BENGALURU/MELBOURNE : Australia's iron ore giants BHP Group, Rio Tinto and Fortescue are set to report a steep drop in their earnings, which is set to compress their payouts to shareholders, after China's COVID lockdown drove down iron ore prices.
Earnings at Rio Tinto and BHP Group are seen declining 48 per cent and 28 per cent, respectively, for the six months to December 2022, while Fortescue's half-year earnings are set to slide about 16 per cent, based on estimates from Visible Alpha and Vuma Financial.
The miners are expected to offer a mixed outlook for 2023, amid uncertainty over the strength of China's recovery following the lifting of its strict COVID-19 curbs.
"We haven't seen too much hard data from China just yet, but I think there's enough for the miners to be more optimistic - cautiously so," said Adrian Prendergast, an analyst at Morgans Financial in Melbourne.
