Tuesday 22 October 2013

Bhp Billiton qtr1 operational review

BHP Billiton

A diversified natural resources company and among the world’s largest producers of major commodities, including aluminium, coal, copper, iron ore, manganese, nickel, silver and uranium, and has substantial interests in oil and gas.  I have a holding in my income portfolio (epic code: BLT).



BHP Billiton updated the market today on their first quarter.  They state that they have maintained strong momentum in the quarter with production increasing by 11% from last year.
 
By major resources:
 
Iron ore production has been raised by 23% over last year and optimisation of the WAIO supply chain continues to unlock substantial value with the 2014 financial year production guidance raised to 192 million tones (BLT’s share), compared to 170m tones last year and previous guidance of 188m tonnes. 
 
Total petroleum production for the quarter was a record 62.7m boe up 2% on last year.  Guidance of 250m boe remains unchanged for the year.
 
Although copper production rose by 6% on last year, it declined by 13% from the last quarter due to planned maintenance, industrial action and lower copper ore grades at Escondida. The expectation for the full year is for copper production to be at a similar level to last year at 1.2m tones for the year. 
 
Metallurgical coal production was up 14% on last year, but down 6% on last quarter due an extended outage at Dendrobium and a scheduled longwall move at West Cliff.
Guidance of 41m tonnes remains unchanged for the year.
 
Energy coal production was up 3% on last year.  Guidance of 73m tonnes remains unchanged for the year.
 
A solid review and the 2% uplift in the guidance for iron ore production provides good support for the SP.

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