De Beers may have launched a confident new marketing campaign this month, but the diamond business isn’t firing on all cylinders with its co-owner Anglo American having written down its value as revenues have fallen.
De Beers recently launched a new marketing campaign – DR
Hopes that the business — which is also co-owned by the government of Botswana — would be listed on the London Stock Exchange are also fading after Anglo American (which itself is listed in London and is a member of the elite FTSE 100 index) cut the value of its D Beers business.
It has reduced its stated value to £3.2 billion from £5.5 billion, the second writedown in two years. CEO Duncan Wanblad also said in a Bloomberg interview that a sale of De Beers was now more likely than a stock market listing. That comes as Anglo-American is focusing on its copper and iron ore businesses.
But its unclear how big the interest in De Beers will be given falling popularity for mined diamonds and a slump in Chinese consumer spending. That’s also reflected in Anglo American’s new rough diamond production guidance for the year of 20 million-23 million carats from 33 million carats.
So just how has De Beers performed? Within its own annual results for 2024, Anglo-American said De Beers production was lower last year, “reflecting a proactive response to a prolonged period of lower demand and higher than normal levels of inventory in the midstream”.
De Beers underlying EBITDA swung from a profit of $72 million in 2023 (the parent company reports in US dollars) to a loss of $25 million. De Beers’ revenue fell 23% year-on-year to $3.29 billion, mainly on the back of a 25% drop in rough diamond sales at $2.7 billion in 2024, down from $3.6 billion in 2023. Rough diamond volume sales fell 28%.
As mentioned, the rise of lab-grown diamonds has coincided with slumping demand from China, which was once the second-largest market globally for diamond jewellery. De Beers said that the diamond jewellery market fell by between 3% and 4% in 2024. And even in the world’s biggest diamond jewellery market – the US – demand dropped 2%, although the company also said that the lab-grown impact on the market could have peaked.
