Anglo-Australian mining multinational Rio Tinto plc (LON:RIO) have seen their share price rally during Wednesday trading, owing largely to its latest performance figures.
Sales boost Rio Tinto profits
Following news of the selling off of its Grasberg mine in Indonesia and technological revelations at their Australian mining operations, Rio Tinto today booked impressive performance figures. The company saw a 56% jump in annual profits on the back of asset sales, particularly in the coal space. For the year through December, net earnings climbed to $13.64 billion, while underlying earnings rose 2% to $8.81 billion.
Chief Executive, J-S Jacques, said,”These strong results reflect the efforts of the team to implement our value-over-volume strategy as we continued to strengthen the portfolio and invest in future growth,”
“Our world-class portfolio and strong balance sheet will serve us well in all market conditions, and underpin our ability to continue to invest in our business and deliver superior returns to shareholders in the short, medium and long term.”
As a portfolio candidate
Following a fourth quarter operations review, production guidance for 2019 was left unrevised. Similarly, it was expected that capital expenditure would remain at approximately $6 billion in 2019, with this figure forecast to increase to $6.5 billion for the following two years.
The company have also declared dividends of 307c per share, a 6% jump on-year. Shares are currently trading up 1.04% or 45.5p at 4,431.5p per share 27/02/19 16:06 GMT. Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley have reiterated their ‘Equal Weight’ stances on Rio Tinto stock, while Goldman Sachs have upgraded their rating from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Buy’ and Credit Suisse have downgraded their rating from ‘Outperform’ to ‘Neutral’.