GFIGold Fields Limited
Is it safe?
Mostly sound, with a caveat: comfortable debt (AA), but big price swings.
Rock-solid balance sheet, low leverage. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -63% · now 38% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can GFI take a bad year?
Gold Fields Limited carries $1.64B of net debt at 0.56× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at FY2024 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.56×
Net debt / EBITDA · 0.23× a year ago · the load is going up
- Interest cover
- 17.4×
Interest cover · operating profit covers the interest bill several times over
- Annualised volatility
- 56%
Annualised volatility · roughly twice as jumpy as the market
Details›
- Total debtFY2024
- $2.50B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $860M
- Net debt
- $1.64B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $2.90B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $2.28B
- Debt / equity
- 0.48×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 0.86×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 56%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −63%
- Below its 52-week high
- 38%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.