The diamond pipeline appears to be heading towards a balance again, as the world’s major producers had reduced supply by a quarter since the beginning of the year, the CFO of Russian miner Alrosa said on Friday.
Commenting on the company’s third-quarter and nine-month results, Alexey Philippovskiy said that the oversupply of polished diamonds and the “challenging situation” in India’s financial sector had had a significant impact on the diamond market.
However, since early August, the prices and demand had “somewhat” stabilised, resulting in increased monthly sales, with total sales adding 7%, 42% and 2% month-on-month.
He noted that Alrosa’s third-quarter financial performance saw “expected pressure” from external factors, with sales down 23% quarter-on-quarter to 6.4-million carats and nine-month sales down 13% year-on-year.
Rough diamond sales in the third quarter decreased by 24% quarter on-quarter to $601-million.
The group reported a 20% quarter-on-quarter drop in revenue to 46-billion ruble. On a year-on-year comparison, revenue fell by 35%.
Net profit dropped 44% quarter-on-quarter and 38% year-on-year to 13.5-billion ruble.