Vale (NYSE:VALE) -1.7% pre-market after reporting late Tuesday that Q1 iron ore production sank 22.5% Q/Q and 6% Y/Y, weighed by heavier than expected rainfalls in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state.
Production also fell due to major maintenance, which Vale (VALE) said should be positive for the rest of the year, allowing the company to maintain its annual guidance of 320M-335M metric tons of iron ore.
Q1 iron ore fines and pellets shipments fell 35% Q/Q and nearly 10% Y/Y.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan cut Vale’s (VALE) FY 2022 sales estimate by 5M metric tons to 315M tons warned of potentially downward earnings revisions, Bloomberg reports.
Separately, Vale (VALE) said it has begun working on another of the five upstream tailing dams it expects to eliminate in 2022 as a safety measure to prevent collapses.
The new effort will focus on eliminating a dike from its Barragem 5 dam at the Aguas Claras mine in Minas Gerais, Reuters reports.
Vale (VALE) “has a great opportunity to be the primary ore and mineral supplier for most of the west,” Sandis Weil writes in a bullish analysis published on Seeking Alpha.
