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LONDON (Alliance News) - Mineral & Financial Investments Ltd on Tuesday said it swung to a profit in the first half of 2016, benefiting from gains on its investments.
The investment company said it made a pretax profit of GBP140,000 in the six months to the end of June, having suffered a GBP211,000 pretax loss in the first half of 2015.
During the half, Mineral & Financial earned a total income of GBP209,000 from gains on investments, whereas it made a loss on total income of GBP136,000 the prior year.
Its net asset value rose by 15% to 7.47 pence per share.
"Although it would be premature to trumpet a full recovery in the mining equity markets, there was some evidence of improvement in the sector during the first half of the year as the prices of many commodities came off multi-year lows and companies found markets increasingly open to fundraisings," Chief Investment Officer Alastair Ford said in a statement.
"That in turn led to some improvement in valuations, although in terms of equities there is still much ground to be made up," he added.
Shares in Mineral & Financial were trading down 2.5% at 5.85 pence on Tuesday morning.
By Karolina Kaminska; karolinakaminska@alliancenews.com @KarolinaAllNews
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