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long-term plan to dispose these as well. The Board Chair believes any shortfalls in Chinese
infrastructure spend will be augmented by an upsurge in new US president –Donald Trump’s
infrastructure spend; so, he believes we should rather not ‘restructure our portfolio’ but seek to

expand it. As the metals we produce have industrial and consumer goods applications, the best way
to decide on our strategic direction is not to focus on the long-term direction of the global economy –
this is a crucial ingredient but best addressed through relevant strategic portfolio models such as
BCG Matrix and the Ashridge Portfolio Display.

4.2.1 The BCG Analysis

In Appendix 4.1, we have conducted a full BCG analysis and summarise our findings as below:

BCG Category Segments BCG general policy/strategy
Cash cow PGMs (Platinum) Hold or Harvest if weak
Star Diamonds Invest capital expenditure and

Build
Question mark Nobium and Phosphates, Nickel, Build, Harvest or Divest
Copper, Iron Ore and Manganese

Dog Coal Divest or Hold

To some extent, we have maintained a balanced portfolio hitherto as we have at least one SBU in
each BCG quadrant. A close observation however, reveals an overconcentration in the Question

Mark quadrant with 4 segments accounting for 33% (3,539+146+544+3,390/23,003) of our 2016
revenues. Apart from Nickel, in 2015, these four Question Marks delivered the best ROCE
(Appendix 4.3) and in 2016, two of the top three were Question Marks. It is clear we could Build

some of these into Stars but we can reduce the overconcentration to help us pay down debt by
divesting from the ones that deliver poor ROCE. In this case, we can divest Nickel which has the
worst ROCE. We do not have its combined value so we cannot tell to what extent any divestment of
Nickel will assist us meet our debt reduction goal. We could target the next smaller unit for

divestment –Nobium and Phosphates, but its ROCE has been consistently the best of all the 8
segments, so we need to re-evaluate through the Ashride Portfolio Display; but also to assess the
robustness of our prescripts for PGMs, Diamonds and Coal which fall outside the Question Mark
quadrant.

4.2.2 Ashridge Portfolio Display

We have attached in Appendix 4.2; our full Ashridge analysis but summarise our findings as below:

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