(RTTNews) -  BHP Billiton Group (BHP: News ,BHP.AX: News ,BBL: News ,BLT.L: News ), the world's largest mining company, on Tuesday reported a profit for the first half of fiscal year 2010 that more than doubled from last year, boosted by strong sales volume growth and cost control. The results were also helped by the reversal of an impairment charge recorded in the year-ago period. However, profit excluding exceptional items, declined 7% from last year.

Looking ahead, the company said it remained cautious about the short-term outlook. The company also announced an increase in the interim dividend.

The Melbourne, Australia-based company reported attributable profit of US$6.14 billion for the first half, up from US$2.62 billion in the same period last year. Basic earnings per share for the half year rose to US$1.103 from US$0.47 a year ago.

The company noted that strong sales volume growth on the back of demand recovery, particularly in steelmaking raw materials and cost control across the business helped partially offset lower prices and stronger producers' currencies.

Exceptional items for the latest half-year period include reversal of impairment charge relating the suspension of Ravensthorpe nickel operations of US$433 million. The company said in early December that it signed a deal to sell the Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation. As a result of the this, impairment charges recorded in the financial year ended June 30, 2009 were partially reversed.

The results for the year-ago period primarily included US$3.36 billion of impairment charge and other items.
Excluding exceptional items, attributable profit for the first-half declined 7% to US$5.70 billion from US$6.13 billion in the prior-year period. Basic earnings per share for the half year were US$1.025, down 6.9% from US$1.101 a year earlier.

BHP Billiton's revenues for the first half declined 17.5% to US$24.58 billion from US$29.78 billion in the same period last year. Revenue from group production was US$22.20 billion, lower than US$25.43 billion recorded in the previous year.

While commodity prices recovered during the latest half-year period from the preceding six months, driven by the rapid economic recovery of China and restocking across the developed economies, realized prices for most of the company's products were lower than the prices achieved during the same period of the prior year. The strength of operating currencies against a weak U.S. dollar negatively impacted costs.

For the first half, iron ore revenues declined 25.6% to US$4.48 billion, petroleum revenues declined 0.8% to US$4.18 billion, energy coal revenues dropped 50.9% to US$2.14 billion, metallurgical coal revenues dipped 44.7% to US$2.72 billion and manganese revenues fell 53.7% to US$888 million. Aluminum revenues were down 20.4% to US$2.00 billion.

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