Aurubis misses Q3 earnings expectations as recycling profit falls
Adds last year's metals theft and segment results in paragraphs 3-6, maintenance shutdown in paragraph 7, outlook in paragraph 8
By Louis van Boxel-Woolf
Aug 5 (Reuters) -Europe's largest copper producer Aurubis NAFG.DE reported third-quarter earnings before tax (EBT) below expectations on Monday, weighed down by lower recycling profits and sulfuric acid prices.
Aurubis faces fierce competition from Chinese metal recyclers. Outgoing CEO Roland Harings had called for a "level playing field" in the market during a second-quarter earnings call, though he said that protection was unnecessary.
The group's quarterly EBT rose five-fold to 90 million euros ($98.4 million) compared to the same period last year, which was affected by a major metals theft in its smelting business. That missed expectations of 99 million euros in a company-provided poll.
Compared to two years ago, the earnings were down 13%.
Third-quarter EBT at its custom smelting and products business was 82 million euros, also down 13% from the fiscal 2021-22, the last comparable year after Aurubis revised down last year's results for the segment.
Meanwhile, quarterly EBT at its multimetal recycling business, which extracts metals from scrap and whose results were not directly affected by the theft, fell 14% from last year to 34 million euros.
Aurubis, which also sells sulfuric acid as a by-product of processing copper, however said the third-quarter result was the best in its history with a major shutdown, referring to the planned maintenance at its Hamburg plant that concluded in July.
The company, which deals in metals such as gold and platinum in addition to copper, confirmed its guidance for the full year.
($1 = 0.9147 euros)
Reporting by Louis van Boxel-Woolf in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi
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