adminAFRICA’S biggest fund manager favours South African platinum equities over those of gold, betting against the price performance of the metals and the share performance of the companies that mine them.
The Pretoria, South Africa-based Public Investment Corp, which manages the equivalent of $1.5 billion, is the biggest or second-largest shareholder in South Africa’s four biggest gold producers and two largest platinum miners, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
It prefers platinum because of the metal’s industrial applications, while gold is primarily used in jewellery or for investment purposes, chief investment officer Daniel Matjila said.
The gold price advanced 7.2 percent this year compared with a 3.9 percent gain for platinum. At the same time, an index of gold stocks traded in Johannesburg surged 52 percent, heading for its first annual increase in three, while a measure of platinum shares declined 11 percent in what will be its fourth year of losses.
“Platinum is strategic in the long term,” Matjila said in an August 27 interview at Bloomberg’s offices in Johannesburg. “We like industrial metals, not those about sentiment.”
South Africa is the world’s biggest producer of platinum, accounting for about three quarters of all supply, and Africa’s largest supplier of gold.
The PIC, which manages money on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund, holds 11.8 percent of Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd, the second-largest producer of the metal, and 3.2 percent of Anglo American Platinum Ltd, the biggest.
It also owns 7.6 percent of AngloGold Ashanti Ltd, 7.7 percent of Gold Fields Ltd., 7.5 percent of Sibanye Gold Ltd and 6.5 percent of Harmony Gold Mining Co. — Bloomberg
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