(Alliance News) - Sylvania Platinum Ltd on Monday reported rising revenue and profit in its recent financial year despite receiving lower feed grades from some host mines.
The South Africa-focused platinum miner said its pretax profit rose to USD143.2 million in the year ended June 30, up sharply from USD55.9 million a year prior and USD24.4 million two years earlier.
Revenues rose 79% year-on-year to USD206.1 million from USD115.1 million. In comparison, the company reported net revenue of USD70.5 million in financial 2019.
With income rising, the company reported a final dividend of 4 pence per share, compared to 1.6p the year prior.
Sylvania teased a potential special payout in the second half of financial 2022, should metal prices remain high.
In the recent financial year, the company's Sylvania Dump Operations achieved target production, noting 70,043 ounces of platinum group metals, which includes platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold.
"With all operations back to normalised capacity and efficiencies during the year, the implementation of our process optimisation initiatives...contributed to the solid results throughout the period and enabled us to meet our stated production target for the year," said Chief Executive Jaco Prinsloo.
Production increased slightly in financial 2021 from 69,026 ounces the previous year, but remained 2.8% below the company's record output of 72,090 ounces in financial 2019.
Sylvania guided output of 70,000 ounces of platinum group metals for financial 2022.
Despite higher profit, the company noted the continued impact of Covid-19 and lower feed grades as operations slowed for some host mines.
Plant feed grades declined 8% in the recent financial year, the company said. While plant recovery efficiencies fell 5% in the same period.
Sylvania said it expects plant feed sources to remain similar for another eight to ten months.
"Our management and technical teams continue to explore further opportunities to improve both feed grades and recovery efficiencies across operations that could add value in the near term, whilst we also continue to engage with various consultants to evaluate the potential of our existing longer-term mineral asset projects," Prinsloo noted.
With a number of upcoming projects planned for the coming year, the company expects capital expenditure to reach USD22.0 million in financial 2022.
Major projects to include three new tailings storage facilities and exploration in-fill drilling at its Northern Limb mining project areas.
Meanwhile, secondary milling and flotation projects at Lesedi and Tweefontein are already on track and expected to contribute to production by the second half of financial 2022 and the first half of financial 2023 respectively, the company said.
Operations at the company's Lesedi project were suspend in August due to concerns about "inadequate water drainage and increasing phreatic water levels at the tailings dam".
The company said the dam, which was due to be decommissioned at the end of 2021, deteriorated quicker than expected.
Sylvania said it expects operations to resume at Lesedi towards the end of September.
Shares in Sylvania were trading up 1.7% at 99.69 pence each in London on Monday morning.
By Scarlett Butler; scarlettbutler@alliancenews.com
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Sylvania Platinum (SLP)