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Sasol Ltd. - Disclosure of Acquisition of Benefici
The company has issued a statement regarding an interest in shares.
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Sasol Ltd. - SFIE - Notice regarding the Guarantor
The company has issued a notification regarding a trading statement.
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Sasol - results of annual general meeting
Sasol advised of the results of the business conducted at Sasol’s annual general meeting held on Friday, 2 December 2022. All the resolutions were passed by the requisite majority of voting rights exercised.
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Sasol - appointment of director
Shareholders are advised in terms of paragraph 3.59 of the JSE Listings Requirements that Mr Andreas Schierenbeck has been appointed as independent non-executive director of Sasol Ltd. with effect from 1 January 2023.
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Sasol Ltd. - SFIE - S&P Global Ratings upgrades Sa
Investors are advised that the credit rating of the instrument has changed.
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Sasol - trading statement and update on operations
Sasol shareholders are advised that for the six months ending 31 December 2022 (2023 financial half year) earnings per share (EPS) and headline earnings per share (HEPS) are expected to increase by more than 20%, compared to EPS of R23,98 and HEPS of R15,21 reported for the six months ended 31 December 2021 (the comparative period).
We continue to see the favourable impact of the higher Brent crude oil price, refining margins and weaker Rand / US Dollar exchange rate on our gross margins. These benefits were partly offset by the downturn in chemical sales prices and higher chemical feedstock prices in our international operations.
EPS and HEPS may be impacted further by adjustments resulting from the 2023 financial half year closure process, as well as the valuation of the statement of financial position at 31 December 2022 based on external market indicators which cannot be estimated reliably at this point in time.
A comprehensive trading statement will be published as soon as there is more certainty with respect to the ranges of the increase in EPS and HEPS.
The financial information on which this trading statement is based has not been reviewed and reported on by the Company's external auditors.
Sasol will release its 2023 half year financial results on Tuesday, 21 February 2023.
Update on operations
Background
Shareholders are referred to Sasol’s announcement published on the Stock Exchange News Service on 20 October 2022 relating to the production and sales performance metrics for the three months ended 30 September 2022.
Following this update, we experienced several operational challenges in October and November 2022 in our Secunda coal value chain. Collectively, these factors have negatively impacted our production and sales volume performance in quarter 2 of the 2023 financial year, as well as the outlook for the remainder of the financial year.
Below is a summary of the major production impacts:
- The continued challenges on coal quality are significant to our operations, together with other factors which are listed below, impacting on our coal blending and Secunda Operations (SO) production volumes.
- Productivity at Mining was significantly impacted by proactive safety and operational stoppages initiated mostly by our own employees and the regulator, to ensure we maintain a safe working environment. Our ability to offset lower productivity through external coal purchases, was constrained by the continued underperformance of the contracted Isibonelo coal supply as well as other suppliers whose production was impacted by loadshedding and higher rainfall. Our coal stockpile is being actively managed to maximise throughput to SO, with our current stockpile at approximately 2.2 million tons at 29 November 2022.
- At SO, we experienced an unprecedented rainfall incident in November 2022 which caused flooding of the west coal processing unit and resulted in a factory outage for several days. In the restart of the plant, we also experienced unplanned outages on the reforming units. We are faced with prolonged downtime on 2 of 17 reformers, which are expected back online before the end of the 2023 financial year. The continued challenges with coal quality have impacted gasifier availability, and although we took decisive action to improve equipment availability, a further deterioration of coal quality during October and November 2022 has impacted production.
- The impact of lower production from Secunda has a direct impact on the downstream chemicals value chains in South Africa. Sasol’s force majeure on the local supply and export of certain chemicals products was largely lifted at the beginning of November 2022 with the end of the Transnet strike action in October 2022. Unfortunately, a shortage of rail cars resulted in the declaration of force majeure on the local supply of ammonia again in November 2022.
On an encouraging note, we have seen positive results from our infill well drilling campaign in Mozambique. We exceeded our internal volume plan to date and are reviewing opportunities to minimise the impact of coal-related production losses. The strong performance is also carried through in the extension of the gas plateau. A further opportunity exists to increase gas supply to the downstream units to the extent possible from January 2023.
Operations in our international businesses continue to deliver steady performance despite challenging macro-economic conditions. Good progress has been made to address the following recent production outages:
- In our Chemicals America segment, the investigation into the Ziegler unit fire was completed. The root cause relates to turnaround maintenance activities. Preventative actions to mitigate against a future occurrence have been identified and are in the process of being implemented. We have been able to restart alcohol production at 50 percent utilisation during November while isolating the damaged section for repairs. The timeline to resuming full production rates is dependent on completion of the repair work which is expected by the end of quarter 3 in financial year 2023, subject to delivery of equipment. Due to the fire’s impact on production, Sasol declared force majeure on the supply of U.S. Ziegler alcohols and derivative products in October 2022. The force majeure will be lifted as soon as production rates and inventory levels improve. Our sales volume guidance for Chemicals America remains intact at 5 - 10% higher than prior year.
- Repair work is nearing completion on Air Separation Unit 2 at ORYX GTL in Qatar following the fire in June 2022. The facility continues to maintain stable operations at 60% capacity. Our previous market guidance of 70%-80% utilisation remains intact for financial year 2023.
Update to market guidance
As a result of the aforementioned challenges, the market guidance mainly associated with our Southern African value chain, is revised as follows:
- Mining productivity of 950 – 1 050 t/cm/s, lower than previous guidance of 1 000 – 1 100 t/cm/s;
- Gas production of 111 – 114 billion standard cubic feet, higher than the previous guidance of 109 – 112 billion standard cubic feet;
- Secunda Operations production volumes of 6,6 – 6,9 million tons, lower than previous guidance of 7,0 – 7,2 million tons;
- Liquid fuels sales volumes of 52 – 55 million barrels, lower than previous guidance of 53 – 56 million barrels; and
- Chemicals Africa sales volumes of 0 – 4% higher than prior year, which is lower than previous guidance of 6 – 12% higher than prior year.
The market guidance in other areas remain unchanged from that reported in our production and sales performance metrics announcement of 20 October 2022.
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| Closing price data source: JSE Ltd. All other statistics calculated by ProfileData. |
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