Sentula finally settles long-term debt of R1.5bn

Photo by Simphiwe Mbokazi

Photo by Simphiwe Mbokazi

Published Apr 3, 2017

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Durban - JSE-listed mining company Sentula has managed to settle its long-term debt by paying the R33.5 million outstanding amount.

The loan dates back to 2007 when the company borrowed R1.5 billion from Standard Bank, HSBC Bank and Sanlam Capital Markets.

“Sentula is pleased to advise shareholders that the company settled the final repayment on The Standard Bank, HSBC and Sanlam Capital Markets Consortium merged term facility.

The original agreement, entered into in 2007, was for an amount of R1.5 billion and the balance outstanding at June 30, 2016, was R33.5 million,” the company said.

In its annual report, the group said it paid R151 million in total debt for the year to end June.

The company has made it one of its priorities to settle long-term debt and restructure in order to return to profitability again.

The group is actively involved in the provision of contracted opencast mining, overburden drilling and blasting, mobile crane hire and exploration drilling services to the mining sector.

Sentula is one of the major suppliers of outsourced mining services in the South African coal mining industry and also owns and mines an anthracite mine.

The diversified mining company, with an established footprint across the African continent, said Nkomati Anthracite, in which it currently holds 60percent of the issued share capital, secured another loan of R151.6m from the Industrial Development Corporation in February.

The group is expected to report better financial results for the six months to end December with losses reduced dramatically as compared to the previous period.

In the trading update in March for the six months to end December, the group said it expected a headline loss per share to be between 3.80cents and 4.20c a share, improving on the headline loss per share of 5.59c per share compared to the previous period.

This will be an improvement of between 25 percent and 32 percent.

As a result Sentula has gained confidence by focusing on expanding on profitable operations.

Sentula shares closed unchanged on Friday at 28c.

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