The Fortescue Ltd (ASX: FMG) share price finished February in the green.
Barely.
Shares in the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) iron ore giant closed on 30 January trading for $21. When the closing bell rang on 27 February, shares were swapping hands for $21.14 apiece.
This saw the Fortescue share price edge up 0.7% over the month just past, underperforming the 3.7% gain posted by the ASX 200 over this same time.
One of the headwinds impacting the miner was the declining iron ore price. Iron ore kicked off February trading for around US$109 per tonne, falling some 9% to just under US$100 per tonne by the end of the month.
Here's what else investors were considering.
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Fortescue share price gets a results boost
Fortescue reported its half-year results (H1 FY 2026) on 25 February.
The Fortescue share price closed up 4.7% on the day, with the Aussie miner reporting all-time high iron ore shipments of 100.2 million tonnes, up 3% year on year.
Adding fuel to those record shipments, Fortescue enjoyed a 7% increase in the realised price it received for its Hematite (iron ore), which came out to US$90.87 per dry metric tonne (dmt).
And costs came down over the six months to 31 December. The ASX 200 miner reported Hematite C1 unit costs of US$18.64 per wet metric tonne (wmt), down 3% from H1 FY 2025.
In other core financial metrics, Fortescue raked in revenue of US$8.4 billion over the half year, up 10% year on year. And underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) leapt 23% to US$4.5 billion.
The miner also revealed strong cash flow generation, with net cash flow from operating activities of US$3.2 billion. Free cash flow for the half year came out to US$1.5 billion, after the miner invested US$1.7 billion in capital expenditure.
On the bottom line, Fortescue's net profit after tax (NPAT) surged by 23% from the prior corresponding period to US$1.9 billion.
The Fortescue dividend
The Fortescue share price also looks to have gotten a lift on the day the miner reported its results after management declared a fully-franked interim dividend of 62 Aussie cents per share. That's up 24% from the 2024 interim payout.
Unfortunately, it's a bit too late to grab the latest passive income payout from the ASX 200 miner.
Fortescue stock traded ex-dividend on Monday, 2 March.
At the time of writing, Fortescue shares trade on a 6.2% fully-franked trailing dividend yield.
