Sibanye-Stillwater's shares get a second place to trade from 6 October. On Tuesday the miner told shareholders its ordinary shares had been approved for trading on A2X, a licensed stock exchange that sits alongside the JSE. It is one of the world's largest producers and refiners of platinum group metals, the family that includes platinum, palladium and rhodium, and a top-tier gold producer as well. It also recycles metals, and has operations and projects on five continents.
What a second listing actually changes
A secondary listing puts the same shares on a second trading venue, and very little else moves. The JSE stays Sibanye's primary listing, its American depositary shares stay on the New York Stock Exchange, and its issued share capital is unaffected. No new shares are being issued, so nobody's slice of the company gets any smaller.
What changes is the choice. Sibanye says the extra venue should give investors greater access to its shares through another regulated platform, and support liquidity, which is market language for how easily its shares change hands.
Why A2X sells itself on price
A2X burst onto the scene in 2017. It is licensed as a stock exchange, regulated by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and the Reserve Bank's Prudential Authority, and it is authorised to act as a secondary venue for companies whose main listing is elsewhere. Its pitch is cost: it says its technology and trade types let it charge lower fees and save brokers money. It also says a secondary listing has no impact on a company's primary listing and costs the company nothing.
Ordinary investors cannot trade on it directly. A2X does not deal with retail clients; it runs a wholesale model, so anyone who wants to trade there has to go through one of its approved brokers.
Sibanye has company. A2X's own news list shows Capitec listing there on 7 September. Business Day counts AngloGold Ashanti, Glencore and Pan African Resources among the miners already on it, alongside big names such as Sanlam, Discovery and Standard Bank.
The exchange is also looking past company shares. Business Day reports that A2X has asked the Financial Sector Conduct Authority to change its listing requirements so it can host secondary listings of actively managed exchange-traded funds, the kind where a manager picks the holdings. Sibanye, for its part, only needs 6 October to arrive.
