Rio Tinto hands investors surprise $4bn payout after earnings hit high

Rio Tinto rewarded fund managers with a special dividend on Wednesday, taking the amount of cash shovelled back to shareholders to a colossal $13.5 billion.

The FTSE 100 mining giant, led by Frenchman Jean-Sebastian Jacques, surprised investors with a special one-off payout of $4 billion after earnings hit a four-year high. The payout is in addition to other cash returns in 2018 including the $5.3 billion full-year dividend and $3.2 billion of buybacks.

Jacques said: “These strong results reflect the efforts of the team to implement our value-over-volume strategy as we continued to strengthen the portfolio and invest in future growth.”

Underlying earnings rose 2% to $8.8 billion and sales rose by $500 million to $40.5 billion due to higher prices for aluminium and copper and increased iron ore volumes.

The business made $8.6 billion from a sell-off of assets including the disposal of the Hail Creek and Kestrel coal mines in Queensland, Australia.

Spending was higher, including nearly $1 billion spent on its Autohaul project for driverless trains on its Pilbara iron ore train system in Australia.