Miner Antofagasta reported lower interim profits due to a volatile copper price, a drought in Chile and concentrate pipeline problems at its Los Pelambres operation.
Core earnings fell 47.5% to $1.24bn on lower revenue and operating costs that increased by 6.9% mainly due to higher input prices. Revenue was down by a third to $2.53bn due to lower copper and by-product sales volumes and lower realised copper prices.
“We expect the remainder of the year to look very different from the first half – as production improves quarter-on-quarter, we ship and sell the concentrate that was impacted by the concentrate pipeline incident, and the desalination plant at Los Pelambres starts, significantly alleviating the issue of water availability. We remain on track to produce our revised guidance of 640-660,000 tonnes of copper for the full year,” the company said on Thursday.
Reporting by Frank Prenesti at Sharecast.com
