Richard Steward

MINING companies are often linked to personalities but few have been as entwined as Sibanye-Stillwater and Neal Froneman, who founded the company in 2013 and retired last year. Former COO and head of the Southern African operations Richard Stewart is now CEO, but building on Froneman’s legacy and tackling Sibanye-Stillwater’s future is a bit of a double-edged sword. He inherits a company that is in a better position now than in the previous two years thanks to a resounding recovery in precious metal prices, principally gold – which makes up about half of earnings – and platinum group metals. Profits for 2025 are set to double as a result.

Stewart says he plans to continue the course set by Froneman but there are some tough decisions coming his way, which will be unfurled in late January, just as Rainmakers & Potstirrers goes to press. The company’s gold mines, and to a lesser extent its platinum mines, are ageing, labour-intensive, high-cost operations. Most critically, they continue to suffer an unacceptably high number of fatalities – three in 2025 following on eight deaths in 2024.

Shareholders are also wanting a greater slice of the pie. Sibanye-Stillwater hasn’t paid a dividend in two years, and the size and timing of the next dividend – most likely this year – will be Stewart’s first big test. He must balance this with the need to reduce the company’s significant debt burden of about R19bn and continue investing. Regarding the latter, it will be interesting to see how Stewart tackles the firm’s Burnstone gold project, its investment in DRDGold and fringe assets such as New Century in Australia. There’s also the not-so-trifling matter of successfully commissioning Keliber, the firm’s Finland-based lithium project.