Thursday 19 August 2021 9:58 am | Updated: Saturday 06 November 2021 8:50 pm

Antofagasta doubles EBITDA but sees shares dragged by falling oil prices

Gold is becoming harder to pull out of the ground while the haven asset is reaching record market prices.

Antofagasta, a Chile-based mining group, has published strong interim results with EBITDA hitting a record $2.4bn, up 132.7 per cent year on year.

Revenue for the first half of 2021 was $3.6bn a 68 per cent jump compared to the same period in 2020 while profit before tax surged to $1.8bn, a £1.4bn increase.

Shares nosedived in the group’s early trading, down 5.13 per cent to a total share price of 1,395.00 – after a collapse in oil prices today sent shares in a string of industrial and mining firms plummeting.

Shareholders received a bumper payout on the back of the London listed company’s performance. An interim dividend of 23.6 cents per share was issued to investors, an increase of 281 per cent compared to last year.

Antofagasta CEO Iván Arriagada said: “We have seen strong copper demand and prices at multi-year highs over the first half of this year which has contributed to the robust financial performance of the Group.”

Half year revenue was boosted by an increase in the realised price of copper by 79.5 per cent while revenues from by-products of the mining process increased by 45 per cent. This increase caused cash flow from operations to rise by 171.3 per cent in the period, reaching $2.5bn.

Arriagada noted that “The half year was not without challenges” pointing out that the company is carrying out “operations and projects under COVID-19 conditions” and with adverse environmental conditions.

The company warned that 2021 has been the direst of a 12-year drought in Chile which hampers the production of copper. As a result Antofagasta revised its copper production guidance downward for the rest of the year, from estimates of 730-760,000 tonnes to 710-740,000.