Patrice Motsepe’s mining giant feels the pain

African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) saw a significant decline in its headline earnings for its 2025 financial year, as lower iron prices and higher costs weighed on the miner’s finances.

ARM is a diversified mining and minerals company with operations in South Africa and Malaysia. The company mines and beneficiates iron ore, manganese ore, chrome ore, platinum group metals (PGMs) and coal.

It also produces manganese alloys and has a strategic investment in gold through Harmony Gold. The company is chaired by billionaire businessman Patrice Motsepe.

On Friday, 5 September, ARM released its results for the year ended 30 June 2025, which revealed a poor performance for the group.

The company’s headline earnings fell 47% to R2.70 billion or R13.79 per share, mainly due to lower iron ore and coal prices. 

ARM explained that it saw a decrease in the average realised export US dollar iron ore prices and increased mechanised development costs at its Bokoni mine.

In the 2025 financial year, ARM decided to suspend early ounces mining operations at Bokoni as part of its plans to limit costs.

The diversified miner said lower thermal coal and iron ore prices and a stronger rand against the US dollar had offset the impact of marginal increases in manganese ore and alloy prices.

However, positively, the company also said unit cash costs growth for PGMs and iron ore improved over the period, increasing in line with inflationary cost increases.

From a segmental perspective, ARM’s Ferrous division saw headline earnings fall 31%, Platinum was down 42%, widening its loss, and Coal was down 88%.

Despite this, ARM maintained a robust financial position, with net cash of R6.61 billion at 30 June 2025, compared to R7.20 billion at the end of its 2024 financial year.

ARM declared a final dividend of R6 per share, lower than the R9 per share payout last year.