buying push that happened for both gold and platinum, resulting in record highs in January. In general, the dollar strength and the higher interest rates are usually a headwind for gold and PGMs. But encouragingly, the net central bank gold purchases have continued through the first half of the year. The market liquidity has also improved as both gold and platinum ETFs have declined.

Gold lost about 2 million ounces in ETFs over the half, while platinum ETFs were down just over half a million ounces as all the investors look to take profit. It's helped liquidity, and it's certainly helped lease rates coming down significantly.

Then on to lithium. Lithium hydroxide prices climbed to a peak of almost $28,000 a tonne in May, and that's the highest it's been since August 2023. From the beginning of April until the middle of May, lithium prices were driven even higher as supply availability was limited, largely by the Zimbabwean government's export ban. At the same time, demand continued to grow for batteries, particularly in energy storage systems and in electric vehicles. We had cathode producers beginning to restock for this demand.

Prices then fell back a bit on the resumption of supply and exports from Zimbabwe, as well as a number of announcements and rumors of possible mine restarts in China, Australia, and the DRC. In quarter two, the price for battery-grade lithium hydroxide declined 9% and was averaging $23,000 a tonne. Today, prices are a bit lower, but still at a $21,000 per tonne number. We expect these prices to decrease somewhat as new supply comes online in the second half of the year, but we cannot foresee this dropping below the levels of 2025.

I think just in summary on markets, clearly biggest risk right now is downside risk, and that is from the macro environment and also the geopolitical uncertainty.

And I will now hand you over to Richard to talk through the South African operations. Thanks.

Thank you, Kleantha, and hello, everybody. So I think two quick points before I get into the numbers. First of all, the South African operations converted stable delivery into real leverage this half. PGM and gold both printed high all-in sustaining cost margins, 44% and 32% respectively, and together, they generated the bulk of the group cash.

Second, we are not standing still in the portfolio. On PGM, we are putting capital into shallow infrastructure-backed extensions that hold a 1.5-million-ounce underground production profile. And in gold, we are producing more surface ounces. We are funding the Burnstonnee project, and we are also taking a tighter look at what remains economic at our Kloof operations. I will take the PGM business first and then followed by gold.

In our South African PGM business, production was consistent and in line with guidance, 790,000 4E ounces. That was 2% lower year-on-year, and that decline almost entirely from surface sources. Underground production excluding Mimosa, was actually up 1%. K4 operation added 10,600 ounces or up 24%, which offset planned plant maintenance at the Rustenburg UG2 concentrator.

Also at the end of the half, we had 15,000 ounces that were on stockpile at the half-year mark, and that will be processed in the second half. All-in sustaining cost was quite pleasing at ZAR26,252 per 4E ounce. It was 10% higher year-on-year, and that is the number to hold. Roughly ZAR1 billion of the increase is royalties and higher basket, and that was about 60% of the unit cost move. The balance is inflation and consumables offset by chrome and other byproduct credits. The chrome operating profit was ZAR1.1 billion.

All-in sustaining cost was slightly below the guidance, and I will speak a little bit more about that later.

Against a 67% higher basket, adjusted EBITDA was ZAR19.2 billion. That was up 302%. All-in sustaining cost margin of 44%, EBITDA margin of 45%. Notional free cash flow was ZAR10.4 billion. That was ZAR9.9 billion higher year-on-year at a 54% conversion. Standing back, this is the operational leverage that we said the portfolio has when delivery is stable and prices move.

In the second half, all-in sustaining costs will lift. It will lift because as our planned development and sustained business capital step up and we are managing that inside the guided range. K4 operation is doing what it was built to do, up 24%. Those are new lower cost ounces of capital already spent. Chrome remains a material stream at ZAR1.1 billion of operating profit.

Volumes were down, and that was after the BTT plant stopped as planned in the second half of 2025 when remaining the tailing storage facility was completed. The remaining stream still matters, however, and chrome should contribute more as the UG2 feed is prioritized going forward, and this is very deliberate as we outlined in our market strategy day recently. The brownfields program is shifting the mix towards UG2, the chrome-bearing reef, so chrome is part of the same quality of ounce plan.

Total capital was ZAR2.6 billion. That was up 4% against a full year plan of ZAR8 billion. So across ore reserve development, sustained business capital and projects. So only one-third of the year at the half and spend does accelerate in the second half as sustained business and project spend pick up.

At the bottom, you can see our brownfields project pipeline is sequenced. We have projects in execution, Siphumelele and Thembelani. That is existing infrastructure and continuity at Rustenburg and more mechanized mining. Western Limb tailings retreatment is our surface sources, lower risk, and we are currently building out the chrome circuit.

In study, a number of projects, East 4 Kopaneng, East 3 Bathopele, as well as the smelter. These are gated on returns, affordability as well as readiness. The point is not to build everything at once. It is to hold about 1.5 million underground ounces a year, lift the UG2 mix and raise the mechanized share. All this without an acquisition premium. We are moving towards a lower risk shallow, and more importantly, it is actually on our footprint.

Gold is the same idea in a different shape. Mix and price more than offset a tougher underground half. Production was 294,000 ounces or 2% down. Underground was 9% down. Surface was 13% higher and is now 36% of the mix. That is a structural shift, and it is how the result held.

Kloof was rebased in the second half last year as we reduced exposure to seismically active ground. Kloof 4 has closed. Beatrix lost higher grade access after seismic damage to footwall infrastructure. Very important to see the plant recoveries at Beatrix are improving on the maintenance intervention.

Driefontein was roughly flat year-on-year. Cooke was up 11% on third-party material, and DRDGOLD produced 2.5 tonnenes of gold, up 10% on yield. Costs are up, and we should be precise as to why this is. Shaft infrastructure maintenance and winder upgrades to keep shafts serviceable. Additional voluntary shifts in a high-price environment. Those shifts actually pay their keep.

At Kloof, ore reserve development and sustained business capital are now expensed because of the shorter remaining life. At Driefontein, water pumping cost is higher on electricity and additional fissure water. At Cooke, plant upgrades for future life, plus double handling and batch feeding of third-party ore to improve recovery. Third-party net cost is also higher, and we all appreciate that because of the gold price is higher.

So in gold, not a cost overrun story. It is planned work. We encounter these challenges, and these are actually around known constraints, and it leaves us with a far lower risk in that underground business. Gold sold was up 5%. The average price was up 35%. Adjusted EBITDA was at a record ZAR9 billion, up 87% at a 39% margin. Notional free cash flow was ZAR3.9 billion and cash generation up 267%.

So the gold business in a nutshell, it's noted, fewer underground ounces but more surface ounces. Spend, we can explain shaft by shaft and a price that converted that mix into record earnings and cash.

Delighted to announce that Burnstonnee is approved. A project of about 130,000 ounces a year at steady state, a 25-year life. Kimberley Reef at about 550 meters below surface. The board has approved ZAR98 million for 2026. The existing shaft decline and surface infrastructure already in the ground. So we are not buying a greenfield premium. This is reserve replacement and a shallower, lower risk ounce to offset depletion from our deep conventional mines.

