(Alliance News) - Hochschild Mining PLC on Wednesday posted a vastly lower interim profit, citing costs related to a fire and Covid-related employee absences, but announced the same dividend as a year ago.
The London-based gold and silver miner operating in the Americas said pretax profit in the six months to June 30 plummeted to USD15.3 million from USD97.8 million a year ago. Post-exceptional pretax profit narrowed to USD5.4 million from USD83.8 million.
Revenue fell to USD347.8 million from USD394.8 million, the FTSE250-listed company reported.
It declared an interim dividend of 1.95 US cents, unchanged from a year ago.
Production was in line with internal expectations, Hochschild said. "This was achieved despite more disruption at San Jose from Covid as well as a fire in the mine's crushing area which temporarily affected operations but did not impact our full-year production forecasts," the Peru-focused firm explained.
Attributable gold equivalent production fell 12% to 166,708 ounces from 188,509 ounces a year ago, which Hochschild blamed on lower grades at the Pallancata mine in Peru. Silver equivalent production fell 12% to 12.0 million ounces from 13.6 million.
On top of that, all-in sustaining costs from operations widened by 30% to USD1,371 per gold equivalent ounces, from USD1,055 a year prior. For silver equivalent, the price increase was 29% to USD19.0 from USD14.7. The increased costs were in line with expectations, the firm stated.
Hochschild added it is on track for its 2022 production target of 360,000 to 375,000 gold equivalent ounces.
Hochschild Mining shares dropped 4.0% to 78.06 pence each in London on Wednesday morning.
By Tom Budszus; tombudszus@alliancenews.com
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Hochschild (HOC)