JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Surface gold recovery company DRDGold has declared an interim cash dividend on soaring six-month earnings.

“We’ve never seen numbers like this. I mean the cash operating profit was R1.4-billion and earnings R950-million. These are numbers over a six-month period. It’s really been a period where a lot of things went right for us,” DRDGold CEO Niël Pretorius told Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview on Tuesday after the Johannesburg- and New York-listed company reported 129%-higher headline earnings a share. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.) 

Asked during an online results presentation if this business model could be extended elsewhere, or if the company had considered this, CEO Niel Pretorius responded: “We look at operations from time to time, we don’t have anything worth mentioning at this stage on the radar just yet, but we certainly are not closing our minds to anything.  “We do believe that the shortcut to some of the operations outside of South Africa would be through our group association with Sibanye-Stillwater.”

Okay, volume throughput was still satisfactory; we are happy with the volumes that we managed to get. We are mining a very low-grade resource, though. And, if you multiply everything by north of two million tonnes per month – our production cycle – a difference in the third decimal could have a 10/15/20 kg difference at the end of that period. So, it’s by and large the head grade that went into the plant. I’m happy that our metallurgical efficiency and plant setup, but those were under control. Plus, we are under. [1:56]. It’s really a function of the quality of the ore body, and it comes, and it goes. There are some of the higher-grade types that have been mined out, but on the whole, it is something that does come and go.

Said Pretorius: “The business is performing in a very stable way. It has good prospects and it will continue to pay dividends for as long as we are able to maintain this model”. But he stressed future expansions would remain in line with management’s current conservative strategy and would be dependent on both movements in the gold price and political and regulatory developments within South Africa which affected the country’s attraction as an investment destination. 

The company, which is majority owned by Sibanye-Stillwater, a major platinum group metals (PGM) and gold producer, had cash of R2.17bn compared with R1.7bn at the end of its 2020 financial year in June. The level of cash and the outlook for the gold price coupled with being debt-free has positioned DRDGold to take a “bolder view” of its plans to expand its Far West Gold Recoveries operations near Carletonville, said CEO Niël Pretorius.

Covid-19 took its toll on global economies and SA’s in particular – that much can be seen in the performance of SA’s blue-chip banking, retail and industrial stocks, which were hammered. Those that recover and thrive will be the companies with the strongest balance sheets and best management.