Petra Diamonds CEO Richard Duffy resigns amid debt crunch

PETRA Diamonds today announced the resignation of its CEO Richard Duffy ending nearly six – largely difficult – years at the company blighted by poor trading conditions and forcing the UK-listed firm into two rounds of restructuring.Duffy’s departure, which is “by mutual agreement and with immediate effect” appears relatively sudden as he will be replaced on a temporary basis by Vivek Gadodia and Juan Kemp who have been appointed Petra’s joint interim CEOs.Vivek serves on Petra’s executive committee as its chief restructuring officer, a role to which he was appointed last year to oversee the latest restructuring. Kemp was appointed as Petra’s chief operations officer for Cullinan mine in 2024. Neither Gadodia and Kemp will yet be appointed as directors, Petra said.“It’s been an honour and a privilege to serve Petra for the past almost six years,” said Duffy in a statement. Shares in the company are about 10.5% lower year-to-date taking losses over 12 months to 34.42%.Commenting in its interim results announcement, Petra said on Monday that the hefty decline in interim adjusted Ebitda – which came in at $15m compared to $38m in the first half of the 2024 financial year – meant it had failed to meet certain leverage and interest covenant ratios for a revolving credit facility (RCF) with South African bank Absa.Absa had waived the covenant breaches, however.“Petra continues to have sufficient liquidity headroom to meet the liquidity covenant requirements under the RCF and 2L Notes,” the company said. It had R50m left in the RCF.The 2L notes amount to $273m in debt that is due to mature in March 2026. Petra said today it had shelved a programme to opportunistically buy-back the notes in favour of a more onerous sit-down with lenders aimed at restructuring the debt.Meanwhile, another pass at an operational restructuring, initially planned for announcement in December or January, has been pushed out to March. The last plan was a rejig of the company’s capital spend over five years and cut cost aimed at generating $180m in cash flow over that period, even at conservative diamond prices.As of December 31, Petra’s consolidated net debt increased to $215m (June 30: $193m) owing to diamond market weakness and the timing of tenders. This was despite registering positive operating cash flow of $16m (vs first half of the 2024 financial year: -$21m), a result of cost cutting measures.Diamond prices have failed to improve over the last two years owing to the growth of synthetic of lab-grown diamonds, and a slump in China. Reuters recently reported that marriages plummted 20% last year amid difficult economic conditions.Duffy was key in saving Petra from bankruptcy when in 2019 he presided over the recapitalisation of the firm’s balance sheet through a share issue representing more than 90% of the firm’s total share capital.The post Petra Diamonds CEO Richard Duffy resigns amid debt crunch appeared first on Miningmx.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com