Business Don't miss out on the headlines from Business. Followed categories will be added to My News. Minerals Resources is pinning its hopes on a transition to lower cost iron ore mining over the next year, after cancelling its dividend for the first time in more than a decade as plunging lithium prices punched a hole in its profits.
MinRes revenue came in at $5.28bn, up 10 per cent on the previous year, while underlying net profit fell 79 per cent to $158m. Net debt more than doubled to $4.
43bn, up from $1.89bn the previous year. MinRes shares tumbled more than 8 per cent in early trade on Thursday to $40.
36, hitting a 12-month low and well off the $79.76 high the shares were trading at in May. The company, led by founder Chris Ellison , was paid $US1279 per tonne for its lithium last financial year, down 76 per cent on the $US5267 it was paid the previous year.
Mr Ellison said on Thursday morning that with the price of lithium at the lowest it has been in six or seven years, “no one in the industry is making any money’’. Mr Ellison said the focus for this year on the mining front was to ramp up iron ore mining at the company’s Onslow operations, after deciding earlier this year to shut down its high cost Yilgarn iron ore operations after 13 years. “We have traditionally had relatively high cost iron ore operations compared to our peers,’’ Mr Ellison said.
“Obviously the large mining organisations had the first pick of the great deposits in iron ore - high g.