DENVER-
Newmont Mining Corp., one of the world’s largest gold producers, said Thursday its fourth-quarter net income jumped more than threefold thanks to higher gold prices although its sales volume dipped.
The results beat Wall Street estimates and helped boost the stock price by 1.5 percent in morning trading.
For the quarter ending Dec. 31, Newmont reported net income of $223 million, or 49 cents per share, compared with $62 million, or 14 cents per share, in the prior-year quarter.
Revenue totaled $1.46 billion up from $1.29 billion a year earlier.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial forecast earnings of 40 cents per share on sales of $1.31 billion.
While the company’s gold sales dipped to 2 million ounces in the fourth quarter from 2.4 million ounces in the year-ago period, Newmont said its average realized selling price rose to $619 an ounce, up 31 percent from $472 an ounce in the previous fourth quarter. The cost of sales per ounce rose to $322 from $232 a year ago.
“We finished 2006 on a high note, generating record earnings of $791 million, despite facing a challenging industry landscape,” Wayne Murdy, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Earnings for the full year climbed to $791 million, or $1.75 per share, from $322 million, or 72 cents per share, in 2005. Revenue rose to $4.99 billion from $4.35 billion in 2005.
Murdy said they expected equity gold sales to drop to a range of 5.2 million to 5.6 million ounces in 2007 before the company’s 2006 investments in Nevada, Ghana and Australia begin to provide benefits.
JP Morgan Securities Inc. analyst John Bridges said in a research note that he expects Newmont to see significant cost gains in 2008 as the company starts up a power plant in Nevada helping to reduce utility bills.
Newmont’s stock rose 72 cents to $47.70 a share in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. In the past year, the price has ranged from $39.84 a share to $59.70 a share.
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