Australia's South32 profit beats estimates; announces $200 mln share buyback
Recasts paragraph 1, add details throughout, analyst quote in paragraph 8; share move in paragraph 9
Aug 29 (Reuters) -Diversified miner South32 S32.AX posted a 59% drop in its annual profit that beat market expectations on Thursday and said it will buy back $200 million worth of shares, after it outlined a return to growth for its Australian manganese operations.
South32, the world's biggest producer of manganese, said in a statement that it is continuing to implement the operational recovery plan for its Australian manganese operations which were hurt by a temporary suspension of a major mine earlier this year.
The company expects to produce around 1 million wet metric tons (wmt) of manganese in fiscal 2025 from its Australian operations. As operational recovery is completed, production is expected to increase to 3.2 million wmt in fiscal 2026.
The underlying earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) for its Australia manganese division declined to $61 million in the year ended June 30, from $266 million a year ago.
The miner's Illawarra metallurgical coal operations, recently sold for $1.65 billion to an Indonesian company-led consortium, were hurt by lower realized prices and reduced shipments, resulting in its underlying EBIT falling to $441 million, sharply dropping from $714 million a year ago.
South32 added itis aiming to secure the necessary environmental approvals for its Worsley mine development project by 2024-end.
Underlying profit at South32 for the reported period dropped to $380 million, from $916 million a year ago. But it beat a Visible Alpha consensus estimate of $334.2 million.
"They (the management) have been pretty disciplined in managing their costs and overall they have done a bit better than people expected on production," said Sudhir Kissun, an investment analyst at Allan Gray.
Shares of the company, however, fell 0.2% to A$3.075 in early trade.
South32 declared a final dividend of 3.1 cents per share, compared with 3.2 cents a year earlier.
Reporting by John Biju and Sneha Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Rashmi Aich
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