Impairments hammer BHP, which has a long road back

The income statement was also hammered by adjustments. After tax allowances, exceptional items wiped $7.7bn (£5.9bn) from the bottom line, thanks to a costly $4.9bn impairment to the company's onshore US shale assets and the $2.2bn in impairments and provisions set aside for last November's iron ore tailings dam failure at Samarco, Brazil. Even on an underlying basis, attributable profit declined by a whopping 81 per cent in the period, explaining the miner's decision to slash the final dividend to 14¢ per share. And while there was no increase in net debt from the half-year stage, this should be seen in the context of a 42 per cent decline in capital and exploration expenditure to $6.4bn.

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One source of optimism came in the copper division, which despite witnessing a drop in average realised prices from $2.78 per pound to $2.14, managed to beat unit cash cost guidance by 6 per cent at $1.20 per pound. Higher concentrate throughput at the Escondida mine - which last year accounted for 62 per cent of underlying cash profits from copper - is expected to push unit costs back to just $1.00 in the 2017 financial year. Against this backdrop, Mr Mckenzie singled out copper and petroleum as the commodities which should rebalance quickest, though the longer-term outlook for iron ore remains choppy.

Prior to these results, analysts at Canaccord Genuity were forecasting adjusted EPS of 56¢ for the year to June 2017, against 20¢ in FY2016.