Australian mining giant has posted a record full-year loss of 6.385 billion U.S dollars on significant one-off write-downs as weaker commodities prices hurt its bottom line, the company said on Tuesday.
BHP Billiton's slump in profit was largely driven by a 31 percent drop in revenue due to plunging commodity prices with 10.7 billion U.S. dollars being wiped off its pre-tax earnings.
"The last 12 months have been challenging for both BHP Billiton and the resources industry," chief executive Andrew Mackenzie said.
Besides weak commodities prices, the company's profit was also dented by the billions of dollars in asset value write-downs and other one-off costs. The major costs came from cutting the value of its U.S. shale oil and gas assets by 4.9 billion U.S dollars, the Samarco iron ore disaster in Brazil by 2.2 billion U.S dollars and money set aside for global taxation reassessments by 570 million U.S. dollars. This is the mining giants' first annual loss since BHP and Billiton merged 15 years ago.
The company declared a final dividend of 14 U.S. cents per share, down 77 percent from last year's final payout of 62 U.S. cents.
At the market's close yesterday, BHP Billiton shares rose 0.45 percent, at 20.25 Australian dollars (15.60 U.S. dollars) each.
Latest comments