Vale has record profit of US$ 18.18 billion in 2010

Last year, Vale registered the largest net profit in the history of the mining industry: US$ 18.13 billion, a result which exceeded the market’s most optimistic expectations. We are going through the best period of our existence, commemorates the company’s President, Roger Agnelli, in his statement sent in the last few minutes of yesterday to the Brazilian Securities Commission (Comissão de Valores Mobiliários – CVM).

The previous record had been broken in 2008, when the net profit hit US$ 12.819 billion. Were it not for the crisis that erupted that September, Vale would surely have had a better performance, but without any certainty of exceeding the figure recorded last year.

The balance sheet was marked by record operational income, operational profit, operational margin, generation of cash flow and net profit. It comes as no surprise to know that this statement was given the title of One Year of Extraordinary Performance.

With the process of the recovery of world markets, after the peak of the crisis at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, the Vale sales picked up during the whole of last year, through price increases, especially in the case of iron ore, and also reactivation of the industry. The result was an operational profit of an impressive US$ 51.39 billion, of which more than 30% of this total, a sum of US$ 16.27 billion was in the fourth quarter. The turnover for the year was 71.3% higher than that recorded in 2009.

Recovery. Highly criticized for the measures taken at the start of the crisis, at the end of 2008, such as headcount reduction and also reduction of investments, the company says that the results obtained in 2010 were due to two factors. One of them was the world recovery, while the other was the selfsame measures taken in reply to the recession.

The prospects for the company for this year are that the heated sales will continue. The world economy is accelerating more quickly than expected, and 2011 will probably be another year of growth above the long-term trend of 4% per annum. (…) The global industrial production has reaccelerated in the fourth quarter and will continue to expand at the start of this year, suggesting that the rate of recomposition of the stock has fallen considerably and that the companies are responding to a more vigorous final demand for freight, the company predicts in their statement.

Asia continues to be the most important market for the Brazilian mining company, even though the sales to this region last year have been slightly below the proportion observed in 2009, when 52.2% of the income came from Asian countries, with the proportion having reached 55.6% the previous year.

Vale operations also achieved a record cash flow generation (measured by EBITDA) of US$ 27.94 billion in 2010, which is 32% higher than the previous record of US$ 21.10 billion observed in 2008.