Anglo American Platinum presents 2022 annual results
Natascha Viljoen, CEO of Anglo American Platinum, commented: “I am proud to announce that Anglo American Platinum has once again delivered safe production and a robust operational performance, resulting in a strong set of financial results for 2022. This financial year has seen us navigate a complex operating environment, with macro-economic challenges, supply chain disruptions, socio-economic unrest, and electricity load-curtailment, as well as some operational headwinds of our own. However, we have seen good levels of resilience across our operations, and the team has worked through these challenges to deliver our mined production, refined production, and sales numbers for the year. The prior year benefited from an increase in refined production, which was due to a strong performance from the ACP Phase A leading to an additional drawdown of c.1.0 million PGM ounces from work-in-progress inventory.
In total, we produced 4.0 million PGM ounces in 2022. While headwinds at Mogalakwena and Amandelbult impacted production compared to the prior year, Mototolo and Unki delivered a strong production performance, increasing mining activity to fill the increased concentrators’ capacities following the successful debottlenecking projects. We have a strong contribution to mining EBITDA from all our own-mine operations and achieved a mining EBITDA margin of 57%.
Our refined production for the year of 3.8 million PGM ounces was despite a significant delay to our first Polokwane smelter rebuild in 12 years. The delay was due to the delivery of sub-standard materials, highlighting the need for our increased focus on supply chain reliability. Waterval and Mortimer smelters achieved record utilisation as concentrate due for Polokwane was redirected to these smelters, and in turn produced greater throughput. As a result, we have a net build-up of work-in-progress inventory of only 100,000 PGM ounces. We are happy to report that our Polokwane smelter is up and running and is performing at its usual capacity.
Despite lower sales volumes in 2022, our EBITDA was R74 billion, driven in part by the highest rand basket price on record. Our profitability was however impacted by above-inflation cost increases in utilities and consumables, in line with inflationary trends globally. Headline earnings was R49 billion. Return on capital employed of 111% highlights a strong financial performance. The Company ended the year with a resilient balance sheet, with net cash of R28 billion after paying dividends during the year.
