> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Record gold prices just gave Harmony its best year ever. Now it’s putting its money into copper. - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/harmony-gold-record-year-copper-australia/ - Published: 2026-08-31T03:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-31T03:14:59.000Z - Description: Revenue rose 34% to R99.2 billion and the dividend is the largest the miner has ever declared, but the finance director says the better returns are no longer in South African gold. - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News Beyers Nel runs South Africa's largest gold producer by volume, and on Thursday an analyst asked how much of it he wants to be gold. He would not name a split. What guides the decision is value, he said: copper or gold, local or offshore, Harmony goes where the value is. That reads like a platitude until you follow the money. Harmony has spent 76 years pulling gold out of South African ground, most of it deep and old. An ageing shaft can still be mined, but each extra ounce costs more to reach than the last, and at some point the same rand does more somewhere else. ## The year that paid for it The gold price did most of the work. Harmony received an average of R2.07 million for every kilogram it sold, about a third more than the year before. Group revenue rose 34%, to R99.2 billion. Gold production itself slipped, and still landed inside guidance for the eleventh year running. The profit measures moved harder than revenue. Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure South African listed companies have to report, rose 87%. Free cash flow set a record at R17.1 billion. The board turned part of that into the largest dividend Harmony has ever declared, a final of 750 cents a share, taking the full-year payout to about R8.1 billion. ## Where the growth money is not going South Africa keeps most of Harmony's production. It does not keep most of its growth spending. That money goes to the higher-grade mines, Mponeng and Moab Khotsong, and to the surface retreatment business that reprocesses old dumps. The marginal shafts get maintained rather than expanded. Finance director Boipelo Lekubo said it flatly: Harmony sees more value in copper at the moment than in gold, or in directing that money to the more marginal assets. Copper arrived by acquisition. Harmony bought MAC Copper in 2025, and with it the CSA underground mine in New South Wales, which delivered 18,207 tonnes in its first year at a grade well above what the company had guided. Eva Copper, an open-pit project in north-west Queensland, is due to pour its first metal in the second half of 2028. Australia supplied about 16% of group production this year, and Harmony expects that share to reach roughly 30% over the coming decade. ## The bill attached Harmony lost R9.65 billion on its gold hedge book over the year, as contracts struck at lower prices settled against a much stronger market. Lekubo calls that an opportunity loss rather than a mistake, and says the point of hedging is to protect a margin, not to speculate: about 30% of production is covered and the rest rides the spot price. Eva has a complication of its own. The site turned up a protected species, the Northern Blue-tongued Skink, which has slowed its environmental approvals, though Nel says first copper and the capital budget are unchanged and construction continues in already-approved areas. What Harmony has told the market not to expect is another record dividend next year. The heavy spending starts now.