Russia's Metalloinvest, one of the leading steel and mining holding companies in the country, has posted a 47 percent growth in its H1 2010 net income to Ruble 15.6 billion (about $509 million), with its consolidated revenues for the period increasing by 43 percent to Ruble 99.9 billion (about $3.26 billion), both compared to H1 2009.
In addition, in H1 this year, Metalloinvest's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) almost quadrupled to Ruble 36.5 billion (about $1.2 billion), and its EBITDA margin increased by 137 percent year on year to 37 percent.
Bloomberg has reported that billionaire Alisher Usmanov and his partners in Metalloinvest are considering seeking as much as $4 billion in an initial public offering in London as early as the first half of next year.
Metalloinvest expects iron ore spot prices in China, to which it links its export contracts, to rise to as much as $200/mt next year, from about $150/mt now, while it expects its 2010 iron ore output to increase by 20 percent to 38.4 million mt on the back of rising demand.
According to the company's CEO Eduard Potapov, Metalloinvest, with 14.9 billion mt of iron ore reserves under JORC classification, has overtaken Brazilian miner Vale (14.3 billion mt) as holder of the world's largest iron ore reserves.