Photo by: Duane Daws
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The share price of diversified miner Exxaro Resources fell by nearly 5.5% late on Tuesday after the company announced that its headline earnings for the six months to June 30 would be at least 20%, or R563-million, lower than the headline earnings of R2.8-billion recorded in the first half of the prior financial year.
The lower headline earnings were mainly attributable to lower earnings from the Sishen Iron Ore Company equity-accounted investment owing to significantly lower export iron-ore prices during the period under review.
As such, headline earnings per share (HEPS) were also likely to be 159c lower than the HEPS of 793c recorded in the six months ended June 2014.
However, the attributable loss for the six-month period to June 30 was likely to show an improvement of at least 20%, or about R488-million, compared with the attributable loss of R2.44-billion for the prior comparative period.
The expected improvement was primarily owing to the R5.2-billion nonrecurring post-tax impairment loss on the Mayoko iron-ore project incurred in the six months to June 2014.
The company would release its interim results on August 20.
Exxaro’s share price on the JSE was trading at R88.39 at 16:34 on Tuesday, down 5.47% on Monday’s close of R93.50.