Our surface gold business is already working, 105,000 ounces, up 13%. That's DRDGOLD plus our own surface business and reduces how much of the result depends on deep level production. The Kloof operation still has optionality. Remaining reserves are under assessment. Nothing is committed. Any additional extraction has to clear returns and affordability. We will not stretch the plan to chase ounces that do not earn their place.

At a price point of about ZAR2.4 million a kilogram, we can look at that properly for life extension to about 2029. That adds three more years. Also looking at including whether a hedge book is the right way to underwrite a specific block of work.

So the value of the gold business today is the record EBITDA. It's the cash and the growing surface share. It's the transition to Burnstonnee, DRDGOLD, and the Kloof assessment. The future we are all aiming at is a shallower, lower risk, higher margin gold portfolio.

So thank you very much. I'll stop there and I'll hand over to Charles.

Thank you, Richard, and good day. I'm going to talk to the international mining and recycling business. I'm going to start with the US PGM operations. Certainly, year to date, you've seen a resilient production in line with our guidance. We produced 138 kilo ounces of palladium and platinum. This was 2% lower year-on-year but within our plan. And our AISC margin came in at 12%, and our all-in sustaining cost when you include the 45X credit came in at $1,347 an ounce. That's 12% higher year-on-year and that really reflects the planned development and the mechanization investment now underway.

Our adjusted EBITDA was 28% margin and an actual adjusted EBITDA of $66 million. That's 56% lower than the prior period last year, and Richard touched on this, which has to do with the fact that we booked a very high credit for Section 45X in the first half of 2025.

So what you've seen year to date in the Montana operations is a 52% reduction in cash outflow to negative $28 million national free cash flow. That's an improving trend of cash conversion and it's supported by higher palladium and platinum prices, particularly in the first quarter of this year while we use proceeds to fund our mechanization process.

At the Investor Day earlier in the year, Kevin Robertson and Matt O'Reilly spoke at length to the mechanization process now underway. If we look at our internal milestonnees on how we are tracking in the first half year to date, we have done a lot of work on mine development, so spend on that to get set up properly. We have successfully trialed mechanized bolting, a ZB21 bolter at Stillwater East with very good results. And we've done a lot of work on the operating model to set up properly for moving to task mining and team-based mining and incentivized in a different way going forward.

Year to date, our AISC cost has come slightly below guidance. To Kevin and the team, it has been a lot of hard work, and it has been really good work.

I think if I look at the second half that lies ahead now, we have a number of critical steps in front of us, and probably the toughest one we are navigating right now is to conclude our union labor agreements. We have two different agreements underway. We have the Stillwater Mine and the Met in one union bargaining unit, and we have the East Boulder mine in a second.

We have been at this for the last two months. It is a work in progress. I am hopeful we will get a land in soon. It is complex work, and it is a workforce that is having to look at changes to the way they do work, the equipment they use, the move to task mining and team-based incentives, and an incentive structure that is looking at safety and it is looking at mining to plan, and it is looking at ounces, and it is looking at the movement of rock and the processing of rock, and it has got multiple metrics about quality mining and quality as against plan. That is a significant shift from the legacy incentive scheme, which is really focused on the miner and tonnenes broken.

It is a very important step to us to get right, and it is a key underpin for the future of this mechanization drive. We have got work ongoing in the second half on infrastructure, upgrades to sand plant and control chutes. We have got a lot of work around capability of our management and our supervisory tier.

So if I look forward and we are getting that right, and I ask, what does 2027 look like? We should be well on track with Stillwater East mine now getting fully mechanized. And we will have East Boulder coming slightly behind, and that was detailed at length in the Analyst Day presentation by Matt, with readiness and set up next year, and infrastructure set up, ventilation upgrade, and the like. From the start of next year, we will implement a new performance management system, and we will focus very much on work execution.

Ans so, if I roll that forward and we track in according to our game plan, we should be seeing it by that point in 2028, a real step change towards the $1,000 an ounce. We should be seeing significantly improved productivity, improved stope availability, and mechanized task mining now fully fledged. That will all be about team-based execution and associated reward. And this really is about a medium-term setup for world-class ore bodies that have significant long-term optionality

So we have to get this right. We have to move down the path we are on. I think there is excellent work underway. None of it is easy, but you will see from the first six months, we had outstanding safety performance. We had mining against plan while all of the change intervention was starting to land. So full credit to all the teams involved in that.

If I turn to the recycling business, which is led by Grant Stuart, and Grant is here with us today. This year to date is really about scale, integration, and margin expansion driving really strong cash generation.

So I think it is an outstanding performance by the team, and you will recall that this is a team that has just integrated two acquisitions in the last 12 months to 1.5 years. And what you are seeing in these numbers for the first time is really the wins that are now starting to come through. So 13% adjusted EBITDA margin, $164 million adjusted EBITDA, and significantly strong cash generation that goes with that, so $103 million. And that is a 63% adjusted EBITDA conversion.

What sits behind that is a lot of work on finding the synergies between the PA site, the North Carolina site, and the Columbus Met. The Pennsylvania site really significantly increased volumes in the first six months, 2.2 million ounces gold equivalent metal produced. North Carolina, 0.5 million ounces gold equivalent metal, and Montana on the auto cats, 100,000 ounces gold equivalent.

So year on year, that is 142% increase in precious metals and coming in on a combined basis at the equivalent of 2.8 million ounces. So a really sizable business. You will see on the slide the breakdown of the different metal components. But I think for the two small acquisitions we did and the quick cash conversion and the limited capital we have to spend, it is a fabulous platform that we will leverage going forward. So all credit to the team on that.

If I turn to Australia, the Century Zinc operation. Here again, you have seen strong cash generation, importantly in a near-end-of-life process. So this is not easy to do, and Barry Harris and the team, I think, have done fabulous work here. They are really working with the last year and a bit of a plan, and that is always complex work, and you have limited flexibility.

They produced 45 kilotonnenes of payable zinc production, 13% lower year on year. That talks both to the limitations on the plan. It also talks to a very wet, rainy season and the impacts on that, maintenance work, and a couple of other things they had to navigate. But the production was in line with guidance. The all-in sustaining cost was at the lower end of the guidance range, $2,162 a tonne. The all-in sustaining cost, given the limited flexibility and what they had to navigate, was 23% higher year on year with production down year on year.

So the adjusted EBITDA, $55 million. That is 54% higher year on year. The average zinc concentrate price 25% higher, but it is lower treatment charges, and it is really good contracting that really made the difference on that delivery. So this is about operational resilience, maximizing high zinc prices on a near end-of-life asset, and I think really good work underway. AUD41 million national free cash flow, which is 86% higher year on year. Really strong cash conversion there as well.

Lastly, if I turn to Keliber lithium project. I think as you are well aware from the Analyst Day we had, we now have mining fully underway. It was initiated in February. We are starting to get the run rates we want there. We are navigating all of the usual complexities of a startup open pit. So it's about the sequencing of ore. It's about dealing with slightly higher sulfate content than we had expected in certain parts of the pit. That has impacts on how we look at our rock dump placement and our water treatment processes and the like.

