With the collapse of the Samarco tailings dam in Brazil last year, BHP Billiton has taken few hits since then despite many efforts the company has undertaken in the direction of supporting the affected communities and the environment. Some of the key things that have been recently highlighted are given below:
Enhancing the provisions: The company has increased its provisions by doubling the same for the Samarco mine disaster in Brazil in excess of $3 billion. The company is to recognise another provision of about USD 1.1 billion to USD 1.3 billion ($1.5 to $1.7 billion) on top of the earlier USD 1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) amount already announced in its half-yearly results in February 2016. The company has stated that the new provision is about 50 per cent share of the current estimate of the Samarco compensation deal/ funding obligations under the framework agreement entered with Brazilian federal, state and municipal authorities in March 2016.
Delay in re-start of operations at Samarco: BHP has highlighted that the uncertainty prevails with regard to the timing of a potential restart of the Samarco operations given the current scenario on the provisions.
Resulting loss: The earlier amount coupled with other asset write-downs led to an interim loss of about $7.8 billion. The present charge is said to be recognised as an exceptional item in BHP’s upcoming results for June half 2016 along with direct costs of around USD 100 million after tax.
Short-term facility: BHP also announced that the mine is running out of cash, and in such case, the company is putting efforts to set up a further USD 116 million short-term facility for the purpose of remediation and stabilisation work and to support Samarco’s operations.
Suspension of the funding agreement: The Federal Prosecutors’ Office appealed against the ratification of the Framework Agreement and the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil issued an interim order suspending the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal to ratify the Framework Agreement. Meanwhile, BHP Billiton Brazil intended to appeal the decision of the Superior Court of Justice. Despite this, the present recognition of the provision is said to demonstrate BHP’s continual support for the long term recovery of the affected communities and the environment.
As noted earlier, BHP and JV partner Vale are to face an $8 billion civil suit as reinstated by Brazil’s Superior Court when the original agreement was suspended. There is a separate $58 billion suit lodged by federal prosecutors. In fact, there are reports that the ratings agency Fitch recently downgraded Samarco by two notches to “C” while stating that the C rating reflects that Samarco may need to request a standstill or restructure its debt in near future given the need to preserve cash for expenses with regard to seeking operating permits.
Despite the above, BHP stock price was up 3.12% in the last five days (as at July 27, 2016) and is up 0.554% on July 28, 2016.
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