Average gold price climbs 35% to $3,811 an ounce
Harmony Gold Mining, a South African gold miner, said Thursday that headline earnings per share for the fiscal year ended June 30 rose 87% to 258 cents, as higher gold prices more than offset a decline in production.
Pretax profit jumped to $2.27 billion from $1.17 billion a year earlier, the company said.
The earnings advance came even as output slipped. Harmony’s average gold price for the year rose 35% to $3,811 an ounce, which more than offset a 3% fall in group gold production to 44,464 kilograms.
Gold prices have remained high, fueled by central-bank buying and safe-haven demand, according to the report on the results. Traders are balancing a war in Iran that could lead the U.S. Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in an effort to keep a lid on inflation as oil prices surge, with concerns over the sustainability of U.S. debt that are driving a flight to safer assets. Higher interest rates weigh on non-yielding assets such as gold.
For the year ahead, the company maintained its full-year group production guidance of 1.4 million to 1.5 million ounces of gold and gold equivalents.
Harmony declared a final dividend of 47 cents a share.