Top South African coal miner makes it rain for shareholders

Despite a slump in coal prices over the past year, Exxaro’s cost-control measures managed to offset this impact and increase headline earnings by 6%.

This allowed the company to reward shareholders by declaring a final dividend of R10 per share.

Exxaro released its results for its 2025 financial year on Thursday, 19 March 2026, covering the year through December 2025.

These results revealed a 2.57% increase in revenue to R41.77 billion, but a 4.64% increase in operating expenses.

This saw the mining giant’s profit for the year decrease by 2.08% to R9.86 billion. Its basic earnings per share fell by less than 1% to 3,178 cents per share.

This was largely due to lacklustre coal sales and production, which grew by only 1%.

The miner explained that in 2025, the thermal coal market experienced a few notable trends, namely, a decline in global seaborne demand, persistent oversupply, and China and India wrestling to balance domestic production with import requirements. 

“These dynamics contributed to benchmark prices sliding to the lower end of the range, with the API4 index falling below $80 per tonne in October 2025, impacting coal industry profitability,” it said.

However, despite a 14% weaker export coal pricing environment, Exxaro’s strong marketing capabilities, disciplined cost management and good production, combined with the defensive nature of the miner’s portfolio, enabled it to report a resilient performance.

Its headline earnings increased by 6% to R7.73 billion, and Exxaro reported that its cash generation remained robust, with cash generated by operations falling only 4% to R10 billion.

“Despite a dynamic macro-environment, we focused on stabilising the business, operational delivery and accelerating the prudent delivery of our Sustainable Growth and Impact strategy,” CEO Ben Magara said. 

“This strengthened Exxaro’s position as a diversified natural resources champion, underpinned by its strong coal base, a growing energy solutions business, equity-accounted investments in iron ore and base metals and the recent acquisition of select manganese assets in the Kalahari Manganese Field.”

Based on these results, Exxaro was able to declare a final dividend of R10 per share, marking a 15% increase from 2024’s dividend.