Flat EBITDA at Anglo American and a nasty drop in HEPS (JSE: AGL)
Operating cash flow is a highlight, though
Anglo American released results for the year ended December 2025. It didn’t take them long in the announcement to mention copper and the Teck deal, although they didn’t actually refer to it as a “merger of equals” in the opening line!
With a major regulatory approval achieved at the end of 2025, they are making good progress in the Teck deal. Once completed, investors will have more than 70% exposure to copper in the enlarged Anglo group.
They could do with a boost, as underlying group EBITDA had a flat year in 2025, coming in at $6.4 billion vs. $6.3 billion in the prior year. This is despite $1.8 billion in run-rate cost savings that were delivered on schedule by the end of 2025. The “run-rate” reference means that the $1.8 billion may not be fully captured in the 2025 financials.
EBITDA margins were strong in the businesses that Anglo plans to keep, like copper at 49% and premium iron ore at 43%.
But despite this, group HEPS actually fell sharply from $0.72 to $0.39 per share.
The highlight was cash conversion in continuing operations of 107%, as they reduced working capital and unlocked cash to help reduce debt. Along with the proceeds of the sale of shares in Valterra Platinum (JSE: VAL), this reduced net debt from $10.6 billion to $8.6 billion.
De Beers remains an ugly story, with an impairment of $2.3 billion to the value of that asset. It will be a brave soul indeed who acquires De Beers and takes a risk on mined diamonds.
The sale of the nickel business is going through regulatory approvals, while the steelmaking coal business still has an uncertain future (while Anglo searches for a buyer).
Record free cash flow at AngloGold Ashanti (JSE: ANG)
The 2025 dividend is the highest in the company’s history
Are you bored of the record numbers coming through in the gold sector? Or are you invested in this sector and every additional update just feels like another pat on the back?
As you know by now, the gold price did really well in the past year and the gold mining houses have been printing cash. AngloGold has added its name to that celebratory list with the release of results for the year ended December 2025.
Free cash flow tripled to a record $2.9 billion. This magnificent outcome was thanks to strong cost control (total cash costs per ounce increased by 7%, mainly due to higher royalty payments) and a 16% boost in production to complement the higher gold prices.
Total dividends for the year were $1.8 billion, a new record. This represents 62% of free cash flow, which is higher than the typical payout of 50% of free cash flow. But this also shows you that management is retaining plenty of firepower, with capital expenditure having increased by 32% in 2025. Notably, sustaining capital expenditure was up 22%, while non-sustaining (or expansionary) capital expenditure increased by 62%.
They haven’t just been sitting back and enjoying the gold cycle. AngloGold has been busy with acquisitions and disposals, having invested heavily in areas like Nevada in the United States. They’ve let go of non-core assets in riskier markets like Côte d’Ivoire and Brazil.
Production guidance for 2026 is 2.8 million to 3.17 million ounces vs. the 2025 number of 3.1 million ounces. They also expect an 11% increase in the cash cost per ounce, with approximately half of the increase from royalty payments and the other half from inflation.
Dis-Chem accelerates to double-digit revenue growth (JSE: DCP)
They are focused on data and partnerships
Dis-Chem released a trading statement for the 24 weeks from 1 September 2025 to 16 February 2026. The market liked it, with the share price closing 3.9% higher on the day.
This is because Dis-Chem achieved group revenue growth of 10.1% in this 24-week period. To give that more context, the six months to August saw them achieve group revenue growth of 8.7%. An acceleration in growth is always welcomed by the market, with the second half of the year clearly going even better than the first half.
Retail revenue growth was 9.5% in this period vs. 8.3% in the interim period. An increase in the growth rate of 120 basis points is meaningful. Like-for-like revenue growth was 5.7% and volume growth was 5.0%, so there is minimal price inflation in these numbers.
If you dig deeper, the efforts of the “X, bigly labs” team at Dis-Chem seem to be paying off (despite having the most ridiculous name in history that sounds like a Musk-Trump concoction). With better data and a refreshed loyalty programme that was launched approximately 7 weeks into this period, they saw retail revenue in the 17-week period increase by 10.4%. This is encouraging exit velocity that shareholders will like.
The profits are what count though. Achieving better sales is great, but the rewards programme comes at a cost in the form of savings passed on to shoppers. Dis-Chem notes that customers enjoyed R410 million in savings over the 17 weeks. I will be interested to see what the impact on gross margin looks like, with the potential upside surprise being that supplier-funded deals often help to reduce the impact on the retail margins of these programmes.
