Rio Tinto

Mining conglomerate, Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) have released its full year results to the Australian stock market investors and share traders.

• Rio Tinto have posted its first loss in its history.
• Rio Tinto made a Net Loss of US$2.99 billion for the full financial year results for 2012, compared to the profit of $5.83 billion generate din 2011.
• The loss was largely attributed to impairments against its aluminium and Mozambique coal assets.

Mining giant, Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) is cutting jobs at Coal & Allied Industries division.

• An unspecified number of jobs will be cut from the division.
• Rio Tinto owns a 80 percent stake in Coal & Allied, with 20 percent owned by Japan's Mitsubishi Corp.
• Coal & Allied has a production of about 30 million tonnes of coal annually. The company employs about 1500 people across its three mining operations in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.

Mining conglomerate, Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO), has announced a better than expected first half underlying profit result of US$5.2 billion. Market expectations set the result to be at US$4.9 billion.

Other notes about the third largest mining company in the world:

• Net profit down 22 percent to US$5.9 billion (1H)
• US$1.94 billion profit drop blamed lower iron ore and commodity prices

Mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO) is planning to sweep up the shares of Canadian uranium company Hathor Exploration as it acquires 93.76 per cent of the latter's shares. Rio Tinto currently owns 119.5 million Hathor common shares.

The mining giant offered a $C654 million takeover last year to the Canadian company, paying $C4.70 per outstanding common share. On December 22, Rio Tinto extended its offer until January 6, 2012 after it acquired 87.26 per cent of Hathor's shares.

Rio Tinto (RIO) has won the poison pill challenge set by Ivanhoe Mines that refrains the Australian miner to increase its stake in Ivanhoe. After 18 months of dispute, an arbitrator decided that Rio Tinto may buy additional shares after its standstill agreement expires on January 18, 2012.

RioTinto (RIO) invests an additional $2.7 billion to complete the $3.3 billion modernisation of aluminium smelter in Kitimat. The project is designed to meet the increasing demand from the Asia Pacific Region.

The Kitimat project is going to increase the smelter's production capacity by more than 48 per cent to 420,000 tonnes a year. The $3.3 billion project is expected to be completed in 2014.

Global miner Rio Tinto (RIO) still sells everything it can produce but warns that customers are becoming increasingly cautious on the uncertainty of the outlook for the Europe and United States economies.

The global miner is still generating high cash flows as iron ore prices recovered recently except for aluminium prices which were below production costs.

Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) is on target to meet its 2011 iron ore production and surpass last year’s record profit of US$14.32 billion. In its third quarter production report, Rio posted new quarterly records for iron ore sales and coking coal production.

Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) and Ivanhoe Mines will keep their profits from the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mining project without the Mongolian government taking a higher stake.

Together with the two miners, the government last night issued a statement saying it will continue to support the existing investment agreement, wherein section 15.30 requires all three parties to consent to any amendments.