Singapore 19/04/2016 - Japan’s Marubeni Corp has cut its profit forecast for its fiscal year ending March 2016 to 60 billion yen ($550 million), from its February projection of 180 billion yen on expectations of large impairment losses, the company said on Monday.
Marubeni expects an impairment loss of 120 billion yen, of which 75 billion yen is from its resource business. Write-down in its copper business in Chile itself is around 35 billion yen.
Marubeni has a 30 percent stake each in the Antucoya copper mine and Centinela copper mine in Chile. The remaining 70 percent interests in the projects are held by Antofagasta.
The company’s other resource business are in iron ore, and oil and gas.
Marubeni made a 105.6 billion yen profit in its fiscal year ended March 2015.
The company joins other global metal miners and traders including Japanese trading houses – Mitsubishi Corp, Mitsui & Co and Sumitomo Corp – who have had to write off millions of dollars of metal assets due to the global slump in commodity prices.