We are hitting the run rates, and I think that is all good work. We have exceeded our strategic stockpile build, so 218 kilotonnenes mined, 186-kilotonne stockpile to date, and that provides really the security for a controlled concentrator ramp-up. The concentrator commission is underway, so what the team has been working on year to date is really trying to get steady state volume and volume throughput to the right levels, and they are starting to hit the numbers there. Now they are swinging into looking at grade improvement and quality improvement. That is really the task in hand being worked as we speak.

The capital spent to date is on plan EUR719 million, and that is within a EUR783 million budget.

Lastly, and again, we unpacked this in detail at the Analyst Day. So we have hit our internal milestonnee on stage 1, which is about the mining ramp-up, and we have exceeded our stockpile tonnenage. So that, for us, is success. We are now busy on the concentrator ramp-up, as I noted, and that is really about now working on grade. And then once we have got that right, looking at the potential for early sales, but we will judge that once we have got the spec where it needs to get to.

Stage 3 is really about the refinery startup. So this is a late-year decision. We are working on getting set up for that. It is really late year. It is about all of the cold commissioning taking place, and then there will be a judgment around what the market conditions are telling us about spodumene sales and about refinery startup moving to battery grade over time.

There is a market-related judgment down the track late year and also a quality assessment of the ore that we have for processing in the refinery. Really what that does is it takes you into 2027 and early next year with expected hot commissioning at the refinery and ramp-up and, again, later in the year, really looking at the decision to proceed to battery-grade product.

So thank you. With that, I am going to hand off to Charl to take us through the finances.

Thanks, Charles, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. So what does everything mean that Charles and Richard have explained? And let's pull it all together in the numbers. I'm really pleased to report on a very strong set of financial results, and it's not often as a CFO that you can stand up and report on a strong set of results. Today, I'm really pleased, thanks to solid operational delivery and supportive commodity prices, to report on the financial performance of the group.

If we start out with the highlights, importantly, the strong operational performance was supported by favorable commodity prices. If we look at the PGM basket across South Africa and in the US, that was up approximately 70% year-on-year. SA Gold up 35%, and then as Charles reported in Australia, the zinc price was up 25%.

And against that backdrop, we remain on target to meet our operational and financial guidance. Adjusted EBITDA came in at a margin of 35%. On an absolute basis, it was ZAR31.8 billion, and that was up 111% year-on-year.

Cash generated by the operations, and Richard Cox spoke about the power of gearing. Cash generated by the operations increased by 551% to just under ZAR21 billion, and that represents a 65% EBITDA to cash conversion.

From a capital investment perspective, we spent ZAR8.2 billion for the first six months of the year, and that was roughly split 60% on ore reserve development and sustaining capital, and the balance, 40%, on projects.

If we look at the operational and financial performance, it resulted in a 216% increase in headline earnings per share. We were up from ZAR1.90 in the same period in 2025, up to ZAR6.01 cents per share. Earnings to cash, the conversion was 45%.

And then importantly, in line with our strategy that was announced in January, our gross debt reduced from ZAR39.3 billion, which is the half two reference point of 2025, to ZAR32.1 billion at the end of half one 2026. That's already an 18% reduction in six months. On a net basis, this translated into a 0.18 times gearing. For those who have followed the story, this is a significant reduction from the tough periods of low commodity prices that we have managed to weather the storm.

If we move to the financial summary, I would like to highlight a few key points. Revenue increased by 64% to just under ZAR90 billion, with almost three-quarters of that contribution coming from the South African portfolio. Importantly, this revenue growth of 64% translated into 111% increase in adjusted EBITDA, and as I said, a 581% increase in profit.

The strong financial performance also benefited the fiscus, with royalties and taxes increasing to ZAR9 billion. That is mainly the result of high commodity prices and the higher profitability of the group. Total capital expenditure as reported came in at ZAR8.2 billion, but that was down 14% from ZAR9.4 billion in half one 2025. And the reason for that is we've effectively completed the major capital expenditure at the Keliber project.

Pleasingly, the Board declared a dividend, an interim dividend of ZAR5.7 billion or ZAR2.01 South African cents per share, and that is at the upper end of our dividend policy, which just as a reminder, is between 25% and 35% of normalized earnings.

The dividend implies a yield of 8% if we look at an annualized number, and that puts us at the top end of our peer group. But f we look at a 12-month trailing yield, we still come in at 6.6%, which also places us at the top end of the peer group.

I think importantly, a big strategic lever for us has been addressing our gross debt. You can see that the debt maturity profile has improved significantly following the refinancing and the reduction of our bonds. That reduction was $250 million. We got that bond away against a tough geopolitical backdrop. I was very pleased with the internal people that worked on that, but also our advisors that managed to get us through that period of turmoil.

As you can see that the maturity profile remains very manageable and liquidity is extremely strong with headroom at about ZAR48 billion, and that's roughly equivalent to 4.5 times of one month's operating and capital expenditure. Our financial policy is to also -- to always have about two months of available liquidity, so you can see that we're in a very, very strong position.

I think the message I want to leave you with today is that overall, we remain very, very well-placed to achieve our strategy of reducing gross debt by 50% over a two to three-year period.

I will now hand over to Ralph to take us through the organic growth and the project portfolio. Thank you, Ralph.

Thank you, Charles, and hi, everyone. So I have the pleasure to provide an update on our group projects profile. Our equivalent ounce production profile continues to provide a strong platform for future growth. While production would naturally moderate over time without further investments, which will drop to around 1.5 million ounces over 10 years, our value accretive project pipeline is positioned to support production, resilience, and improve the quality of the portfolio over the medium and long term.

Contributions of Keliber and K4, which is in this profile, already provide an important foundation for this trajectory. As you can see, the solid portion of the graph has grown, which now includes our approved projects, which is Thembelani, Sipumelele, Western Limbs Tailings Retreatment, and now more recently, Burnstonnee and Mt Lyell.

It materially supports our production outlook over the next five years and also creates a solid foundation for our future projects, which is in that hashed area on top. All of those are mechanized PGM projects of relatively low capital intensity. The projects which are still in study phase will continue to be evaluated and sequenced through our disciplined capital allocation framework with a clear focus on returns, affordability, readiness, and strategic fit when ready.

If we look how our projects stack up, on the left-hand side is IRR, and at the bottom is the project capital. All of you can see all of our approved projects demonstrate a robust return, and also our studies in the future, we will follow the same principle before we approve those. We have shared basically all of the approved projects, which is in execution in our Capital Markets Day.

So I will spend a bit more time today on Burnstonnee and Mt Lyell, which has just been approved by our Board. Starting with Burnstonnee, as Richard already indicated, it is a shallow mine for South African gold mining standards, between [551] kilometers depth. Our guidance for this year is we will spend about ZAR98 million of capital for project setup and start of recruitment.

Capital guidance for the total project is around ZAR6.2 billion, and of which ZAR3.5 billion is for infrastructure development. Just a reminder, Burnstonnee will create around 2,500 jobs by the time it hits steady state. Quite a healthy NPV of ZAR19.2 billion, an IRR of 36%. At spot prices, our NPV is around ZAR29 billion, an IRR of 45%.

Looking at our build-up, so our expected AISC would be around ZAR872,000 per kilogram, and we expect to produce around 4 tonnenes of gold per annum when Burnstonnee is in steady state. On the right-hand side, you will see our capital profile with obviously the bulk of the capital to be spent over the next couple of years.

