Antofagasta Raises Dividend on Strong 1st Half Earnings

Antofagasta PLC (ANTO.LN) on Tuesday more than tripled its interim dividend payment after reporting a sharp rise in earnings, citing higher copper prices, increased sales volumes and tight cost management.

The Chilean copper miner recorded pretax profit of $689.1 million for the six months ended June 30, up from $276.5 million pretax profit in the year ago period, on a revenue of $2.05 billion and $1.44 billion, respectively.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the interim period increased 88% to $1.08 billion mainly due to higher revenue. First-half copper production rose 7.1% to 346,300 tons.

The FTSE100-listed company declared a dividend of 10.3 cents per share for the period, versus 3.1 cents paid a year ago.

Antofagasta has reiterated its copper-production guidance range of 685,000 and 720,000 tons and net cash costs guidance of $1.30 a pound for 2017. Capital expenditure guidance for the year is also unchanged at $900 million.

Write to Tapan Panchal at tapan.panchal@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 22, 2017 02:41 ET (06:41 GMT)