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Anglo American has written down the value of its De Beers diamond business for the second time in two years.
The London-listed miner said on Thursday it had booked an impairment charge of $2.9bn on the unit, which it is seeking to offload. That follows the $1.6bn writedown of De Beers in its annual results last year.
Impairment charges helped to push Anglo to a $3.1bn net loss in 2024, down from a $283mn profit the previous year.
The charge comes as Anglo races to execute a turnaround plan following last year’s $39bn takeover attempt by rival BHP.
Anglo fended off the bid, promising instead to overhaul the company by offloading businesses by the end of 2025 in order to focus on copper and iron ore.
Anglo has made progress on three of the four main elements of its restructuring plan, selling its steelmaking coal assets and this week announcing the planned sale of its nickel business and preparations for the spin-off of its platinum arm.
But divesting De Beers has been more challenging. Anglo chief executive Duncan Wanblad admitted last year that offloading the unit would be the hardest part of the transformation plan. He said this month that it was “not impossible” that the company would still have De Beers “early next year”.
Diamond prices have fallen over the past decade, and the market has come under recent pressure from the rise in popularity of cheaper lab-grown diamonds and the pullback in consumer spending in China.
