Sylvania Platinum – executive interview

In this video, Jaco Prinsloo, Sylvania Platinum’s CEO, gives an update on the company’s exploration assets following the release of an updated mineral resource estimate and a scoping study on its flagship Volspruit exploration project. Sylvania generates its revenue by extracting platinum group metals (PGMs) from six chrome tailings and other mine dumps and has no underground mine exposure. In addition to its mine dump operations, the company has a number of exploration assets in the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex in South Africa. Sylvania has exceptional cash-generating capacity given the high prices of PGMs, especially rhodium, and the low-cost nature of a surface dump retreatment operation, paying high ordinary dividends as well as windfall dividends. The announcement of the exploration project results includes an NPV of $27.3m for part of the Volspruit project excluding the 5-6% revenue contribution from rhodium as this is not yet JORC (a generally accepted mineral resources code) compliant, but will add orders of magnitude of value to the project. Also, exploration drilling on its Far Northern Limb (FNL) project has unexpectedly intersected the T-Zone, a reef which also occurs on the neighbouring PGM project near the FNL, also a significantly value-enhancing discovery which outcrops on surface in the FNL. With further drilling, the value of both these areas is likely to add huge value. Whether Sylvania proceeds with these projects on its own or enters into a JV with partners are options not yet decided. Jaco also briefly talks about the Q123 results, which were the fourth best in the company’s history.