{"id":14801,"date":"2012-09-20T04:39:47","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T02:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/09\/lonmin-to-press-ahead-with-debt-talks-after-pay-deal\/"},"modified":"2012-09-20T04:39:47","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T02:39:47","slug":"lonmin-to-press-ahead-with-debt-talks-after-pay-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/lonmin-to-press-ahead-with-debt-talks-after-pay-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lonmin to press ahead with debt talks after pay deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Sarah Young<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">LONDON, Sept 19<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; The end of a bloody strike by<br \/>\nSouth African workers at Lonmin  will give the<br \/>\nminer a stronger hand in its refinancing talks with lenders, say<br \/>\nanalysts, who believe the firm can withstand higher wages<br \/>\ndespite its stretched balance sheet.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Lonmin expects to see production at its Marikana mine resume<br \/>\non Thursday when striking workers return after it agreed an 11<br \/>\nto 22 percent pay increase, a deal which it hopes will put an<br \/>\nend to six weeks of disruption.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>With mining operations due to restart, Lonmin will have a<br \/>\nstronger platform from which to try to sort out its pressured<br \/>\nbalance sheet ahead of what most analysts say is likely to be a<br \/>\nbreach of debt agreements.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Having a mine that&#8217;s back up and running provides the base<br \/>\nfor Lonmin to start having those discussions with lenders,&#8221;<br \/>\nPanmure analyst Alison Turner said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Analysts said the higher wage for next year would add to<br \/>\npressure on the company&#8217;s margins, but they called the estimated<br \/>\nsums involved &#8220;manageable&#8221; and thought it would not have a<br \/>\nmaterial impact on the scale of a possible equity raising.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Lonmin has agreements with lenders that require it to keep<br \/>\nthe ratio of net debt to core profit at no more than four times.<br \/>\nThat ratio will be tested at the end of this month and is<br \/>\nalready seen as strained.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Without active mining operations taking place, the company<br \/>\nwould have found raising additional financing difficult, whether<br \/>\nthat be through a debt deal or an equity raise, both of which it<br \/>\nhas said it is considering in order to shore up its balance<br \/>\nsheet.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>WAGE BILL<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sarah Young LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) &#8211; The end of a bloody strike by South African workers at Lonmin will give the miner a stronger hand in its refinancing talks with lenders, say analysts, who believe the firm can withstand higher wages despite its stretched balance sheet. Lonmin expects to see production at its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-14801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}