For now though, Dis-Chem is happy to bank the market share gains. For the 12 weeks to 25 January 2026 (a period measured by NielsenIQ), they achieved volume growth of 8% vs. the market at 1.3%, taking market share across all categories up by 80 basis points.
They are also doing particularly well in areas like GLP-1 drugs, with pharmacy revenue up 13.7% for the 17 weeks under the new rewards programme. Aspen (JSE: APN) shareholders will certainly be interested in this level of GLP-1 adoption.
In the Wholesale business, revenue was up 15.7% in the 24-week period vs. 11.1% in the interim period to August. Sales to own retail stores were up 16.2% vs. 10.9% in the August period. The Local Choice pharmacies increased from 230 stores to 281 stores. Wherever you look, there’s an encouraging acceleration in the business.
This is a seriously impressive performance. A gap has now opened up between the Dis-Chem and Clicks (JSE: CLS) share prices:
Are we witnessing a rerating of Dis-Chem that will stick this time, relative to Clicks at least? Have your say in the poll below:
enX will sell the remaining 75% interest in West African International (JSE: ENX)
Trichem is exercising its option to own the entire thing
Back in March 2025, enX announced that Trichem would subscribe for a 25% stake in West African International (WAI). Trichem then had the option to sell their 25% stake back to enX (a put option), or to acquire the remaining 75% interest in WAI (a call option).
Trichem is clearly happy with the asset, having injected R107 million for the initial 25%. They’ve decided to go with the call option rather than the put option, which means they will acquire the remaining 75% in WAI from enX.
It’s a much bigger deal than you might think, as it triggers a s112 situation for enX. This is because the 75% stake represents the majority of the remaining assets in enX. This puts us into the territory of the Companies Act that is regulated by the Takeover Regulation Panel, hence the exercise of the option by Trichem is actually classified as a Firm Intention Announcement.
It gets even more interesting from a regulatory perspective. As this is just a subsequent tranche of a previously announced transaction, the categorisation calculation that took place at the time of the original deal stills stands. So although it is a s112 from a Companies Act perspective, it’s only a Category 2 under the JSE Listings Requirements.
But they need a circular anyway, not just a terms announcement, as the s112 needs a shareholder vote. They also need to include a fair and reasonable opinion from an independent expert.
It all sounds like useful inspiration for a tricky question in the JSE Sponsor exams!
The call option will be practically implemented as a subscription for shares by Trichem, followed by a share repurchase from enX. The pricing for the subscription was previously set at between R286 million and R407 million, with the calculation based on the underlying net asset value and profit after tax.
Based on the receipt of cash for this tranche, along with the release of cash held in escrow after the first subscription, enX plans to return the majority of the resultant net cash to shareholders. The circular will hopefully give a better indication of what that number might look like.
Local gold and PGM at Sibanye-Stillwater more than doubled EBITDA in 2025 (JSE: SSW)
The day really was darkest before the dawn
Sibanye-Stillwater’s results show you what can happen when you give yourself a chance to get lucky. After many self-help initiatives during the PGM downturn, the business was positioned for an upswing. And boy, did that upswing arrive in 2025.
The results reflect a 14% increase in revenue in 2025. That was good enough to drive a wonderful jump in HEPS of 281%. Talk about a year to remember!
It was also heavily weighted towards the second half, with normalised earnings coming in 377% higher in the second half vs. the first half of the year. The second half contributed 83% of full-year normalised earnings. If they can maintain that momentum, 2026 will be even better.
The balance sheet is in much better shape these days thanks to the improved profits, with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 0.59x at 31 December 2025.
If we dig a bit deeper, we find that the South African PGM operations generated EBITDA of R16.7 billion, while South African gold generated R12.5 billion. In both cases, those operations more than doubled EBITDA vs. the 2024 levels.
The numbers are excellent elsewhere as well. The US PGM business swung from a loss in 2024 to positive EBITDA of R4.4 billion in 2025. The recycling business generated R4 billion in 2025 vs. just R0.6 billion in 2024. In fact, only the nickel business was in the red in 2025.
It wasn’t all good news in the gold business. The geotechnical issues at Kloof represent just one of the group’s headaches. But when the commodity prices behave like this, it can make up for a lot of other problems.
Spar needs a new CEO (JSE: SPP)
Things seem to be going from bad to worse
Spar closed 7% lower on Friday after giving the market a negative surprise around leadership. Angelo Swartz has resigned as CEO, having been with the group for 19 years. He was only in the top job since October 2023, so that’s not a terribly long innings by CEO standards.
