MTN
Ownership = control: MTN plans to buy the 75.3% of IHS it doesn’t already own, so it will control almost all of IHS’s African cellphone towers, helping it run its network more smoothly and cheaply.
Big cash deal, no new shares: The company will pay around R35bn–R40bn in cash for the rest of IHS, using IHS’s own cash plus MTN’s funds, and won’t issue new MTN shares to do it.
Lower costs, more profits: By owning the towers instead of just renting them, MTN expects to cut costs, earn more profit and cash, and better handle problems such as power cuts, fuel costs and weak currencies in its African markets.
Sibanye-Stillwater
Big metal health check: Sibanye-Stillwater has done its yearly count of how much metal it still has in the ground and can mine in future. These updated platinum, gold and battery-metal numbers show the group can keep producing for many years, with a full tech report due in April 2026.
PGMs shine, gold shrinks: Platinum-group metals (PGMs) in South Africa and the US look solid, with platinum reserves up thanks to new Marikana projects, while the US PGM mines also grow slightly. Gold is the weak spot, with big cuts at Kloof and other shafts making overall gold resources and reserves smaller.
Energy metals and tailings twist: “Future” metals are a mixed bag: uranium gets its first official reserve at the Cooke tailings dump, Keliber lithium in Finland grows after new drilling, but US lithium at Rhyolite Ridge is gone after Sibanye-Stillwater exited the project. Zinc at the Century tailings dam keeps running down and should be finished by about 2027, while the Mount Lyell copper project in Australia gets its first long-life mining plan.
ASP Isotopes
Nuclear HQ heads to Texas: Quantum Leap Energy (QLE), a unit of ASP Isotopes, is moving its global head office to Austin, Texas, to be closer to US customers and tap into the state’s pro-nuclear rules, skilled workers and cheaper costs.
Building a fuel factory for the future: QLE plans a big nuclear-fuel hub in Texas with Fermi America, including a new HALEU enrichment plant and isotope facilities in Amarillo, to help power future nuclear reactors and energy-hungry AI data centres.
Who are these guys? QLE and ASP Isotopes develop advanced ways to separate and enrich special atoms (isotopes) used in medicine, clean power and next-gen reactors, working with partners such as TerraPower and Necsa, but all their big plans still face technical, regulatory and market risks. DM