Archived article
Please note that tax, investment, pension and ISA rules can change and the information and any views contained in this article may now be inaccurate.
BHP said it expected to output to improve in the fiscal year after the miner saw group annual copper equivalent production decline amid several unplanned outages and adverse weather.
For the year, production was group copper equivalent production for the 2019 financial year declined by 2%, as the miner exceeded full year production guidance for petroleum and met its downwardly revised guidance for copper and iron ore.
Copper output fell 4% to 1,689,000 tonnes and iron ore output was flat at 238Mt.
Metallurgical coal and energy coal production, meanwhile, was marginally below guidance, which the company blamed mainly on lower than expected wash plant yields and adverse weather impacts during the June 2019 quarter.
The company said it expected to record a negative movement of approximately US$1 billion for the 2019 financial year following unplanned production outages of US$835m during the first half.
Looking ahead to fiscal 2020, the company expected group copper equivalent production to be 'slightly higher' than the 2019 financial year despite a 7% decline in petroleum volumes largely due to natural field decline.
Petroleum output was expected to decline by 4% to 9% within a range of 110 MMboe. to 116MMboe. Copper output was expected to rise by 1% to 8% within a range of 1.705m tonnes to 1.82m tonnes, while Iron ore was expected to be up by 2%to 8%.
'Our overall production was broadly in line with last year, overcoming the impacts of weather, grade and natural field decline, and unplanned outages in the first half,' said BHP Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Macken.
'Our exploration program delivered encouraging results, with seven out of nine petroleum wells successful and further evaluation of the Oak Dam copper prospect underway. Strong underlying performance puts us in a position to deliver higher volumes in the 2020 financial year.'