Amplats warned that earnings would be well lower (much lower), in the face of what we now know is a changing company. Changing from expensive underground mining to fewer and more profitable open cast and mechanised mining. That is effectively the future that has been chosen by the shareholder. And to think that the share price of Amplats in Rand terms is down nearly 60 percent. The going has been more than tough, it has been awful. See the twelve months ended 31 December 2015 trading update.
Whilst the stock slipped nearly three percent on the day, I suspect that much of that was market related, implying that (using a Rumsfeldian) all this was known knowns and baked into the share price cake. Talking about Rumsfeld, I saw this via Quartz, can you believe it? Noted torture enthusiast Donald Rumsfeld has made a really difficult solitaire app. Which is more torturous, holding Amplats shares for the last decade or hearing about (from Rumsfeld) the hardest version of solitaire and downloading it to compete? It is close.