LONDON: Rio Tinto Group will pay its highest interim dividend in four years as first-half profit soared on strong commodity prices and a restructuring drive that boosted earnings.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s second-biggest miner posted a 43% increase in underlying profit to US$6.85bil, lifting its interim dividend to US$2.11 per share, the highest since 2022.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s Sydney-listed shares rose more than 5% in early trading.<\/p>\n
The higher earnings were driven by a US$3.6bil benefit from stronger commodity prices, the company said in filings.<\/p>\n
Prices for copper, a key growth business for the company, have climbed about 10% this year, driven by supply disruptions and demand boost from data centres.<\/p>\n
Over the reporting period Rio found US$870mil in cost savings through productivity efforts. It plans to find further savings, bringing the total to US$1.8bil by year-end.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is substantially more to come,\u201d chief executive officer Simon Trott said of the savings, adding the company was in a \u201crelentless pursuit\u201d of operational efficiencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re really seeing productivity become a structural driver of improvement in these numbers,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trott has prioritised slimming down Rio and making it a more simplified business since he was appointed in August last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the strategy involves selling non-core assets to raise US$5bil in 2026, including the company\u2019s titanium and borates divisions.<\/p>\n
While little detail was provided on the timeline for the disposals, management was \u201ccomfortable\u201d with how they were progressing, Trott said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The results also came as strong commodity prices outweighed the impact of China\u2019s economic slowdown, US tariff campaigns and conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Prices of iron ore, Rio\u2019s biggest earner, remained steady over the six-month period, despite plateauing demand from dominant buyer China.<\/p>\n
The company is yet to complete negotiations with state-backed buyer China Mineral Resources Group Co over forward supply agreements. \u2014 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON: Rio Tinto Group will pay its highest interim dividend in four years as first-half profit soared on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20718],"tags":[39833,21219,8795,5357,22805,39832,459,4047,12991,39831],"class_list":["post-93363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rio-tinto","tag-commodityprices","tag-copper","tag-corporate-news","tag-datacentres","tag-dividend","tag-ironore","tag-mining","tag-productivity","tag-rio-tinto","tag-riotinto"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117005919516213542","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}