Releasing its financial results for the first half of the year, diversified miner Rio Tinto said that its diamond business reported a 16% drop in revenue in H1 2019 compared to the same period a year earlier. The company said that the decline in earnings came about due to weaker diamond pricing and provisional pricing movements along with the expected reduction in overall production from its diamond mines, the jointly owned Diavik in Canada and fully owned Argyle in Australia.

During H1 2019, Rio Tinto said that its gross revenue from the diamond business was US$ 271 million, 16% lower than the US$ 323 million gross revenue for H1 2018. EBITDA for the period stood at US$ 69 million, nearly half of the US$ 132 million reported a year earlier. The miner reported a loss of US$ 5 million in H1 2019 compared to net earnings of US$ 55 million in the same period a year earlier.

As previously reported, Rio Tinto’s diamond production was 10% lower than the first half of 2018. At Argyle, production was down 13%  in the period, due to lower recovered grade, partly offset by stronger mining rates. At Diavik, production was 1% lower, with lower recovered grades partially offset by higher ore processing throughput. Rio stated however, that strong operational performance was maintained at both mines which had strong ore processing throughput rates. 

The miner said that its production guidance for the full year for the diamond sector remained unchanged at between 15-17 million carats.

The slowdown in certain sectors was offset by a robust performance in others, and Rio Tinto reported an overall strong performance across all sectors. It said that net cash generated from operating activities rose 22% in H1 2019 with an underlying EBITDA of US$ 10.3 billion and EBITDA margin of 47% and declared that it would return a sum of US$ 3.5 billion to its shareholders with an interim dividend of US$ 2.5 billion and a special dividend of US$ 1 billion.