BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP) is a global leader in the resources industry, with a diversified portfolio of natural resources. The company's operations include: iron ore, coking and thermal coal, copper, zinc, oil & gas and diamonds.
Spotlight is on nickel - again
What is it about nickel? The recent announcement that BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP) has sold its Yabulu, Australia, nickel-cobalt processing unit for an undisclosed sum, and taken a carrying value write-down of some USD 500m, plus a further estimated USD 175m of unrecoverable tax benefits, has again put the spotlight on one of the world's most trashed up commodity subsectors - nickel.
Notably, the only one that has caused any real kind of a headache for the world's biggest diversified resources group.
On 21 January 2009 BHP Billiton had already announced the indefinite suspension of the Ravensthorpe nickel mine, Australia, and halted processing of the mixed nickel cobalt hydroxide product at Yabulu. The impairment charge and increased provisions for rehabilitation of USD 3.36bn (USD 1bn tax benefit) were recognised for the half-year ended December 2008. Ravensthorpe, a relatively new mine, cost AUD 3bn to build.
The closure of Ravensthorpe rendered Yabulu non-core for BHP Billiton, with Yabulu left at the top north east part of the continent processing materials from offshore third parties. During the second half of calendar 2008, total underlying EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) for Ravensthorpe and Yabulu was, indeed, a loss of USD 233m.
BHP Billiton also runs the so-called "Nickel West" assets, in Western Australia, which include its own Mt Keith and Leinster mining operations, Kalgoorlie nickel smelter, and Kwinana nickel refinery.
Acquired as part of the WMC acquisition in June 2005, Nickel West ranks as the world's third largest producer of nickel in concentrate, including material taken in from third parties. It ranks as a fully integrated nickel business, with mines, concentrators, a smelter and a refinery.
Nickel ore from Leinster and Mt Keith is concentrated on-site; the combined concentrate product is transported by rail and mixed with concentrate from BHP Billiton's Kambalda concentrator at its Kalgoorlie smelter. By now, it's possible that nickel is no longer regarded as a core area for BHP Billiton.
More broadly, for those on the wrong side of the nickel story over the past five years, tens of billions of dollars have been lost. Nickel prices zoomed upwards after the onset of the so-called commodities supercycle, commencing early in 2002, and peaked prematurely, near USD 25.00/lb, in mid-2007, given that most other commodities peaked around mid-2008.
Nickel hit USD 4.00/lb during some of the darkest days of 2008, and has since recovered to over USD 7.00/lb, continuing to unleash wreckage on nickel diggers across the world.
The pain for nickel miners has been significant, from the top five producers, Norilsk, Vale, BHP Billiton, Xstrata, and PT Aneka Tambang, to the smallest names, such as Australia-based Albidon, which has all but disappeared behind the smoke of its Zambian development, Munali, despite its relatively high grade orebody.
PT Aneka Tambang, one of the world's best endowed nickel names, posted profits of INR 54.7bn for the first quarter of 2009, representing a 94% fall from the INR 936.9bn recorded for the first quarter of 2008. Sometimes, the compression, and then destruction, of profits in the nickel subsector is difficult to comprehend.
During 2008, EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) from Xstrata's Falcondo operation in the Dominican Republic collapsed to USD 76m, a fall nearing 90%, from USD 655m in 2007, "as a result of higher oil prices and the decline in nickel prices".
Falcondo was temporarily suspended in August 2008, and subsequently went into care and maintenance. Xstrata, easily the most acquisitive mining company across the supercycle, was attracted time and again into the nickel cauldron, shelling out USD 18.9bn in cash in 2006 for nickel-copper digger Falconbridge.
Xstrata continued its belief in nickel into 2008, paying USD 2.9bn in cash for Australian nickel specialist Jubilee Mines. Xstrata's EBIT from nickel already collapsed from USD 2.2bn in 2007 to just USD 341m in 2008; beyond Falcondo, Xstrata has taken a number of drastic steps in its nickel division.
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