FTSE 250-miner Hochschild Mining PLC (LON:HOC) has whacked up its interim dividend by 42% after a strong first-half performance in 2018.
The half-year pay-out has been hiked to 1.965 cents a share from 1.38 cents the year before, underpinned by adjusted earnings per share that rose to five cents from three cents in the first half of 2017.
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Half-year revenues rose to US$372.3mln from US$340.8mln last year.
Adjusted underlying earnings (EBITDA) climbed to US$161.9mln from US$136.0mln while profit before tax and exceptional items almost doubled to US$54.9mln from US$28.9mln.
Net debt at the end of June had narrowed to US$67.3mln from US$102.8mln at the end of 2017.
On the operational front, all-in sustaining costs eased to US$11.9 per silver or US$880 per gold equivalent ounce from US$12.0 and US$892 respectively in the first half of last year.
All-in sustaining costs for the whole of 2018 are expected to be in line with the company's US$13.0-13.4 per silver equivalent ounce (US$960-US$990 per gold equivalent ounce) target.
Hochschild said it is on track to deliver its attributable production target of 38.0mln silver equivalent ounces for 2018 (514,000 gold equivalent ounces).
"Hochschild Mining has delivered a strong first half performance with record production at Inmaculada and a very solid performance on the costs front leaving us on track to achieve our 2018 targets,” said Ignacio Bustamante, the chief executive officer of Hochschild.
“Our brownfield programme has started to generate some exciting results with the key achievement of the addition of 800,000 gold equivalent ounces (59.2 million silver equivalent ounces) of resources at Inmaculada as well as good progress at Arcata. We have also been able to advance our debt repayment programme with the refinancing and repayment of our bond to put the company in a strong financial position to execute the brownfield plan and growth strategy,” he added.
Shares in Hochschild were down 0.3% at 168.51p in early deals.