Anglo American Pulls Back
Vidya Ram, 12.17.08, 06:30 AM EST
forbes.com
The miner delays projects in the hope of an economic recovery, leaving BHP as the only large rival not to do the same.
Anglo American PLC
12/17/2008 9:40AM ET
Anglo American has joined rivals Rio Tinto and Xstrata in announcing plans to slash expenditure on developing new projects, from copper to iron ore, leaving BHP Billiton as the sole large miner to have not significantly cut back on production.
Anglo's chief executive, Cynthia Carroll, said the company's capital expenditure had been capped at $4.5 billion, a fall of just over 50.0%, as it mothballed a number of key projects. Its Anglo Platinum subsidiary is deferring the building of a new shaft at Amandelbult in South Africa, while the expansion of Los Bronces, a Chilean copper mine, will be delayed to the end of 2011. Minas-Rio in Brazil will not begin producing iron ore until that time either, representing a six-to-twelve month delay. And Anglo is responding to lower demand for coal by cutting production of the commodity to "marginally below 2008 levels."
Shares of Anglo American fell 1.1%, to 15.48 pounds ($23.94) in London, performing slightly better than the European mining sector which fell 2.3%. Unlike Rio Tinto (nyse: RTP - news - people ), which announced earlier this month that it would be cutting 14,000 jobs, Anglo said the impact on jobs was still under discussion with governments and unions. (See "Slimmer Rio Leads The Way.")
"Anglo American and other big miners have pushed back volume growth, from base metals to iron ore, which means if volume has fallen and prices have fallen, profits have got to fall as well," said Charles Cooper, an analyst at Evolution Securities in London.
He noted that BHP Billiton (nyse: BHP - news - people ), which last month walked away from a takeover bid for Rio Tinto, stood out among the large diversified miners in not following this trend. He said BHP could be seeking to capture more market share, including from Rio Tinto in iron ore, as its rivals pulled back.
The darkening economic outlook for China has added to the gloom over the mining sector, which had counted on demand there to spur future growth. |
