Volatile rand hobbles Sibanye

A year ago South Africa's biggest gold producer was churning cash, sizing up acquisitions and plotting expansion projects.

Today Sibanye Gold is shutting mines. The difference? A big rebound in the rand.

High costs and labour-intensive operations mean Sibanye and other producers are highly leveraged to one of the world's most volatile major currencies.

Sibanye expects to report a first-half loss of at least $360-million (about R4.73-billion), compared with a $22-million profit a year earlier, the company said yesterday.

The loss was partly due to the rand, which averaged 14% stronger during the period.

Last year Sibanye was considering deepening some of its existing operations and had a plan to remine old waste dumps for gold.

Now it is working on plans to close its Cooke and Beatrix West operations, potentially affecting 7400 jobs. The stock has dropped by 58% in the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, it was a busy day for market watchers on Thursday, with a number of important JSE-listed companies indicating their state of play:

lPPC's share price jumped 14% to R3.99 after it issued an upbeat operational update for the June quarter, the first of its financial year.

The cement maker said sales volumes in the rest of Africa hit double-digit growth, with business in Rwanda especially robust.

- Standard Bank's share was little changed following its interim results, with the lender squeezing higher interim profit out of slightly lower revenue in the six months to end-June. Revenue declined 0.2%, but personal and business banking revenue grew 0.7%. The interim dividend was raised 18% to R4.

- Exxaro more than tripled its interim dividend to R3 as interim revenue grew 10% to R10.7-billion and aftertax profit more than doubled to R2.7-billion.