So what makes Burnstonnee attractive? I think if we look at this, Burnstonnee sits with a substantial amount of infrastructure already developed. I think most important is our vertical shaft and our decline shaft in place. Over and above that, is we have our TMM fleet available, so when we start mining next year, we can start that quite quickly. We will build up to 2029 and create a stockpile for our processing facility to start in Q1 2029.

After that, we will have continuous operations steadily building up to steady state. At this stage, we are targeting 2.7 million ounces, which form part of our reserve. With successful execution of Burnstonnee, that will open up the additional 8.9 million ounces in future. So when we talk about a 25-year life, that is the 2.7 million ounces you see here.

It is also my pleasure, which we have not shared a lot of information yet in our Capital Markets Day, it's Mt Lyell. Like Burnstonnee, Mt Lyell also sits with a substantial amount of infrastructure. It is a copper-gold mine in Tasmania. It is around the town of Queenstown, and I just want to let you focus on that picture. So in that yellow area, so the top northeastern portion, you see Prince Lyell, Western Tharsis, Cape Horn, and Copper Chert.

Those are the ore bodies we are currently targeting as part of the Mt Lyell project. I think more important, if you look on the southwestern side is a tailing storage, fully permitted tailing storage facility. So like Burnstonnee, again, we sit with significant amount of infrastructure already in place and obviously reduces the capital bill, which we need to pay for Mt Lyell.

ur guidance for this year, we would spend around USD7.5 million for Mt Lyell, and that again will go for project setup, start of recruitment, and mobilization. Our total project capital to get to production is around $340 million. That attracts a net present value in the region of $550 million, an internal rate of return of 20%. If we look at today's spot prices, that net present value is above $1 billion [and then a present value region] of 28%. Mt Lyell will also contribute about 300 jobs when it is in steady state.

If we look at Mt Lyell, I think this is quite a nice picture. You can see the old vertical shaft and waste room there in the center, and you will see some disturbed ground right next to it. That is where our future processing facility will be. So we will start with the decline operations, and then in about three years' time, we will bring in the vertical shaft, which then will allow wasting to a concentrator, which will be right next to that. We see that waste area.

We spent a lot of time over the last three years to do the feasibility, and a lot of it was focused to engineer out the safety-related issues, which was identified with the previous owner when that mine was stopped in 2014. I think very important is I showed you those four different ore bodies. Instead of focusing just on Prince Lyell, ultimately we will also have Western Tharsis and the other two.

That allows us to create multiple attacking points, still relatively shallow before going deeper. Life of Mt Lyell is around 23 years. Another important point is, so what liabilities will we carry? Sibanye-Stillwater will manage all obligations arising post-1999. Anything prior to that will be carried by the Tasmanian Government. We also at this stage -- our footprint is basically all undisturbed areas for Mt Lyell, and we will maintain it like that. If we look at the production profile, we expect around 26,000 kilotons of copper, which will come out of that.

In addition, around 16,000 oz of gold and another about 116,000 ounces of silver, which will come out when this mine is in steady state production. All-in sustaining cost is expected around $2.56 per pound. Like Burnstone, obviously initial capital will carry the largest bill. After that, we should stabilize in terms of capital expenditure.

As already mentioned, Mt Lyell sits with substantial infrastructure. Our decline is already connected to where the mining workings will happen. We sit with the ventilation infrastructure, we sit with the water-pumping infrastructure, which is important in this part of Tasmania, which has the highest rainfall. Established materials handling and logistics areas. Our biggest focus is to get the concentrate built so that we can start to produce some product. 78.8 million tonnes of resource and 54.6 million tonnes of reserve. That excludes work we are doing currently at this stage on future exploration.

What is also important for Tasmania, it will be a relatively clean mine, so we will use renewable hydropower. As already discussed, we will stick into our disturbed ground area and also it will allow us to actually contribute to the future environmental cleanup for Burnstone -- apologies, Mt Lyell. In closing, Burnstone and Mt Lyell demonstrates the strength, depth, and quality of our project pipeline, as well as the disciplined approach we are taking to capital allocation. Thanks. With that, I hand over to you, Richard.

Awesome. Thank you very much, Ralph. Just into the last section of the day. Thank you very much. I've got the pleasure today of wrapping up, just talking a little bit about sustainability. I do this on behalf of Melanie, who is our Chief Sustainability Officer. Unfortunately, couldn't be with us today in person, but will be online. I dare say as soon as we mention the word sustainability, we all think soft ESG.

In fact, that's something you don't talk about in parts of the world anymore. I hope I'm going to show you that actually sustainability for us is very hard. It, in fact, is what I would argue Sibanye has been built on. We started a company with five gold assets that were supposed to close in six years. 14 years later, they've produced their best ever cash profit that we have seen out of those businesses. We started our PGM business with mines that were due to close and retrench 12,500 people.

Today, we're investing in three projects that will extend those for another few decades. I dare say it's the same approach we're taking to our US operations. Been asked on many occasions, why are these operations still going? It's because we can see a different way of achieving value out of a world-class ore body for decades to come. That's who we are as a business. That's sustainability. But to be sustainable, we look at it in three aspects, business resilience, and I dare say that's what you've been hearing about today. Where are our margins? What does our balance sheet look like? How are we operating on a day-to-day basis?

Portfolio resilience, what are we investing in? What is the business going to look like going forward? How are we optimizing our returns on capital employed? Again, I dare say I think you've heard about some of that today, as well as how we're optimizing our resource extraction at places like Stillwater. The third aspect is value creation that we call people, planet, and prosperity. All of that comes together in the ethos of our tree. This is not soft. Let's go on to what this means from a hard business perspective.

In January, we shared with you how we were thinking about capital allocation. We said we've got a capital allocation model that first looks after the resilience of the business. That's the part on the top, sustaining our ore reserves and making sure the business has sufficient liquidity. What's left over, we'd put into three buckets, shareholder returns, debt reduction with a target of 50% reduction in gross debt, and then life extension or growth, where we were focusing on organic growth. At the first milestone, our first half years, how have we done against that? Well, I think as Charl shared, very pleasing the numbers that we've produced, which has allowed us to progress the strategy a lot quicker than I think any of us thought we would.

But we are tracking the promises we made. Dividend at the upper end of the dividend policy that we have comes in at roughly 30% of the cash that we had after operations. We've paid just over 36% towards reducing our gross debt and made a substantial dent in our gross debt, enhancing the resilience of the business. Investing in our own projects, that is lagging a little bit. That of course has to do with the timing of the projects.

This is why we remain confident that the projects we have announced today we can comfortably fund over the next few years. With projects like that, there are always opportunities to look at some neat funding solutions, at streaming options, at various off-take options. These, of course, will be things we will explore. Again, is there risk mitigation there? Even without any of those, we are comfortable that we have the ability to fund the future growth of the company.

I think when we look at the environmental side, two points I would really like to just discuss today. Energy, of course, a key aspect across the world and South Africa as well. Today, we do have the biggest portfolio of renewable energies of most private companies in the country, but certainly of any mining company.

