Aurubis increases its operating profits

Aurubis AG has reported improved year-on-year operating profits in the first nine months of its fiscal year and its most recently completed financial quarter.

The Hamburg, Germany-based company, which produces copper at most of its facilities in Europe and the United States and additional nonferrous metals at refineries in Belgium and Spain, has reported operating earnings before taxes (EBT) of 90 million euros ($98.6 million) in the quarter, a 400 percent spike compared with the 18 million euros ($19.7 million) garnered one year earlier.

According to Aurubis, the prior year’s quarterly figures were restated to reflect the distribution of the metal shortfalls due to the criminal activities directed against Aurubis in fiscal year 2022-23.

In this fiscal year’s third quarter, Aurubis operated most of the quarter without production at its sizable smelter in Hamburg, where a $270 million maintenance project was underway. Without that facility contributing, the company calls its recent results the “best quarter with a major shutdown in company history.”

The Aurubis 2023-24 fiscal year runs from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30. After nine months in the books, its EBT of 333 million euros ($364.8 million) have increased by 29.5 percent compared with EBT of 257 euros ($281.5 million) in the first nine months of its previous fiscal year.

“As the significantly higher operating result in the first nine months of 2023/24 clearly shows, with its smelter network, Aurubis is a strong company on the road to success,” soon-to-depart Aurubis CEO Roland Harings says. “The colleagues involved in the maintenance shutdown did an amazing job successfully completing the largest and most complex shutdown to date.”

Aurubis, which calls itself “one of the largest copper recyclers worldwide,” says its current capital expenditure investments amount to more than 500 million euros ($547.8 million), noting projects like the new recycled-content copper plant in the U.S., a new bleed treatment facility in Belgium and an installation at its Beerse, Belgium, refinery.

The company says wider business and operating conditions contributing to its recent profitability include increased treatment and refining charges with a slightly higher concentrate throughput, a significantly higher metal result, higher revenues from the Aurubis copper premium and from increased shapes surcharges with ongoing high demand for copper wire rod, and lower energy costs.

Unfavorable market conditions, according to Aurubis, include lower sulfuric acid revenues, lower income from refining charges for recycling materials and increased group costs.

“Based on the results released today, Aurubis is confirming its forecast range for fiscal year 2023-24 with projected operating EBT between 380 million euros ($416.3 million) and 480 million euros ($525.8 million)," the company says.