Companies: CFM   

Central African Mining & Exploration Company (CAMEC) has pulled its planned coal float and is ‘reviewing’ exploration spending and an intended buy-back.

Chairman Phil Edmonds has told shareholders at today’s annual meeting that London-based CAMEC, with interests in the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, increased revenues 90 per cent to $184.5 million (£115 million) in the six months to September and achieved average monthly sales of copper and cobalt ‘significantly ahead of the same period last year’.

He cites a range of active projects, such as the Luita copper plant in the Congo, grain processing in Mozambique and investment in Sabot, ‘one of the largest trucking and logistics companies in central and southern Africa, and stresses that CAMEC had more than £30 million cash and no debt at the end of September.

However, ‘current capital market turmoil and the recent fall in commodity prices’ have convinced Edmonds and his colleagues that divesting CAMEC’s extensive coal assets in Mozambique and South Africa is ‘not appropriate’. Similarly, the company is ‘prudently reviewing’ both its exploration expenditure and its previously announced plans to ask shareholders to authorise a share buy-back.

Conceding that current unrest in the Congo is ‘a concern’, Edmonds argues that CAMEC’s operations are in that vast country’s mineral-rich south-eastern province of Katanga, ‘unaffected by the recent troubles in the far north-eastern areas’. The shares, which hit 97p in 2006, have now crumbled to 6.25p, valuing the company at £175.2 million.          

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Central African Mining & Exploration Company	AIM	£75.7m	2.70p	0.02p
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Other company articles:
Reappraisal for CAMEC			06/11/2008
Miners wait for the call			31/03/2008
Still scrambling for Africa			07/02/2008
CAMEC plans new Congo deal			07/02/2008
Congo miners plan £2bn merger			06/11/2007