START YOUR MORNING BY LISTENING TO TODAY’S BIZNEWS BREAKFAST BRIEFING PODCAST – Equities take a breather; Oil slips below $100; Coal booms, Thungela profits rocket; China’s facing a foreign debt crisis
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Anglo’s folly – Thungela from R25 to R290 in a year, still cheap
In June last year, Anglo American caved to shareholder pressure on ESG by completing the de-coupling of its South African coal assets. The new company, Thungela Resources, traded life at R25 a share. Anglo’s large foreign shareholding base dumped their allocations as quickly as they received them.
Yesterday Thungela issued a trading update disclosing it had earned R67 a share in the six months to end June. Annualised, that’s R135 a share – in a single year, five times the price at which Anglo rid itself of the supposed millstone.
In the investment world, following fashion is rarely a smart call. This one, taken by handsomely remunerated London-based managers, has to rank among the worst ever by any South African company. Even now, with Thungela’s shares more than 10x the price at which it was abandoned by its former parent, they look appealing.


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