Mining conglomerate on BSE record 7% decline in profits

Anglo America Plc is a prodigious firm in the mining sector. None the less, being big alone does not guarantee year on year success as this year’s half year results indicate Anglo America has recorded a slight decline in profits.

This is according to the company’s half year financial performance report released on Thursday 26th. The Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) listed mining conglomerate underlying EBITDA increased by 11 percent to $4.6 billion (about P47.3 billion) compared to $4.1 billion (about P4.2 billion) registered in the half year ended June 2017.

Anglo reports that this was driven by strong pricing across the Group, particularly in copper and the platinum basket of metals, and continued productivity improvements and cost control across the portfolio, more than offsetting the impact of inflation across the Group and suspension of Minas-Rio operations

The Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mark Cutifani noted that Anglo American has also made good progress against disciplined capital allocation objectives, strengthening the balance sheet with net debt down to $4 billion (about P41 billion), delivering an increase in the dividend commensurate with earnings, and continuing to invest prudently across the business. “This strong financial result derives from our consistent productivity improvements in the underlying operations and a stronger price environment for many of our products,” he said.

Cutifani further stated that his diversified Mining Group has realised significant productivity improvements delivering a further two percentage point improvement in the first six months of 2018. “A 6% increase in copper equivalent production volume helped deliver $0.4 billion (about P4.1 billion) of cost and volume improvements in the first half, out of the $0.8 billion (about P8.2 billion) targeted for the full year, against a backdrop of rising input cost inflation and the temporary suspension at Minas-Rio,” he said…

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