Apex Mining profit jumps 351% on higher output
Apex Mining Co. Inc. reported a consolidated net income of P322 million in 2016 amid higher production output, rocketing 351 percent from P71.4 million in the previous year.
In a statement, Apex said the parent company alone posted a net income of P440.5 million, up 160 percent from P169.3 million in 2015.
It said consolidated net income was lower than the parent company’s due to the administrative costs of the non-operating subsidiaries. These include Monte Oro Resources and Energy Inc. and Itogon-Suyoc Resources Inc.
Overall, Apex chalked up P3.5 billion in revenue last year, jumping 45 percent from P2.4 billion in 2015 due to record output at the Maco mine in Compostela Valley.
The project turned out 54,681 ounces of gold and 309,623 ounces of silver in 2016, breaking the respective records of 43,048 ounces of gold and 224,479 ounces of silver in 2015.
In 2016, the company observed metal prices rose 8 percent to average at $1,255 per ounce of gold, and 6 percent to $17 per ounce silver.
Last year was the “second year of continued positive results after the current management team’s taking over the helm in October 2013,” Apex president and chief executive Walter W. Brown said.
Brown also said that as of last year, the company was employing 90 percent of its workforce from Mindanao and sourcing 30 percent of the material it consumes from Compostela Valley and adjacent provinces, aside from the electricity brought from power plants in the Mindanao grid.
He said Apex spent P94 million for the company’s social development programs for the host communities and for royalty and surface rights paid to the indigenous people of the mine; and paid P137.5 million for national and local taxes.
“This contradicts the notion that it is only the owners of mining companies that reap benefits from mining operations,” Brown said.
“On the contrary, a substantial portion of the value derived from the mine flows to the economy of the country, benefiting the employees, the people living in the mining areas, and the satellite businesses that depend on mining,” he said.
Brown added that mines are usually located in remote and largely uninhabited areas where without such operations there would be no economic activity at all.
“In fact, in periods of depressed prices where operations would result to a loss, which is not uncommon to the industry, none of the revenue would remain to accrue to the owners,” he said.
