PAN African Resources is hoping a Main Market listing in London can help capture new investors who are underweight in gold or are looking for a replacement stock given the recent departure of gold counters from the exchange.
In 2024, AngloGold Ashanti bought Centamin, which was listed in London, while Randgold Resources merged with Toronto-listed Barrick in 2019.
“There’s not that many alternatives and so I think we can position ourselves quite nicely,” said Cobus Loots, CEO of Pan African Resources. The South Africans are the largest gold producer on AIM where the firm is currently listed. An application to move to the London’s Main Market by year-end was announced on September 8.
“From a regulatory perspective, we comply with all the JSE requirements. So it’s not massively onerous in terms of compliance or regulation,” said Loots. “This seems to be the next logical step for us.”
Shares in Pan African have gained almost 114% year-to-date on the back of a rampant gold price, up 38.7% over the same period ($3,626/oz). While Pan African has outperformed VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) over the past year, the ETF is still playing catch up with the metal.
This suggests investors remain under-allocated in gold, said Loots who described it as “insanity”, especially when gold shares are compared to high multiples tech stocks. “Is gold at $3,000/oz insane in a market where you get 80 times earnings [for tech stocks],” said Loots. “Is it reasonable to buy tech stocks at huge multiples earnings?”
Loots is hoping that Pan African’s combination of capital conservatism and growth potential will retain and attract new investors. The company has targeted 40% output growth to just under 300,000 oz in the current (2026) financial year, with the potential of more to come, though not perhaps from merger & acquisition activity.
Its 50,000 oz/year Australian Nobles mine could be supplemented with production from Warrego, a prospect on the same property (about 50km away) as well as underground developments at the Juno and Golden 40 pits (adjacent to Nobles) doubling production to about 100,000 oz/year. Warrego also has potential for copper by-products.
Pan African is also assessing whether to expand its Mintails (MTR) tailings deposit near Johannesburg. The development of the Soweto Cluster could add between 30,000 to 50,000 oz in additional annual gold to the currently budgeted 50,000 oz. The outcome turns on whether Pan African opts for more mine life (15 years) or a more capital intensive, ‘big bang’ approach, reducing mine life of the cluster to 10 years.
Pan African has guided to total capital this year of $147m of which $60m is stay-in-business capital. While the company has net debt of $150m, significantly up year-on-year (2024: $106.4m), there has been rapid de-leveraging. Net debt of $228.5m was recorded as of December 31.
Despite this it doesn’t seem likely Pan African will institute an interim dividend. When asked, Loots said: “It’s a constant debate.
“Pan African has demonstrated over many years that we are not only conservative, but also quite good at allocating capital.” The final dividend declaration for the 2025 financial year was $48.7m compared to $27.5m for the 2023 financial year, an 80% increase.