We have over 165 megawatts currently producing today. We see that going up to over 835 megawatts by 2028. So what is that in numbers for the business? It is more than ZAR1 billion of saving in energy costs for us by 2028. It is a huge impact in terms of carbon taxes. These are real numbers on the bottom- line, and ultimately, 50% of our power supply will be within our control. For anybody who was trying to survive as a high-energy user five years ago, trying to survive in South Africa, this is a significant relief for us as a business and I dare say relief for the country in terms of where excess generation can go.

The next one I just want to touch on is water. I dare say again, as a country, it is probably the thing being discussed most I hear today. Wherever I hear crisis, water is on the list. There are lots of people discussing the water crisis. I am not sure how many of us are actually doing much about it. The country needs to be aware we have a crisis coming and I dare say El Niño is just going to shine a big spotlight on that.

From our perspective at the moment, we are lucky in that we have our gold operations, which are very water positive. Today, our gold operations are 90% independent, water independent, 95%, in fact, at gold. Our PGM operations today that are in a water scarce environment are already 42% water-independent with a very clear plan to get to 90% by 2028. This is going to be hugely important for mining companies going forward to be water independent.

This is business resilience. I think on the social side, again, not going to go into huge detail today. We discussed this a lot, but the point I just wanted to leave us with today is we hear about social with SLPs. There is a lot more that many mining companies are doing, and we really need to be sharing our story better.

From a Sibanye perspective, we have our foundation. Of all the dividends we pay, 1.5% goes into our foundation. We have invested hundreds of millions within our communities, largely infrastructure. We have our own community trusts, where during times like this, our communities benefit significantly, as do other stakeholders from what we make. And of course, multiple CSI funds, most of which go towards developing economies beyond our mining entrepreneurs and supply-chain development.

What does this practically mean? Well, to give you one example, I was very fortunate, I think privileged, to spend a day two weeks ago with the families of the survivors of the tragedy of the Marikana event in August 2012. What a day where you sit and on the one hand, there's loss and grieving for what happened 12 years ago. But on the other hand, some of the good that has come out of that, one of which was we celebrated five new graduates that came out of our 1608 Trust.

Out of a trust fund, where 138 beneficiaries have gone through school, many of whom have gone through tertiary education. Today we have 29 graduates, doctors, lawyers, farmers, geologists, 13 of whom are employed at Sibanye. This is what we can do when we acknowledge our past, when we work together for a new future. This is sustainability.

When we hear about EMPs, when we hear about IRMA, et cetera, that's compliance. This is sustainability. This is the purpose of our company. Just in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, very briefly, I think in terms of the guidance for the year, it remains largely unchanged. We have made one update to the gold operating unit cost.

I think as you heard from Richard, we have had a few real drivers on that cost, much of which has been almost investment into sustaining that business for a few years longer. But we have slightly increased that guidance, and the only other two small changes is included roughly ZAR100 million for each of Burnstone and Mt Lyell for the second half of this year as we kick those projects off. In conclusion, I think just going back to my first slide, we set out a strategy at the beginning of the year.

I think we were very clear in terms of how we were looking at capital. That was about both creating value for our shareholders, improving our business resilience, and investing in our future. I dare say the environment that we've had over the last six months, and once again, I think full credit to our teams for their delivery. We've been able to really fast track this and fundamentally strengthen the business significantly from where we were just 12 and 6 months ago.

I think we've demonstrated the portfolio that we have. Our Capital Markets Day took you through the details, and I said it there and I'll say it again, I still firmly believe we have the best PGM portfolio in the industry and one I wouldn't swap.

The flexibility, the opportunity to develop that in multiple phases gives us huge optionality to the PGM markets going forward. And I dare say you've now seen us committing to investing in those as well as our Burnstone and Mt Lyell operations. And ultimately, we've been able to create the shared value that is why we are here as a business, both in terms of our dividends today as well as investing into our communities around us. Going forward. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. I think with that, we will be happy to take any questions, Enrique, I guess from the floor first and then online. Over to you. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Richard and the other presenters. Any questions from the room? Thank you, Arnold. Charles is on his way to you.

Yes, good afternoon. It is Arnold van Graan from Nedbank. Three questions if I may. Richard, the first one is for you. When you took over this role, it is a few months ago or a year ago, you obviously would have had clear plans of where you wanted to be here today at 1H. You have given a lot of detail around that progress. I guess in your own words, where do you think you are ahead, where are you on plan, and where are you behind? That is the first one for you. One for Charles on Stillwater. You are looking at the incentive plan going through that. So two questions.

The one is, how confident are you that you would get that through? Secondly, I think more importantly from my perspective, how confident are you that would actually drive the productivity and cost numbers to get it sustainable? Because we see these incentives constantly changing and that is the nature of mining. How do you know, or can you give us some comfort that this is actually what you need to make that work? Then a short one for Charl and very important one. When are you going to get to Section 45X cash in the bank? I am assuming that will help bring down that cash balance that you are pushing down, which well done, by the way. That is it from me. Thanks.

Arnold, thanks very much. Good afternoon. Let me take your first one. I think where we are ahead without a doubt overall has been the cash generation. I think, of course, we've had very supportive markets. Overall, what that's impacted positively is the balance sheet.

I think we set ourselves a goal of getting that debt down by 50%, the gross debt, that remains the goal. We thought two to three years to really get there. In the current market, that could be quicker. That would certainly be, I think, the areas where we're most ahead. I think where we are tracking well is in terms of our plan on optimizing margins. This has been around business excellence, around operational performance.

I think overall across the business, we're seeing a lot of stability coming in. We're hitting the numbers we want, and of course, once you get stability, you can really start driving those margins. I'd say that's where we're on track. The areas that I think take longer than I originally anticipated to be honest, I think is essentially changing the efficiency and the operating model of the business.

This is something we've got a big business at, something we've got to do cautiously. Ultimately, it's about being far more efficient, the systems that we put in place to be sustainable. We are a company that's grown from the acquisition and amalgamation of four, five, six different companies. Getting that standardized across the business is something you need to do carefully in order to not disrupt the business. I think we are making the progress we want.

The other one we haven't touched on today, but I should mention, is simplification of the portfolio. I think the reason is difficult to discuss that in an event like this until there's a decision made on something, we can obviously announce that and share it. We are getting quite close on a few, and I think the team has done great work in how we can simplify and realize value for some parts of the portfolio that are non-core, but certainly look forward to sharing more of that with you as and when we can when there are hard numbers. Thank you. Charles, do you want to-

Yeah, sure. Is my mic on? Yeah.

Yep.

Arnold, I think the key thing to understand is this is an integrated approach with multiple components at work at once, and I will quickly sketch them and go to your question. Interestingly, your observation that incentive schemes come and go, what we find at Stillwater is a legacy scheme that has been there for 20 years. It is focused on miners, and as you are probably familiar with that technology in narrow seams, it is two miners to a stope.

They do everything from drill, blast, muck, and haul, and they are heavily incentivized on volumetric numbers. It is not about the quality of the break, it is not about the cycle time of blasting, it is about the volume. That is an agreement that has been laid up through negotiation over 20 years. We are busy changing that, which is complex work, not easy or quick work.

I think importantly, when you look at our miners in that mode of activity and incentive, they are exceptional miners. They are high capable individuals that are incredibly well-trained, and they have done this their whole life. From their perspective, why change anything, right? That is the fundamental issue you have to navigate in a negotiation.

