Codelco's profits fell by 85.5% year on year in the first quarter of 2020, the company said on Friday May 29, due to lower copper prices brought about by the global spread of the novel coronavirus.
The world's largest copper producer earned a profit of $54 million in "a challenging first quarter," Codelco said, noting that the steep fall in the underlying price of copper hurt the company's bottom line significantly. Codelco had earned $372 million in profits in 2019's first quarter.The Chilean state-run miner produced 361,000 tonnes of copper at its wholly owned mines, 5.7% more than the corresponding quarter in 2019, due...