"And we absolutely support the call for increased transparency in tailings dams disclosure."
In its results BHP confirmed it had suffered a $US835 million hit during the December half related to unplanned production outages at its Olympic Dam facility in South Australia,an iron ore train derailment at its Western Australia iron ore operations and fires at its Spence plant and its Nickel West smelter.
This was partly offset by the build-up of inventory levels during the outages,and by record production volumes at its Jimblebar iron ore mine and its South Walker Creek coal mine in Queensland.
"We expect a strong second half performance to offset the negative productivity movement in this period,bringing the overall movement to broadly flat for the full year,down from the previous guidance of $US1 billion,"BHP said.
The miner said it would continue to drive productivity improvements and unlock value through continued automation of its supply chain and best practice procedures in production and maintenance.
The $US4.03 billion profit result is a measure of BHP's"underlying attributable profit"from continuing operations. But on a statutory basis,BHP's profit rose 87 per cent to $US3.76 billion.
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According to the website Vuma,which aggregates analyst forecasts,analysts were expecting BHP to report a half year attributable profit from continuing operations of $US4.21 billion and total revenue of $US20.69 billion.
Analysts had predicted an interim dividend of US53 cents per share. Total revenue,at $US20.74 billion from continuing operations,was above expectations. The US 55 cent fully franked interim dividend will be paid on 26 March.
BHP released its December half results after the Australian market closed on Tuesday.
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In recent weeks the price of BHP's biggest revenue generator,iron ore,has jumped more than 17 per cent on global markets in the wake of the dam disaster. In the aftermath of the tragedy,a crackdown by Brazilian regulators is expected to reduce Vale's iron ore production.
The disaster occurred after the half had finished,so the higher iron ore prices were not reflected in BHP's half year profit. But if maintained the higher prices will significantly swell BHP's revenue in the June half now underway.
Macquarie analyst Hayden Bairstow said BHP's December half result was"solid"with the profit beating expectations.
"Cash flow generation was 7 per cent ahead of our estimates and enabled a higher dividend to be declared,"he said.
Andy Forster,senior investment officer at Argo Investments,said the result reflected the miner's operational issues."The confidence you can take out of it is the fact that they've maintained their cost guidance for the full year,"he said.