Harmony Gold doubles dividend on bullion bull run

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JIMMY MOYAHA: Following the strong gold price throughout the 2025 calendar year, the team at Harmony Gold Mining Company released their update for the six months ended 31 December 2025.

We’re going to look at the start of their new financial year and how the business has been faring with the group’s financial director Boipelo Lekubo. She joins me on the line now to see what we make of the performance.

Boipelo, lovely having you on the show, as always. Thanks so much for taking the time. It is good to be able to start off the new year on such a strong footing, especially benefitting from that stronger gold price that we saw towards the tail end of last year.

Take us through your thoughts from a management perspective on how the first half of the year started.

BOIPELO LEKUBO: We’re quite pleased with how the first half went. As you rightly [noted], we did benefit from higher realised gold prices, but this was really supported by continued operational discipline.

We always say at the end of the day that the [gold] price can be high, but you need the ounces to sell. So that strong foundation on an operational perspective is important.

We enjoyed a 20% increase in our group revenue to R44 billion, and cash generated by operating activities up 31% to R13 billion. So we have a strong balance sheet.

Net debt to Ebitda [earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortisation] is 0.18 times, and that’s well below our one times threshold post the acquisition of the MAC Copper Limited asset in Australia.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Boipelo, you touched on having a stronger balance sheet from a business perspective, and I can imagine in the mining space this is exactly where any mining company wants to be – with liquidity of just under R15 billion in cash and undrawn facilities.

The stronger gold price clearly meant you didn’t have to dip into those facilities as much, but it also gave you that room and flexibility to be able to look at the business from a different perspective.

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BOIPELO LEKUBO: It is always a balancing act, especially when you look at capital allocation.

For us, our first rand or dollar always goes towards safety and the sustainability of our operations.

We have then allocated to our organic projects and advanced copper. So in scale only where returns are good.

We continue to preserve the balance sheet.

That’s really in terms of discipline and consistency through the cycle. You would have seen that we have revised our dividend policy upwards, so it’s also about sharing in the good times with shareholders.

Every initiative competes on risk, margin and then cash conversion. So we have grown selectively, sequentially and affordably, turning the today’s gold prices into durable and compounding value.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Boipelo, you touched on risk. I want to take a look at the Eva Copper Mine Project acquisition in Australia. Can you take us through the strategic decision from a business perspective?

Harmony for many, many years has been known as a gold miner – in fact one of the largest in the world and one of the best at what it is that you do.

For the business to branch out into copper assets – that’s a strategic move that I imagine would have gone through many different phases and conversations. Take us through the rationale there and how that’s coming along into the business.

BOIPELO LEKUBO: Eva aligns firstly with our strategy, and it lowers our risk profile with sustainability embedded in the planning. Let me say it has brought the copper story forward for Harmony.

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We have an asset, Wafi-Golpu, which we are currently permitting; that’s in Papua New Guinea. We own that asset.

It’s a 50-50 joint venture between ourselves and Newmont. It was initially discovered as a gold ore body, which then turned into a gold-copper ore body and then now is more a copper-gold ore body, that is.

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We were finding it extremely difficult to find value in gold, given the current elevated prices. Copper is where we saw value and it is really, as I say, bringing that copper story forward for us.

So we announced our final investment decision in Eva towards the latter part of last year. We are currently in construction as we speak, and we are expecting first production towards the end of calendar 2028.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Boipelo, before I let you go, I want to take a look at the remaining six months of the business for this year’s reporting cycle. Your thoughts on the macro environment that could potentially affect operations?

We know that ongoing global geopolitical tensions tend to impact mining businesses in different ways from perhaps some of the other businesses. How are you reading the global macros at the moment and how is your business preparing to contend with them?

BOIPELO LEKUBO: We generally focus on what we can control, and that is ensuring that we have safe production – and safe profitable production, that is.

Listen/read: The brilliance of Harmony’s MAC Copper acquisition

It’s important that we maintain that consistency in the last half of the year, as well as bringing the Eva Copper Project to fruition.

We did buy an asset in Australia – MAC. So MAC is important. That asset is set up for the long term.

So there are a couple of things in our pipeline that we really need to ensure that we deliver on while, as I say, focusing on what we can control. It’s really aided by the strong gold price that we currently have.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Well, all the best to the team at Harmony as they continue into the second half of the year, benefitting from the stronger gold prices but also looking to see how the business continues to remain sustainable and safe in all of their efforts.

We’ll leave the conversation on that note. Thanks so much to the group financial director at Harmony, Boipelo Lekubo, for joining us to take a look at the first half of the year.

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