BHP Billiton Ltd paid out a record dividend as profits hit a four-year high on stronger prices and confirmed that it will return the bulk of almost US$11 billion in asset sales to investors.
The world’s top miner yesterday raised its annual dividend 42 percent, including a record final payment, although it said it will wait to confirm how and when it will hand back a further windfall from deals agreed last month to sell US shale assets.
BHP follows Rio Tinto Group and Vale SA in raising payouts, as investors press for greater rewards.
While BHP continues to have a positive outlook bolstered by rising commodities demand in the developed world, it said key oil, copper and coal units are forecast to see rising costs, and also flagged concerns over slower growth in China and global trade tensions.
Full-year underlying earnings jumped 33 percent to US$8.9 billion in the 12 months through June, Melbourne-based BHP said in a statement.
That compared with a US$9.2 billion estimate among analysts’ forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.
The producer booked US$5.2 billion of after-tax impairments, including a previously flagged writedown on the value of the shale assets, a US$2.3 billion charge as a result of US President Donald Trump’s US tax reform and US$650 million of costs related to the deadly Samarco dam failure in Brazil.
The producer is pursuing nine significant projects, spending about US$1 billion on exploration work and could consider a potential acquisition to lift output in conventional oil, chief executive officer Andrew Mackenzie said.
“We are really pulling the growth lever pretty hard,” he told reporters on a conference call.
BHP will seek to accelerate conventional oil production to capture better prices, he said.
Output from offshore oil and gas assets is forecast to fall as much as 6 percent in the current fiscal year as fields decline.
The producer’s cash pile is being boosted after it struck the deals last month to sell US shale assets, including to BP PLC.
The net proceeds will be returned once the agreements are completed, Mackenzie said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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