Pan African Resources - An accounting storm in a legal teacup

This morning, Pan African announced that it may have been in technical breach of the net asset test when it paid out dividends to shareholders in the five years from FY19–23 and also when it instigated its share buyback programme in 2022. As attested to by the fact that it took five years to be noticed, the apparent breach arises from the nexus of an arcane bit of legislation and a curious distinction between the presentation currency of the group (the US dollar) and its functional currency (the South African rand) and the effect of the depreciation of the latter against the former on the distributable versus undistributable reserves of Pan African Resources. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple remedy that involves a court sanctioned capital reduction process via a clever reserve juggling act. There will be no change to the number of Pan African shares in issue. However, it will require shareholder assent, which is the reason for PAF’s announcement. We believe it is in shareholders’ interest to vote in favour of these resolutions at its forthcoming general meeting on 10 June.