The Rio Tinto Ltd (ASX: RIO) share price will be on watch on Thursday.
That's because the mining giant released its half year results after the market close today.
Let's see how the miner performed during the first half.
Rio Tinto share price on watch
For the six months ended 30 June, Rio Tinto reported a small increase in consolidated sales revenue to US$26.87 billion.
The drivers of this modest growth were its Aluminium, Copper, and Minerals segments, which offset an 18% decline in Iron Ore revenue to US$12,518 billion for the half.
Aluminium revenue increased 20% to US$7.75 billion, copper revenue jumped 41% to US$6.2 billion, and minerals revenue rose 5% to US$2.9 billion.
However, margin pressures in the Iron Ore and Minerals segments meant that Rio Tinto's first half underlying EBITDA fell 5% to US$11.55 billion and underlying earnings dropped 16% to US$4.8 billion.
This led to the Rio Tinto board electing to cut its dividend by 16% to US$1.48 per share. This represents a US$2.4 billion dividend and a 50% payout ratio.
'Very resilient financial results'
Rio Tinto's outgoing chief executive, Jakob Stausholm, was pleased with the half. He said:
We are delivering very resilient financial results with an improving operational performance helped by our increasingly diversified portfolio. Underlying EBITDA of $11.5 billion and operating cash flow of $6.9 billion, despite a 13% lower iron ore price, demonstrate the growing contribution from our Aluminium and Copper businesses and our Pilbara operations' strong recovery from the four cyclones in the first quarter. We are reporting underlying earnings of $4.8 billion (after taxes and government royalties of $4.8 billion).
Our strong cash flow enables us to maintain our practice of a 50% interim payout with a $2.4 billion ordinary dividend, as we continue our disciplined investment in profitable growth while retaining a strong balance sheet. We are well positioned to generate value from our best-in-class project execution, together with growing demand for our products, now and over the coming decades. We remain on track to deliver strong mid-term production growth, with solid foundations in place and a diverse pipeline of options for the future.
Outlook
All guidance has been reaffirmed for FY 2025. This includes Pilbara shipments of 323Mt to 338Mt and copper production at the higher end of 780kt to 850kt.
Though, it is worth noting that management now expects its Pilbara shipments to be at the low end of this guidance range.
Pilbara iron ore unit costs are still expected to be US$23 to $24.50 per tonne, whereas copper unit costs are now expected to be 110 US cents to 130 US cents per pound. This is down from 130 US cents to 150 US cents previously.
