JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Shares in South African gold miner Harmony Gold fell to a 21-month low on Tuesday, extending their losses after Chief Executive Bernard Swanepoel resigned and a poor earnings forecast on Monday.
Harmony shares have lost over a quarter in value over the past two trading sessions and tumbled to 68.50 rand on Tuesday -- its lowest since November 2005, according to Reuters data.
At 0901 GMT the share price stood at 72.25 rand, 10.36 percent down on the day.
The world's fifth-biggest gold producer announced Swanepoel's surprise resignation on Monday and said it expected to post a fourth-quarter headline loss, leading ratings agency Fitch Ratings to place its long-term and short-term Issuer Default Ratings on Rating Watch Negative.
Harmony forecast a headline loss of 130 to 160 cents per share in the three months to end June because of rising costs and a drop in output, and a profit of 20 to 30 cents per share for the 2007 financial year.
The miner reported a headline loss of 269 cents in the previous year.
The resignation of Harmony's founding CEO, together with the earnings estimate, came a week before Harmony had been scheduled to release fourth-quarter results and raised questions about its outlook. It has postponed its earnings statement to August 27.
The share price was likely to remain under pressure until Harmony allayed some of that uncertainty, an analyst in Johannesburg said.
"Unfortunately, I think everything happened too suddenly. The right action in my view is to postpone the results ... I don't see it (the share price) falling 50 or 100 percent but certainly sentiment will not favour Harmony," the analyst said.
"Harmony is a South African company so they've got wage settlements -- too many things add to the uncertainty. Everything that could've gone wrong in the space of a couple of days has actually."
A Harmony spokeswoman said the company would address concerns at its results presentation by acting Chief Executive Graham Briggs.
"Graham Briggs is now acting CEO. He's going to take cognisance of everything in the group ... The market has the percentage ranges on earnings. The actual figures will be released at the presentation," she said.
