
THERE might be one more opportunity for Anglo American to sell off more shares in Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) before it demerges the company “during the course of next year”, according to Anglo American CEO, Duncan Wanblad.
Answering questions after his address to the Joburg Indaba mining conference being held in Sandton today Wanblad said it this would be completely dependent on the markets at the time of the opportunity.
“So it’s not absolutely certain that we could do it or will do it,” Wanblad said.
Anglo sold around 14 million Amplats shares, equivalent to about 5% of the company, in September in a “bookbuild” which Wanblad said was aimed at doing two things of which the main one was to minimise a flowback in the shares after the demerger.
“The prime driver was to pre-emptively put some of the stock into the right hands prior to the demerger and this was absolutely successful.
“The second reason was, of course, to put some money onto the Anglo American balance sheet because we going to be divesting some 25% of EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) but not all of the debt.
“On that basis it was important for us to restructure some of that on the way through.”
Wanblad played down suggestions that the restructuring being carried out would make Anglo American a target in term of takeover plays from other mining groups because Anglo would be seen as a pure copper play.
“I don’t believe that is inevitable. We will only be 60% copper and we will have very good growth optionality. To the extent that we are fully valued in the context of the sum of our parts we will be a very viable, stand alone company.
“I cannot say what other people are going to do from a corporate action point of view and I don’t really care about it. What I care about is delivering on the strategy to create value for my own shareholders but, more importantly, all of the stakeholders.”
Wanblad rejected suggestions that Anglo had been forced into this restructuring because of the bid for the group made by BHP and maintained it had been completely proactive on Anglo American’s part.
“It was all proactive.
“We had started the whole strategic review of the portfolio and many of the elements of that were already in place but what I had to do – when the offer (from BHP) came in – was accelerate things and that was less than ideal.”