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Anglo Asian Mining PLC greatly increases profit from operations in Azerbaijan

Finance Materials 19 May 2020 23:36 (UTC +04:00)
Anglo Asian Mining PLC greatly increases profit from operations in Azerbaijan

BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 19

By Eldar Janashvili - Trend:

Anglo Asian Mining PLC, the gold, copper and silver producer focused in Azerbaijan, completed 2019 with profit worth $30.1 million, Trend reports referring to the company.

Accordance to the report, the company’s profit increased by 19 percent on a year-on-year basis compared to $25.2 million in 2018.

The total revenues increased by two percent year-on-year from $90.4 million in 2018 to $92.1 million in 2019.

Some 82,795 gold equivalent ounces were produced in 2019, calculated using budgeted metal prices compared to forecast of 82,000 to 84,000 gold equivalent ounces.

Gold production for 2019 decreased by four percent year-on-year to 70,098 ounces compared to 72,798 ounces in 2018.

Copper production for 2019 increased by 34 percent year-on-year to 2,210 tons compared to 1,645 tons.

Silver production for 2019 deceased up to 159,356 ounces compared to 210,184 ounces in 2018.

Some 53,992 ounces of gold bullion (59,481 ounces in 2018) were sold at an average price of $1,410 per ounce in 2019 ($1,265 per ounce in 2018).

The copper concentrate shipments to the customer totaled 10,281 dry metric tons with a sales value of $16.7 million in 2019 (excluding the Azerbaijani government’s production share) compared to 7,675 dry metric tons with a sales value of $15.4 million in 2018.

The cost of gold production increased to $591 per ounce in 2019 ($541 per ounce in 2018). The total production target for 2020 is between 75,000 and 80,000 gold equivalent ounces.

"I am very pleased to report on another year of excellent performance for Anglo Asian," non-executive chairman of the company Khosrow Zamani said. "We continue to enjoy higher precious metal prices and the company increased both its turnover and profits in 2019 with production broadly similar to 2018."

"The company is now debt free and has a robust balance sheet," Zamani added. "Our geological exploration program made very good progress. We announced two new significant copper and gold discoveries at Avshancli and Gilar. The mineral reserves and life of our existing mines are being extended and several promising new mineral occurrences are under investigation."

"The Group's financial position continued to strengthen in 2019," non-executive chairman of the company said. "Cash from operations including cash in transit was $42.9 million and free cash flow was $25.5 million. The final installment of its bank debt was repaid in February 2020."

"The Company had over $50 million of bank debt in 2015 and it was therefore a significant milestone to become debt free in early 2020," Zamani said. "The company is committed to delivering returns to shareholders by dividends and has a target of distributing approximately 25 percent of free cash flow to its shareholders. I am therefore delighted to announce a final dividend for 2019 of 4.5 cents per share giving a total dividend for 2019 of 8.0 cents per share."

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