They are working to plan and slightly ahead of plan, as we have shown. But that plan is producing, as you know well, without 45X credits at in and around $1,500 a troy ounce. That is when they go in full bore, right? That is the best we can do. You have to fundamentally change a number of things to move that dial towards $1,000. One is to really look at your planning and have a very integrated planning approach.

But it goes, and you would have seen this in the Analyst Day, really the stope configuration. You have got a vertical ore body. You have got different dips between Stillwater and East Boulder. Stillwater allows us to use slightly bigger equipment on bolting, mechanized bolting, which is bespoke to us as well with Komatsu. East Boulder has a different dip, so you have to use smaller equipment, otherwise you get sizable dilution.

In both setups now, you are going to get dilution, but you are going to get very much enhanced productivity and cycle time. So your ounce return is significant. But what underpins that is task mining, so not two miners doing everything and getting highly rewarded for that. It is an integrated approach between the planners, the drill and blast, the mucking, the haul, all the way through to the plant. Right?

That full team incentivized approach is new for that operation. It is not new anywhere else in the world. It is not even new in the US and Nevada, for example, but it is very new to that operation. So you still want to favor the miners because that is where your core skill sets are. That is where the history is. But you want a fully incentivized team.

And then with that, we are not just changing mechanized bolters. We are going from two-yard to four-yard muckers. We have got a number of equipment shifts which all enable much higher productivity. So we are confident on our plan to get towards $1,000 over a two-to-three-year step change program. It is being introduced incrementally between the two sites. There is a lot of training that goes with it.

The fundamental first cab off the ramp now that we've done the trial mining, which we did collaboratively with miners, and we've done the work management, is both to land the incentive scheme in the agreement. Once it's there, we can work with that going forward. I sketch that it has multiple components, not just volume and break. That, to be blunt, the miners don't like because they're doing very well with how they do things right now.

There's a lot of convincing to do. But ultimately, without that anchor incentive done in a structurally different way, without the enabling equipment, without the changes to work management, without upskilling our supervisors, you don't get towards $1,000. You have only incremental gains on the current mine plan. This, for these operations, is make or break for the future.

But it's not a one-hit wonder. It's not a silver bullet. It's an integrated program that gets layered in over several years of change management, and we have to take our workforce with us. And right now, to be blunt, they don't like change. So a lot of work going into that. I have a very high regard for the United Steelworkers as a union in the US.

I've spent quite a bit of time with their national leadership, giving them the why, giving them the how, appealing to them to back us to make the change. I think at a national executive level, they get it. I think we still have work to do with our workforce. These are two different contracts still in negotiation. We can have bumps in the road. I don't doubt this for a minute.

But the direction of travel, where we have to get to and how quickly we have to get there, either makes this 40-year options on these ore bodies or four years, because we're not going to vote sizable capital if we can't make these changes. And you've got capital down the road on tailings expansion, rock dumps, and so on. And in the US, that's expensive spend. So we've got to get this right. We've got to take our workforce with us.

I think there's a core that gets it. They are totally up for this. Any one of those miners who's worked in Nevada and elsewhere, this is well known to them. But it's a change from a way of doing things, and that way was not broken. It's a proud way of doing things in Montana. But you don't get towards $1,000 without the systemic integration of multiple pieces now shifting. So does this keep me awake at night right now? Absolutely. But the roadmap is clear.

The plan is really good. The leadership team is fully on it. Now it's about change management and getting people to go with it, and we've put a lot of change on the table in the negotiations, so it's not an easy one. The legacy negotiations have always been incremental additive items to a legacy agreement, and we're changing that whole model. So not easy, but work in progress.

Thanks, Charles. Is my mic on? In terms of 45X, about 10 days ago, we had our first interaction with the IRS. It was a team of five, of which two were engineers. They confirmed that they are looking at the 2023 tax return, which is the first year of the 45X credit. That it was more a process kickoff, but the two engineers on the call already started asking some questions around process, our relationship with our refiner. They also asked if they can do a site visit. Arnold, I do not have a timeline. I mean, no timeline was agreed at that meeting. I think it is safe to say that it is now in process. We will update you as and when we get more information.

We have also asked the team to look at are there other companies that have received the 45X, and there are. Through the direct pay method, we know of a company called Corning that has already received $83 million back in the direct pay method. I think it is just a process issue now, but unfortunately, there is no specific timeline.

Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much for the comprehensive answers. Appreciate it.

Thanks.

Yeah, no problem.

Thanks very much. It's Brian Morgan, RMB Morgan Stanley. Just a couple of questions. Should I just do them all in one go? Cool. Charles, Stillwater West, it's now out of the five-year plan. Is it out even if we get to $1,000 in the next two to three years? Is that the right way to read it? Maybe another question is, since we last spoke in April, how have you seen the spent catalyst feedstocks into recycling business? How does that move? Have you seen any improvements in that regard?

Charles, maybe a question for you just on that specifically is the advances now ZAR7.5 billion, ZAR7.4 billion of advances coming out of that now. It's quite a big number. How should we be thinking about the accounting of that? Because it's a lot of cash. Just some thoughts around that one. I had a fourth one and I've forgotten what it was. I'll just leave it to that, if you don't mind.

Great. Richard, do you want to pick up the recycling one there, if that's okay?

Howzit, Brian. Good to see you. From an autocat recycling perspective, I don't think we've seen much incremental move or the market size getting bigger. It's really just been moving pieces of the puzzle left and right. There has been some slight incremental move in the market in terms of the pricing, but nothing that's going to significantly move the needle.

On Stillwater West, the track we're pursuing is we've got to get towards the $1,000 at Stillwater East before we go anywhere near Stillwater West. It's going to take us two to three years to really show that we are hitting bullseye on that objective. Once we know we can do it, and we can do it well, then we will have a run at looking at Stillwater West.

But we'll look at it in the way you look at a new project. Although we've got a lot of fixed infrastructure, we've got multiple different setups for mining. You want to know that you can go back there with a fundamentally different productivity structure and a different cost structure. You've got to look very carefully at how you sequence that on that legacy set of operations because it requires infrastructural upgrades and it can be very expensive if you do it wrong. I don't see it as a full mine standing up immediately. I see it as probably incremental. I see the planning phase getting stood up once we know we're well on track elsewhere.

That takes you year two into year three. Then it'll be going back to the capital allocation discussion. It'll be stacked in a rank of multiple cabs in the company looking to get capital, and only the fittest will survive. It's in the frame, but it's not near-term, and you don't want it to go away. But you don't rush back there because then your whole cost structure changes, your CapEx changes, and you're back treading water. The whole objective to $1,000 is long-term palladium pricing is around $1,100.

That might improve. There's no radically bullish case on palladium long term. It might be a conservative case we're dealing with, but you've got to manage to $1,100 and show a margin on that. That's how we think about it. You don't chase volume for volume's sake because on the mechanization plan, we can unlock real cash flow. We step up ounces incrementally year by year, but we get very good returns once we get those productivities up, and that's the objective.

Thanks, Brian. As you say, it is a big number. I think importantly is that, and you would know that number moves up and down as commodity prices moves up and down. I think, well, I know that the team has done some really good work around that. So there's no risk in it for us because we either lock in the price. First of all, we deal with reputable collectors and the team has a very good handle on that.

