SMM’s Recurring Profit Drops by 65% for Fiscal 1H

Sumitomo Metal Mining (SMM) announced on Thursday its consolidated recurring profit for the first 6 months of fiscal 2009 (April-September) dropped by 64.9% to 27.8 billion yen from the corresponding period of fiscal 2008. The profit lowered for Mineral Resources business unit and Metals business unit due to demand decline for base metals such as copper and nickel. Market demand was also low for Electronics & Advanced Materials business unit.

Consolidated net sales for the first 6 months were 32.59 billion yen, down by 33.6% year-to-year. Consolidated operating profit lowered by 50.8% to 23.3 billion yen. Investment profit on equity method, gained from overseas mines such as Cerro Verde mine of Peru, shrank to 9.4 billion yen for April-September 2009 from 34.3 billion yen for the same period of 2008. Recurring profit was impacted despite of SMM’s cost cut effort.

SMM announced its annual capital expenditure plan as 52.7 billion yen for fiscal 2009. The investment for overseas metal resource projects expands to 32.1 billion yen from previously estimated 3.4 billion yen due to non-planned equity acquirement in Pogo gold mine and investment for Nickel Asia Corporation.