By Jaime Llinares Taboada

 

Antofagasta PLC on Thursday reported a profit drop for the first half of 2022 and reiterated recently-revised guidance for the full year.

The Chile-focused copper mining company made a pretax profit of $679.6 million for the first six months of 2022, down from $1.78 billion a year earlier.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization plunged 48% to $1.24 billion, reflecting lower copper production and prices, and higher costs. This was slightly below the market consensus of $1.26 billion--provided by Vuma and averaged from 13 analysts' estimates.

Antofagasta declared an interim dividend of 9.2 U.S. cents a share, down from 23.6 cents in 2021.

The group reiterated 2022 guidance, with copper production of 640,000-660,000 metric tons at a net cash cost of $1.65 a pound.

"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," Chief Executive Ivan Arriagada said.

 

Write to Jaime Llinares Taboada at jaime.llinares@wsj.com; @JaimeLlinaresT

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 11, 2022 02:42 ET (06:42 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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