SYDNEY, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Australian mining giant BHP Billiton's fiscal 2016 earnings came in at market expectations despite its worst performance in 15 years on the continued commodities rout and a bout of significant impairments.
The global diversified miner on Tuesday announced underlying EBTIDA earnings slumped 44 percent to 12.34 billion U.S. dollars, taking a 6.385 billion U.S. dollar profit loss in the year to June 30 2016.
Excluding the 7.67 billion U.S. dollars in one-off charges from its bad bet on U.S. shale gas and the Samarco tailings dam disaster, underlying profit fell 81 percent to 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, attributed to a 10.7 billion U.S. dollar revenue decline from weaker commodity prices. It's the weakest since BHP and Billiton merged 15 years ago.
"The last 12 months have been challenging for both BHP Billiton and the resources industry," BHP Billiton chief executive Andrew Mackenzie said in statement after the Australian market closed.
"Nevertheless, our results demonstrate the resilience of our portfolio and the diverse ways in which we can create value for shareholders despite low commodity prices."
After scrapping its progressive dividend policy late last year in a bid to shore up its balance sheet, BHP declared a final dividend payout of just 14 U.S. cents per share, fully franked, down 77 percent from fiscal 2015.
"The dividend was a little lower than consensus expectations, but probably not enough to cause concern," CMC Markets chief market analyst Ric Spooner told Xinhua, noting underlying results were marginally ahead of the market's 1.1 billion U.S. dollar expectation.
"The headline loss was not as bad (either)."
In anticipation of BHP's earnings, its Australian based stock were up 9 Australian cents (6.94 U.S. cents), or 0.45 percent at 20.25 Australian dollars (15.62 U.S. dollars).
The market however will take a positive step on the BHP's continued focus on productivity gains in its latent capacity, which the company claims will support volume growth of up to four percent in the next fiscal year, excluding its U.S. onshore interests which remain idle.
With costs cuts and a reduction in net debt, the global heavyweight expects to generate more than 7 billion U.S. dollars in free cash flow in fiscal 2017 at current commodity prices, thanks to the reshaping of its portfolio mix.
"While commodity prices are expected to remain low and volatile in the short to medium term, we are confident in the long-term outlook for our commodities, particularly oil and copper," Mackenzie said.
In early London trade, BHP Billiton's shares were up 12 pounds sterling (15.52 U.S. dollars), or 1.15 percent at 1,054.50 pounds sterling (1,364.15 U.S. dollars).
