CaratGem Diamonds' half-year averages $1,395 a carat, up 38%
The Letšeng producer sold 42,624 carats for $59.5 million in the first half, averaging $1,395 against $1,008 a year earlier. Eight stones cleared $1 million each, for $16.1 million.
§1The half, as published.
Gem Diamonds sold 42,624 carats for $59.5 million in the first half of 2026, an average of $1,395 a carat against $1,008 in the same period a year earlier, a rise of 38%. The figures are the company's own, in a trading update published on 28 July covering 1 January to 30 June. Eight diamonds sold for more than $1 million each and together brought $16.1 million, which is 27% of the half's revenue from eight stones. The highest price of the period was $32,908 a carat, paid for a 52.24-carat white, about $1.72 million for the stone.
The half-year average is below the quarter that opened it, and that is the useful fact. The first-quarter update put revenue at $32.1 million: 16,727 carats from the first export sale of the year at $1,501 a carat, which is $25.1 million, plus a parcel of ten stones above 10.8 carats totalling 363 carats for a further $7.0 million. Those two legs reconcile to the stated $32.1 million exactly, and to 17,090 carats, a blended first-quarter rate of $1,878. Subtracting both from the half leaves about $27.4 million on 25,534 carats for the second quarter, an average near $1,073, roughly 43% below the first quarter's blended rate. That subtraction is this desk's arithmetic across two of the company's own releases and is not a figure Gem Diamonds publishes.
§2Lumps, not a run rate.
The update also names a 346.99-carat recovery at Letšeng, which the company calls the Lesotho Jubilee, and reports no price against it. That is the shape of this producer's accounts: revenue arrives in lumps and the lumps do not respect quarter boundaries. A miner whose half turns on eight stones has a quarter-to-quarter series that carries more information than its half-year one, and the half-year one is what gets reported.
Twenty-seven percent of the half's revenue came from eight stones.
§3Both ends of the size curve.
Set against the rest of the rough market the direction is unchanged. De Beers' realised price for the same half was $105 a carat on revenue of $1.58 billion, down 19%, with an underlying loss of $188 million that was 23% narrower, figures this paper printed on 31 July. Gem Diamonds' $1,395 is thirteen times De Beers' average, and the two are not selling the same product: Letšeng's orebody yields large Type IIa material, and the De Beers book is weighted to the commercial sizes where lab-grown competition is heaviest. A 38% rise at one and a 32% fall at the other are the same market read from opposite ends of the size curve.
The number to hold on to is $1,073, not $1,395. The half-year average blends a strong first quarter with a second quarter that, on this desk's reconstruction, ran about 43% below it, and the year-on-year rise is measured against a first half of 2025 that was among the worst the trade has recorded.
The 346.99-carat recovery is the next test. It will land in a later set of accounts as a single line, and the price it fetches will say whether the top of the natural market is still paying.
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