HIGHER commodity prices and strong operating performances, particularly from its energy minerals, aluminium and diamond businesses, helped the Rio Tinto group achieve its best ever half-year financial result in the six months to June 30,2004. Net earnings reached a record 1.44 billion US dollars, up from 641 million US dollars in the first six months of last year. After adjusting for exceptional items (including one-off gains from asset disposals and a 160 million US dollars write-down on a US coal operation), net profit rose by 55 percent over the year-ago period, to 933 million US dollars. Speaking at a results briefing in London this Thursday, chief executive Leigh Clifford said the group had an especially strong second quarter after enduring a number of operational difficulties in the first three months of the year, including reduced production at the Grasberg copper-gold joint venture in Indonesia following a pit-wall failure last year (MJ, October 10, 2003, p275) and lower output at Rio Tinto's Western Australian iron-ore operations following a tropical cyclone earlier this year (MJ, March 5, p5).
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