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Petropavlovsk suffers hit from iron ore start-up costs
RUSSIAN miner Petropavlovsk posted a 10 per cent fall in full-year profit due to start-up costs at its IRC iron ore subsidiary and higher gold production costs.
Underlying earnings, before exceptional items including IRC, fell to $205m (£127m), beating the $191m consensus of eight analysts provided by the company.
Revenue rose 30 per cent to $612m on record production and higher gold prices.
However, the cost of producing gold continued to rise due to lower grades at the Pioneer mine and a higher percentage of output coming from higher cost alluvial production.
The group appointed three executives to its board, Dr. Alfiya (Alya) Samokhalova, Andrey Maruta and Martin Smith.