Atlas Mining swings to P1.9 billion profit in H1

MANILA, Philippines — Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. posted a net income of P1.94 billion in the first half of the year, a turnaround from its P190 million net loss in the same period last year.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, Atlas attributed the positive growth to higher metal prices and increased production.

“Net income improvement benefited from higher metal prices and improved production and shipment volumes in the second quarter,” Atlas said.

Average copper prices grew by 70 percent in the second quarter to $4.21 per pound, while gold price also increased by 10 percent to $1,821 per ounce compared to the same period last year.

Apart from higher metal prices, the company also attributed the improved income to higher copper production and shipments of its wholly-owned subsidiary Carmen Copper Corp. in the second quarter.

This was largely due to improvement in grades and milling tonnage.

On a quarterly basis, copper metal produced jumped by 43 percent to 22.8 million pounds from 15.93 million pounds.

Similarly gold produced also increased by nine percent to 5,829 ounces from 5,346 ounces in the previous quarter.

However, on a yearly basis, copper metal production declined to 38.73 million pounds from 54.17 million in the same period last year, largely due to the decrease in copper grades by 26 percent as ore milled in the first quarter was sourced from stockpiles.

Gold production also declined year-on-year by 51 percent to 11,176 ounces from 22,815 ounces due to lower gold grades.

Atlas reported that its cash costs decreased by 10 percent  to P4.26 billion due to overall lower volumes of shipments and production.