Then I think from a pricing movement perspective, that risk is ameliorated through either locking it in through hedges or more recently we've put that metal consignment line in place. That will continue to show up as working capital. There's unfortunately nothing we can do. That's the nature of that business. I guess with a 14% margin and the manner in which we turn that working capital, it remains a very, very good business for us.

The 45 times accounting. You were asking on the 45 times accounting?

No.

No.

That was Arnold.

Sorry, just one more question if I may, actually, Richard. Just on Mt Lyell to you. You are talking about simplification. Everybody is clamoring for projects at $6 copper. It is not big. You got a lot of other stuff to do in your portfolio. Is this a core asset, really?

Yeah. Let me expand. Brian, thanks for the question because that is a good one. I think the way we look at it is where can we create value? That is the critical question. Exactly as you say, would we be copper miners competing in bulk mining in Argentina? No, that is not our business. I do not think we can add any value there. An underground mining operation in Tasmania right now, that is exactly where our sweet spot is.

That is what we understand. I think a couple of points to it. If we just look at Mt Lyell alone, the numbers you have seen, the valuations that we have done it on, the decision we have made it on is, of course, on the resource we know now. I have got to say, when you go and look at an asset like that, I used to have a professor who said to me, when you are looking for exploration, you look for juicy plumbing systems. This is juicy.

The opportunity to expand that resource and make that into a much bigger project is significant. That really is very interesting country. In terms of a project like that today, I guess the question we ask ourselves is, we did look at alternatives. Could we have sold it? Could we have brought in a partner? Could we have done some sort of fancy offtake financing? The answer to all of that is yes, absolutely we could in this market.

When you look at the value that we could generate from that asset by building it ourselves, it is significantly higher. If you flip that and said, if we had an opportunity to acquire an asset like that in a jurisdiction where we've got a well-established team on a mine that we understand, that is our bread-and-butter underground mining, would we have moved on it?

The answer is yes, we probably would have. Here we have it within our portfolio ready to go. Absolutely it is. I do think the one thing that we will still look at carefully with Mt Lyell, as you saw, it's got some interesting byproducts on gold and silver. Of course, copper there has a lot of interest in terms of offtake. Could there be ways to help finance this in a smart method with some of those byproducts? That's certainly something we will continue to explore in a bit more detail. For now, absolutely happy with it. It could be a real value addition to the company.

Thank you. We have no further questions from the room. We've got a question from Nkateko from Investec. Please comment on cost in SA Gold, excluding DRD. All is sustaining cost now at about $3,500 an ounce. Is this the new cost base for these operations before Burnstone?

Thanks for that question. Including DRD, we're at ZAR1.6 million a kilogram. Excluding DRD, we're at ZAR1.8 million a kilogram. DRD is doing ZAR1 million a kilogram. That does trajectory tell us where we also want to follow in terms of the surface business. What is the future cost of the SA business? I think what's the trajectory? When we look at the mix, it's also quite difficult to aggregate. Take, for example, our most expensive business.

That's Kloof. Kloof is 15% of gold production. Currently, Kloof is producing at 2.4 grams per tonne. Can we keep it at 2.4 grams per tonne? If we think we can keep it at 2.4 grams per tonne, there's a business for the next three years. If Kloof's with us, it's going to increase cost. Our best business is Driefontein, ZAR1.6 million a kilogram. That's 50% of the production.

But what we see at Driefontein, of the working cost, 25% of the working cost is electricity, and electricity did go up by 13% with the regulator. Driefontein does pump a lot of water, so it's a big question, what's happening with the Driefontein water? Is it stagnant? Is it increasing? I think in the Wits basin, we are seeing water increase annually. I do think in Driefontein, if they manage their production, which they are, we might see a slight uptick in cost, but that will obviously anchor the cost towards the lower level. Beatrix, ZAR1.8 million a kilogramgram at the moment. It's not really a cost issue as much as a production issue.

We are chopping through some difficulty extending life of mine below deepest level, but I think we'll be learning there and we will get better. So managing the cost into the future, what have we signaled? We've signaled costs for gold the back- end of this year within the range of ZAR1.75 million to ZAR1.84 million. I think that does take into account some of the significant infrastructure spends at the moment. Will that continue into the future? Likely not. We are responding to some of the infrastructure vulnerabilities. 10% of our business is surface, and Cooke at the moment is producing at ZAR1.9 million a kilogram. We see opportunity to grow that.

But within those numbers is quite a big maintenance spend to prep that business for the long term. Cooke on the third- party, three years ago, there wasn't a lot of near surface half a gram a ton material around, and it certainly wouldn't have sustained ZAR1.9 million a kilogram. But at a ZAR2.4 million a kilogram price environment, there's a lot of these resources around, and we are investing in that business.

It's quite significant. In the first half, we put ZAR50 million into Cooke because we see an opportunity for the long run. So it's quite a difficult one to pitch what happens long- term. There is a lot of infrastructure spend. I think that'll go away.

I do think the cost pressure that we are signaling ZAR1.75 million to ZAR1.84 million has got a lot of investment in there. A lot of our businesses are like Kloof, for example. It's got a one-year life. A lot of that capital is expensed. That's in the number.

You all of a sudden have a longer life. Assets no longer impaired, that drops out of that number. I do think it's a good number for the near-term. But as we see future potential of our Driefontein operation and the surface operations, I do think that cost inflation on that number certainly will come down. Rich, I'll leave it there.

Thanks.

Thank you very much, Rich. We also have profiles from our SA Capital Market day that one can have a look at looking into the future for costs. The next one, also from Nkateko, you are lagging your peers on dividend payouts. At what point do you think you will consider adjusting dividends higher to align with peers?

Thanks, Nkateko. Listen, I think firstly just, our dividend payout is obviously at 25%-35% of normalized earnings. I think if I compare that to peers, most are between 30% and 40%. So we're possibly slightly lower on that front. But listen, I think we've been clearing our capital allocation model. So in that model at the moment, we're looking at that roughly third, third model. That is until such time as we can get our gross debt down by at least 50%.

Until then, I don't materially see that model changing. I think it is about resilience of the business. Commodity prices have been high, but we're also living in very volatile times. Volatility we know often precede shock. So listen, we are certainly getting ourselves resilient for what may come. Once that is down, that would be a logical point to revisit the capital allocation model, and that would be a discussion with the Board.

As it stands at the moment, I think we're sticking to what we said, in terms of consistent dividend payouts, in terms of reducing our debt and investing in our business for the future.

Thank you. From Enoch, from Shanghai Metals Market also asked, what were the average PGM prices during the period? Did you produce osmium? How much mechanization are you doing in Southern Africa?

I think there's some quick answers to that one. We don't produce any osmium. No, we do not extract that. The average metal prices, I'm sure were in the booklet. I'm not sure if anybody's got them on hand. I think it was around ZAR40 --

Yes.

It was just under ZAR44,000 per 4E ounces.

