Raubex ready to acquire the shares of lossmaking Bauba

RAUBEX Group, the infrastructure development and construction materials supply company, on Friday said all conditions for its acquisition of chrome ore mining and platinum exploration company Bauba Resources had been met. It will offer 42 cents per Bauba share. Bauba, meanwhile, reported bigger losses.

Bauba Resources’ share price closed unchanged at 41 cents on the JSE on Friday, while Raubex’s share price closed 1.67 percent lower at R40.70.

Raubex is expected today to report an earnings per share increase of between 244 and 254 percent for the year to February 28, compared with the same period last year.

This was expected to translate to earnings per share being between 300.7c and 309.4c and headline earnings per share of between 293.2c and 301.4c (81.9c). Bauba, meanwhile, said it had changed its financial year-end to February 28 from June 30.

Revenue for the period decreased by 7.5 percent to R256.2 million, while the comprehensive loss widened to R52.3m from R31.4m. Investment in property, plant and equipment increased by 45 percent to R293.8m from R202.6m.

Chrome concentrate production increased by 40 percent to 138 053 tons.

Run-of-mine production increased by 16 percent to 205 940 tons.

Bauba said in its results that a $24 per ton increase in the average chrome ore China cost insurance and freight prices for benchmark 42 percent concentrate was offset by a similar increase in freight costs and an average stronger rand. “Freight costs during the current reporting period have increased significantly (in US dollar terms) compared to the prior reporting financial period.

“The increase in freight pricing to record levels has been caused by global demand exceeding available capacity and new capacity not becoming available quickly enough.

“In South Africa, factors negatively impacting freight costs are the Covid19 pandemic, key port terminal assets requiring regular maintenance, recent civil unrest, port cyber attack and poor port operations.“