BHP Billiton post record production and lowest injury rate

BHP Billiton’s Full year results announcement to the ASX this afternoon have shown revenue growth of 1.9 per cent, representing a $67.2 billion increase.

Profits have increased 23.2 per cent to 13.8 billion, resulting in a fully franked dividend of US 62 cents per share, compared with 59 cents on the preceeding year.

Leaving behind some of the boom era expansion, the global miner has been able to reduce capital and exploration expenditure by 32 per cent, taking the present expenditure down to US$15.2 billion, enabling a US$8.1 billion increase in cash flow despite the weaker commodity prices.

The expenditure is forecast to decline by a further US$400 million in FY2015.

Net debt for BHPB is currently sitting at US$25.8 billion.

CEO Andrew MacKenzie said the last 12 months has seen BHP Billiton deliver on their commitments.

“Our operational performance continued to improve, enabling us to exceed production guidance for a number of our core commodities including iron ore, metallurgical coal and petroleum liquids,” he said.

“Productivity-led volume and cost efficiencies of US$2.9 billion were US$1.1 billion ahead of the plan, meaning we have now embedded more than US$6.6 billion of sustainable, annualised productivity-led gains over the last two years.”

The ramping up of core assets over the preceeding years have enabled BHP to exceed guidance for the FY2014, with group production increased by 9 per cent.

Businesses which best exceeded guidance include iron ore with 225Mt production for the year, 37.6 Mt of coal in Queensland, petroleum which increased 18 per cent to 106 MMboe thanks to growth in US oil fields.

Manganese alloy, alumina, copper, and thermal coal succeeded in exceeding guidance, but by smaller margins, and will form the key elements of the upcoming ‘NewCo’ demerger.

Aluminium, manganese ore, gas and nickel all failed to exceed guidance. Aluminium and Manganese will also be demergered, while gas is retained, although the future for the Nickelwest operation is uncertain with BHP continuing to review the business to determine whether to spin off the asset.

In order to maximise returns on the capital invested in their iron ore business in recent years, BHP have set target guidance for production at 245 MT by end of FY2015, although their target capacity is set at a massive 290 Mtpa.

BHP say this additional capacity will be one of the lowest cost expansion opportunities in the industry with a capital intensity below US$50 per tonne.

BHP Billiton have also reported a record low Total Reportable Injury frequency of 4.2 per million hours, down 51 per cent from 8.5 in FY2005.

Leave a Reply

Send this to a friend