Income attributable to equity holders, pre-significant items, decreased to $1.34 billion from $4.28 billion, prior year.
Advertisement
“2017 is going to be very much open to deliberations”, Chief Financial Officer Steven Kalmin said on a call with reporters.
The company reported a USD8.01 billion pretax loss in 2015, swinging from a USD4.25 billion profit in 2014, after a considerable fall in revenue and a large amount of impairments forced Glencore into the red. Glencore on Tuesday expanded its target to cut debt by a further $1 billion to $17 billion by year-end.
“All on eyes on the second quarter for asset sales”, Ben Davis, a mining analyst at Liberum Capital Ltd.in London, said by e-mail.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation tumbled 32% to $8.69bn, although that was in line with analyst expectations, while adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) also fell sharply, plunging 68% year-on-year to $2.17bn.
The Swiss company’s shares plunged 70 percent past year, prompting a debt-reduction plan that included stopping dividends and selling assets and new stock.
“The commodity sector was particularly adversely affected by a succession of disappointing China macroeconomic data, declining oil prices, and the strong U.S. dollar”.
Glasenberg has borne the personal scars of the miner’s annus horribilis as his 8.4% stake in Glencore is worth less than half the £3.4 billion it was worth at the beginning of previous year.
“Our diversified portfolio, based around a core of [top-class] assets, combined with our highly resilient marketing business, underpins our ability to continue to be comfortably cash generative at current and even lower commodity prices”, he said.
Advertisement
Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg LP, is a senior independent non-executive director at Glencore.
