Abstract:

In the first three quarters of 2020, the Company recorded RMB80.306bn of revenue, up 140% year-on-year; RMB5.870bn of EBITDA, up 5% year-on-year; RMB1.610bn of net profit attributable to the parent company, up 29% year-on-year; RMB9.660bn of net cash flow from operating activities, up 589% year-on-year; and RMB1.648bn of capital expenditure.

The Company maintained stable operations with production of all products in line with expectation. Operations in China achieved molybdenum production of 10,133 tonnes and tungsten production of 6,676 tonnes; copper and cobalt production in the DRC added up to 141,966 tonnes and 10,507 tonnes; Brazil operations produced 7,234 tonnes of niobium and 824,214 tonnes of phosphate; NPM in Australia (based on 80% of equity interests) produced 19,955 tonnes of copper and 15,146 ounces of gold; IXM realized concentrate sales of 1.56 million tonnes and refined metal sales of 1.82 million tonnes.

IXM continued to grow with robust performance and fully leveraged the synergy between mining and trading, breaking a new record by realizing more than US$95mn net earnings from Q1 to Q3 2020.

The Company keeps enhancing efforts in cost and efficiency program across all business segments. Total production cost of mining was down by over RMB1.3bn, including over US$130mn savings in total cash cost from DRC operations and nearly US$30mn from Brazil operations year-on-year.

With regard to balance sheet management, the Company has sufficient liquidity reserves with a balance of cash and cash equivalents of RMB20.98bn and a further decrease in net interest-bearing debt ratio to 22.44%.

According to Mr. Rubin Yue, Joint Company Secretary & Board Secretary of CMOC,

“The Company registered continuous improvement in its operating performance over the first three quarters of 2020. Despite the hard blow dealt by COVID-19 across the industry, the Company managed continued success in improving cost and efficiency, equipment availability and reliability, and stability and stronger performance in production of all metal products by further elevation in management and technical innovation. In particular, copper and cobalt operations reported copper production of nearly 51,000 tonnes and cobalt production of 3,964 tonnes in Q3, a record quarterly high. Copper production rose by 8% for Q1-Q3 2020 over the same period in 2019. IXM also maintained sound trading performance and realized nearly US$50mn net earnings for Q3 alone by capturing market opportunities.

With regard to capital projects, despite majority project delays including TFM process expansion hampered by earlier restrictions on personnel and equipment mobilization and transportation due to COVID-19, the Company is keeping up with its countermeasures and expediting construction progress as mobilization and logistics gradually recover.

In face of the continued spread of COVID-19 in Africa and Latin America, pandemic containment still poses a significant challenge to certain business units of the Company; mining operations are facing declining ore grades and in consequence the negative impact on cost and production; particularly, the Company is seeking feasible solutions to drive up the low recovery in Brazil in the context of the low temperature in winter and unfavorable ore characteristics experienced in Brazil operations.”