Copper market’s biggest whale fuels speculation of a major shift
The world’s single biggest buyer of copper, State Grid Corp. of China, has slowed its purchases of copper wire this year.
Europe’s largest copper producer Aurubis AG reported first-half core profit above expectations on Wednesday, helped by lower electricity and gas prices.
Aurubis’ first-half core profit, also known as operating earnings before taxes, rose 2% to 243 million euros ($260.96 million) from the same time last year, beating the consensus estimate of 233 million euros expected in a company poll.
Group revenue for the first half of the year fell 6% to 8.25 billion euros, roughly in line with expectations of 8.27 billion euros.
Second-quarter core profit, at 132 million euros, increased 16% from the year-ago period, while revenue fell 7% to 4.35 billion euros.
Revenue was down mostly on lower copper prices and a drop in copper shape sales such as bars and sheets, Aurubis said, with demand from the construction sector particularly muted.
Lower sulfuric acid sales, which it sells to industry, and lower refining charges for the processing of recycling materials also crimped revenue, the company said.
But the firm’s first half result was boosted by “considerably higher” treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs) stemming from higher copper concentrate throughput at its sites, Aurubis added.
Miners pay TC/RCs to smelters to process copper concentrate into refined metal, offsetting the cost of the ore.
Aurubis reiterated its guidance for the year even as it said an increase in global smelting capacity and limited growth in concentrate supply from the mining industry would likely hold down TC/RCs for the year. It said long-term contracts meant it had “limited” exposure to developments in the spot market.
The company’s shares had closed almost 11% lower last Friday after analysts at UBS warned that low TC/RCs would hit its earnings.
($1 = 0.9312 euros)
(By Louis van Boxel-Woolf and Paolo Laudani; Editing by Jamie Freed and Eileen Soreng)
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