Johannesburg - South African diversified miner Exxaro on Thursday posted a 33 percent drop in full-year earnings, hit by lower coal export prices and volumes.
The company, South Africa's second-largest coal producer, with interests in iron ore and base metals, said headline earnings per share for the year to December fell to 14.01 rand from 20.98 rand the previous year.
The drop was in line with its own projection of a fall of between 31 to 40 percent.
Headline EPS are the main profit gauge in South Africa and strip out certain one-time items.
Exxaro, a big supplier of coal to power utility Eskom, said full year revenue dropped 23 percent to 16.1 billion rand ($1.77 billion).
Overall coal production was stable at 40 million tonnes, while export sales dropped 21 percent, primarily due to limited capacity on the railway line connecting the mines with the port.
“The 2013 financial and operational results are expected to be impacted by commodity price volatility, the ZAR/US$ exchange rate fluctuations, as well as the availability of trains in the export coal business,” it said in a statement.
Exxaro declared a final dividend of 150 cents per share.
Shares in the company are up 2.4 percent this year, compared with a 3.7 percent rise in the JSE Top-40 blue-chip index. - Reuters