Antofagasta results trigger sell-off

FTSE 100 miner Antofagasta (LON:ANTO) saw its share price drop by 5.44% to 1,086p (as of 11:45 BST)  after reporting a 15.3% decline in revenues for the six months ended 30th June. EBITDA margins for the period were 430 basis points lower which contributed to a 22.4% fall in EBITDA for the period.

CEO Iván Arriagada commented: “Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its impact on consumer markets, the realised copper price was 12.5% lower compared with the same period last year and this impacted our revenue. However, despite these challenges the Group had a strong operating and cost performance with copper production of 371,700 tonnes, sales volumes falling by only 2% compared to the first half of 2019, and a 6% improvement in net cash costs, aided by savings of $78 million from our Cost and Competitiveness Programme.

“As the COVID-19 emergency has unfolded during the period, our focus has been on the health and safety of our employees and contractors, and the communities near our operations. Our growth projects have been temporarily suspended and we have been running our operations with approximately two-thirds of the workforce on-site, with the remainder either quarantining or working remotely. During this period, we also completed our final power contract that will allow all our mining operations to be using 100% renewable power from 2022 at lower cost“.