For the first six months of 1990, Cyprus Minerals (NYSE) reported earnings of US$55.5 million, or US$1.17 per share, on revenues of US$894.8 million. The earnings were affected by a pretax US$27.5 million writedown of the company’s investment in the Kanawha coal mine in West Virginia. On an after-tax basis, the writedown amounted to US51 cents per share.
Earnings for the second quarter amounted to US$25.4 million, or US54 cents per share, compared to second-quarter 1989 earnings of US$61.7 million, or US$1.48 per share.
On a segmented basis — before exploration, corporate and other costs — the majority of the company’s earnings came from its copper- molybdenum-gold operations which earned US$61.6 million during the second quarter, a decrease of US$27.2 million over the second quarter of 1989.
The drop was the result of lower sales of produced copper and lower prices, accounting for about US$11 million of the decrease. The balance can be traced to higher costs, averaging about US75 cents per lb. versus US65 cents in the year-earlier period.
The writedown at the company’s coal operations is related to lower than expected reserves in the initial mountain top mining area, higher than anticipated reclamation costs, and poor performance from highwall mining machines. Cyprus Minerals (NYSE) $000s except per-share items* 6 months ended June 30 1990 1989 Revenues $894,800 $889,300 Net earnings 55,500 142,700
per share 1.17 3.44 *US dollars
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