Word: coppers
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Down & Up. Other industries presented an equally mixed picture. Copper was hard hit (see Industry). Southern Pacific Railway nudged its net up for the year with the help of a fourth-quarter rise in the oil industry, a 32% cut in Jersey Standard's fourth-quarter net (to 71?, v. $1.04 a year earlier) gave the world's biggest oil company its first yearly earnings dip in five years. Healthy fourth-quarter gains were run up by International Business Machines ($2.17, v. $1.86 in 1956), which had a record profit year, and Westinghouse Electric Corp. ($1.11, excluding...
From the world's largest copper company last week came a dollars-and-cents confirmation of the industry's slump. Kennecott reported 1957 earnings of $7.32 a share v. $13.23 in 1956. The drop surprised few Wall Streeters, who are figuring on similar drops for Kennecott's competitors. They estimate Anaconda earnings at slightly over $4 v. $12.85 m J956 and Phelps Dodge at around $4.40 v. $8.72. Principal reason for the drop: a price slide that Kennecott's President Charles R. Cox called a "debacle." Three weeks ago Kennecott set the pace for domestic producers...
...present price headaches are caused mainly by a hangover from a four-year spree. As demand began to soar in 1954 in the worldwide boom, Chilean, African and U.S. producers boosted production and opened new mines. Copper supplies were still so short in 1956 (after a 43-day U.S. strike in 1955) that free market prices in London were bid up to 54.6?. "Now," says Kennecott's Cox, "automotive production is down and so are housing starts. Utilities have slowed their expansion programs. Those are our three biggest customers. And there was that price; when it climbed past...
...peril point" of 30?. The current tariff, suspended until next July, is 1.8? at a 24? peril point. Tariff advocates argue that the U.S. imported an estimated 215,000 tons more than it exported in 1957. Without the imports, U.S. production would have been close to consumption. But the copper producers themselves have done no campaigning so far for a tariff increase. While Phelps Dodge and Magma, which now mine only in the U.S., stand to benefit from a tariff boost, international miners such as Kennecott and Anaconda are in a different position. Their domestic mines would profit...
Empty Pipeline. They are also aware that while a tariff might shelter some of the industry, it cannot dispel the gloom in the copper markets. Only the customers can do that, and so far they have shown no sign of stepping up their buying, even though their inventories are low. "We hope present cuts are enough to bring production into line," says Phelps Dodge's President Robert Page. "Fabricators have cut inventories to the bone...