- Dividend down 12 per cent, ahead of rival miners
- Oyu Tolgoi ramp up remains on track
Talk about good timing. Rio Tinto's (RIO) difficult years-long expansion of the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine is now delivering tonnes into a constrained copper market, where stronger prices helped the major miner prop up earnings in a year where they would have tumbled otherwise.
Overall underlying earnings, in line with consensus, were down 12 per cent year on year to $11.8bn (£9.36bn). Other commodity price reversals resulted in a $1.5bn decline in underlying cash profits compared with 2022, largely in the aluminium division. The copper unit reported underlying Ebitda of $1.9bn, down a quarter on the year before, with Oyo Tolgoi partly balancing out the hit to income from a suspension of smelting at the Kennecott operation in the US.