ZAR44,000 per 4E ounces in South Africa. In terms of mechanization, I think, Rich, do you want to-

Yeah. Of the 776,000 oz we did, conventional is about 60%, trackless about 30%. Our surface contributes 5% and purchase of concentrate about 5%. Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Xing Liwei from Dow Jones asked how much chrome was produced in H1 and that compared to the previous year. I do not know if Rich.

Yeah, thank you very much for that question. Chrome was lower. Last year we produced about 1,160,000 tonnes and this year 950,000 tonnes for the same period. Quite a significant 210,000 tonnes lower, so 18% year-on-year. A big chunk of that, or 175,000 tonnes was because we closed the BTT concentrator and that is because as we planned, the resource feeding the BTT concentrator completed and that contract completed.

The balance is when we closed the BTT concentrator because the tailings facility closed, it has a neighboring tailings facility, and that neighboring tailings facility is a younger tailings facility, so less chrome in the mix. Still profitable and that was fed through remainder concentrators that also lowered the chrome output. We see going forward with the agreement we have with Glencore, the technology we are implementing, the workarounds on the Rowland chrome, we will get back to better numbers in the back end of this half and then into next year.

Thank you. Nkateko asked, please comment on the integrity of the infrastructure at Mt Lyell and any potential risks.

I will take it.

Thank you.

Nkateko, thank you. I will start this. We are extremely fortunate that we had a care and maintenance team at Mt Lyell since the mine closed in 2014. The decline is in extremely good shape and that also allows us to have a relatively quick ramp up. Part of our feasibility study, which we started already in 2023, was looking at the rest of the infrastructure and anything which we are not deemed fit will be rebuilt and that is part of the capital expenditure you see. For example, the concentrator is totally new. Then you also see that post-capital implementation, we also will do shaft refurbishment of the vertical shaft, and we allowed around $74 million for that. I think importantly is we want to start mining, we want to get going. That infrastructure is in quite a good shape. Thanks to that care and maintenance team. Thank you.

Thank you, Ralph. Steve Shepherd says congratulations on the operating and financial results. Also commenting that Stillwater has been problematic. Apart from a few years, it has been either loss-making or marginal. On this basis, is the risk management time and effort really worth it? Is it core to Sibanye, the Sibanye assets? Is the question he is asking. Thank you.

Let me take that, Steve. Thank you and good afternoon. Yes, listen, I think it is, and I guess that is almost the point that I was trying to make by saying we are looking at this asset differently. Yes, you are exactly right. Listen, Stillwater historically has done exceptionally well in high-price environments. It did for us. It paid itself back. But in low-price environments, it struggled. And that is a little bit ironical given that it is by far the highest grade PGM deposit in the world by 5 times. But it is due to the higher costs in mining in the US. That is simply the maths around it.

I think the critical aspect is if you are going to be in the PGM industry, you have to recognize that all PGMs come from three areas at the moment, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Russia, and Stillwater. Having that flexibility of an operation that sits in a geographically different area, I still think is critically important and very strategic.

Now, does that mean we will continue to try and make an operation work at a loss-making level forever? No. Of course, there is a limit and there is a line that has to be drawn, and I dare say if we listen to Charles, that is part of the line we are drawing with stakeholders. We have a plan. We know how to get there. If that plan does not deliver, then at a point, we have got to call it. But we do have a plan that we think will deliver at $1,000, and I think we have a real responsibility to try and make it get there.

If we cannot, there will be a point to call it. If we can get there, that is absolutely one of the best PGM deposits in the world with still 40-60 years' worth, 40-100 years' worth of mining if you look at the whole ore body, and I think we have a responsibility to try and make it work. Listen, Steve, I think it does remain core to the portfolio as long as we're in the PGM business, which we certainly plan to be for the foreseeable future. Thanks, Steve.

Thank you very much. Shashi Shekhar of Citi asks, could you please elaborate more on the increase in trade and other payables of ZAR9.2 billion that impacted your free cash flow, and will it reverse in future?

Yeah. I think importantly, the ZAR9.2 billion was a release of working capital, so that was a positive impact on the free cash flow. In terms of the overall level of trade and other payables, it's a number that goes up as commodity prices go up. If you look at the same period for the previous year, there's one thing to mention is that we included the North Carolina site from about September last year which brings across its own trade and other payables. That would not have been in the same period in 2025. Then, as I said, as prices move up, these numbers also move up because of the way that we lock in the prices. Your question on whether it will reverse, if prices do come down, which is not a positive for us, you will see a release after a period of time. If you ask me, I hope this number grows which does then suggest that we get higher commodity prices. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you. There was a second question on dividends, but it was similar, so already answered. Thanks, Shashi. If we do not have any hands in the room, I think there is a caller on the line. Operator Judith, if we can queue that. Thank you.

Ephrem Ravi, Citigroup.

Thank you for taking my question. I think there is a bit of an echo here, but I will push through nonetheless. Firstly, on Century, you are clearly reaching the end-of-life of tailings. From memory, there is a silver deposit nearby, given where silver prices are and your balance sheet now having pretty much peak [yeared]. Are you putting that project into the pipeline? Would that be a consideration at all going forward and diversifying your metal suite in precious from gold and PGMs into silver as well? The next question was on Keliber. Obviously, there is also the gating of the lithium hydroxide project from spodumene to a technical grade to battery grade. Is prices a factor at all that you are considering, or is it more customer availability and long-term contracts that are driving that decision? Thank you.

Let me give that a try. I just want to make sure I got you correctly on the first question, Ephrem. Was that with regards to the PhosOne project or?

Yes.

Perfect. Ephrem, no. Listen, I think we have been quite clear that phosphate at the moment would not be part of our strategy. That does not fit in with what we are looking at. As you quite rightly mentioned, at the moment, Century has about 12 to 18 months' worth of mining left. There again, we are in quite advanced discussions with our partner in that regard as to how that infrastructure could best be used towards developing that phosphate project.

But it is not a project that we would be looking to put any capital into. From our side, that is how best we could realize any value from the existing infrastructure we have. That is one of those examples I referred to regarding progress on simplifying our portfolio. But no, that would not be one that we would be looking into going forward.

I think with regards to the Keliber question, let me give that a first crack, but please, Ralph or Charles, feel free to add. I think at the moment or the decision regarding turning on the refinery really hinges around three big things. Today we are commissioning the concentrator. As Charles mentioned, we have commissioned the throughput portion of that. We are now looking at how we can optimize the grade. Once we have that up and running and grade being at the right levels, then we can contemplate. That is one of the first parts to turning on the refinery. The second part to turning it on will be what commodity markets are doing, what lithium markets are doing.

The reason why that is important to us is if you do get a collapse in lithium prices and essentially if China wanted to manipulate prices by bringing a lot of supply online, you can put a mine and a concentrator on care and maintenance quite safely and at a relatively acceptable cost. You do not want to put a refinery onto care and maintenance. Those are big chemistry sets. Once we turn that on, that is one you want to run consistently for an extended period of time. So we will assess the market and assess the concentrate. If we do not turn on the refinery, then we have the option of selling the spodumene concentrate. I hope that addressed the question. Thanks, Ephrem.

I think that concludes it if you want to just thank.

Wonderful. Awesome. Thank you very much, everybody, again, for joining us today. I think a pleasure to have you all here today. We look forward to seeing you soon. Please enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Thank you very much.