HSD: BHP Billiton profit falls 30 percent for 2nd year

BHP Billiton have announced a 30 percent fall in profit for the 2013 financial year (here). This is bad enough, but then consider that BHP Billiton had a profit fall of 35 percent the year before (here). To make it even worse BHPB had their highest ever production from their coal, iron ore, and alumina interests.

Just to make this perfectly clear, in a year where BHP Billiton achieved huge production upgrades, especially in iron ore, their profit fell by 30 percent.

This sure makes the point on how far the price of commodities has fallen in the last 12 months and the experts are forecasting at least two more similar years before prices might begin to recover by a useful amount.

I guess we can expect to see more rationalisation across BHP Billiton and other mining companies as they continue to struggle with the steep fall in resource values.