The group isn’t exactly on a firm footing right now, hence why the market punished the share price for this turn of events. It helps a bit that Reeza Isaacs, the current CFO, will be stepping into the CEO role. This at least shows some internal continuity.
Megan Pydigadu, currently the COO, steps into the CFO role. The experience she gained in the turnaround of iOCO (JSE: IOC), which was of course still called EOH at the time of the turnaround, will no doubt be useful at Spar.
A further leadership change is the creation of a Managing Director position for Groceries and Liquor in Southern Africa. I don’t like this at all, as it suggests that top management will be straying further from the core business and will be focusing their attention elsewhere.
Above all, I sincerely hope that Spar isn’t cooking up another offshore acquisition. If you think the market response to Mr Price (JSE: MRP) announcing the NKD deal was bad, just wait until you see what would happen if Spar does something ridiculous. The only thing they should be doing is focusing on their core business – and it should be getting maximum attention from the top execs.
There’s a trading update call scheduled for Monday morning, so investors will no doubt have some pointed questions about this development.
Nibbles:
- Director dealings:
- The CFO of Calgro M3 (JSE: CGR) bought shares worth R203k.
- An associate of a director of Visual International (JSE: VIS) sold shares worth R124k.
- Magen Naidoo has bought another R7.6k of shares in Mantengu (JSE: MTU). You’ll find an important update on the leadership of the company further down in the Nibbles.
- AfroCentric (JSE: ACT) announced the disposal of Active Health back in December 2025. It’s a Category 1 transaction, so they need to get a circular out. The JSE has granted an extension until 24 April 2026 to distribute the circular.
- Northam Platinum (JSE: NPH) announced that the revolving credit facility has been increased from R11.3 billion to R13.3 billion. It matures in August 2027, giving them useful flexibility on the balance sheet. They also have a general banking facility of R1 billion, so the total available banking facility is now R14.3 billion. The plan is to push further into renewable energy projects that are owned and built by the company, rather than relying only on power purchase agreements with independent power producers. By 2030, Northam expects to source 70% of group energy needs from renewable sources.
- Boxer (JSE: BOX) announced that James Formby is stepping down as chair with effect from 28 February 2026. The interesting element to this story is that Sean Summers, the CEO of Pick n Pay (JSE: PIK), will be taking the role of non-independent, non-executive chair. Formby will remain on the board, just not as the chair. And in case you’re wondering, Charlotte Maponya will continue as lead independent director of Boxer. If Summer’s appointment confuses you, just remember that Pick n Pay still holds a controlling stake in Boxer.
- Mantengu (JSE: MTU) announced that CEO Mike Miller has resigned with effect from 28 February 2026. Those who followed the story last year may be aware that I was on the receiving end of a number of completely unsubstantiated allegations by Miller. I hope he finds peace in whatever he does next. And most of all, for the sake of the employees at Mantengu, I hope that incoming CEO (and current CFO) Magen Naidoo can improve things at the company, as recent performance has been very concerning. The jury is still out on whether any of the share price manipulation allegations have merit, as there were a number of parties accused of being involved. Will we ever really find out? Honestly, who knows – it’s one of the most bizarre stories I have ever seen on the market. And in case you’re wondering, Langton Mpofu has been appointed as the CFO to replace Naidoo. Mpofu has been with Mantengu since 2024, so there’s at least some continuity there.
- Goodness knows what the reason for the delay is, but the special dividend declared by Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers (JSE: CAT) has not received approval from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). For this reason, the company has chosen to withdraw the declaration of the dividend and rather declare an interim dividend of the same value as the intended special dividend. Interim dividends don’t need approval by the SARB. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for some of the discussions that would’ve taken place in the background here!
- Shareholders of 4Sight Holdings (JSE: 4SI) approved the repurchase of shares from Silver Knight Trustees at 55 cents per share. The value of the repurchase is R10 million. That might not sound like much, but the market cap of the company is R390 million. Perhaps more importantly, the current share price is significantly higher at 71 cents.
- I generally ignore independent director changes that don’t have other interesting elements to them, but a change in the chairperson of the board is always worth mentioning. Insimbi Industrial Holdings (JSE: ISB) noted that Robert Dickerson will retire as chair, with Nelson Mwale taking that role with effect from 28 February 2026. There are changes to board committees as well.
- Trustco (JSE: TTO) has decided to terminate the American Depository Receipt (ADR) programme that trades in the over-the-counter (OTC) market in the US. Holders will have until 26 March 2027 to swap their ADRs for underlying ordinary shares, which would then need to be held on the Namibian or South African register. Is this a precursor to the promised full-fat listing in the US, instead of the skim milk version on the OTC market?
