BHP smashed all dividend estimates when it announed an interim dividend of US1.50 (A$2.10*) this morning, despite having pumped more funds into the long-running repair and compensation programs linked to the 2015 Samarco dam disaster and having excluded its petroleum assets from the result as they are classified as discontinued assets given they will shortly be offloaded to Woodside Petroleum. (* exact conversion to be advised on 28/2/22)
The profit of US$9.71 billion for the past six months was a big improvement on the $US6 billion underlying profit posted by BHP in February last year and was not far below the company’s biggest ever half-year profit, which was $US10.7 billion in February 2011. If BHP’s petroleum assets were included in today's profit result, BHP would have come close to beating that record profit with $US10.6 billion worth of half-year earnings.
Here are the full results:
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And in addition to all those lovely dividends there are also all those juicy franking credits, further fattened by the fully franked 'in specie' allocation of Woodside shares before 30 June. Let the good times roll!
P.S. And what a day it has been: BHP came out with all guns blazing and hitting a high of $49.88 shortly after opening, before giving up all those gains for a loss of fifteen cents on the day but still thirty-four cents above its intra-day low of $47.84. Huge fluctuations for such a dinosaur!
