By Jiahui Huang


Impala Platinum vowed to cut capital expenditure, becoming the latest platinum miner to trim its spending budget amid persistently weak prices and rising costs, after net profit plunged in the first half of its fiscal year.

The world's second-biggest platinum miner said Thursday that it cut its capital expenditure guidance for the fiscal year ending June to between 11.0 billion rand ($571.5 million) and ZAR12.0 billion, but didn't give its previous capex forecast.

Last week, peer Anglo American Platinum said it could cut around 3,700 jobs in a restructure to keep costs down, following a similar move by Sibanye-Stillwater in November.

Prices for platinum group metals, or PGMs, have crashed in the last 12 months, with prices for rhodium and palladium down 57% and 36% over the period.

"We expect 2024 to be a difficult year characterized by anemic precious metal consumer and investor sentiment as economic and geopolitical uncertainty linger," the Johannesburg-based precious-metals miner said.

Its basic earnings dropped to ZAR1.61 billion in the half-year ended Dec. 31 from ZAR13.97 billion a year earlier, due to a sharp drop in platinum group metals prices in 2023.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 66% to ZAR8.44 billion as revenue decreased 25% to ZAR43.425 billion. As a result, headline earnings plummeted to ZAR3.3 billion from ZAR14.02 billion.

The company didn't declare an interim dividend.


Write to Jiahui Huang at jiahui.huang@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-29-24 0133ET