(Adds details, comment on coal business, dividend, operating profit)
JOHANNESBURG, March 08 (Reuters) - South African miner Exxaro Resources Ltd reported on Thursday a 65 percent drop in full-year profit, in line with the company’s estimate, due to costs related to an investment vehicle that is used to increase black shareholding.
Although the operating profit rose 17 percent to 6.060 billion rand ($512.2 million) for the year ended December 2017, costs to the tune of 4.339 billion rands linked to the replacement of its black economic empowerment (BEE) vehicle, which increases black shareholding in the firm, hurt the annual earnings, the company said.
“The coal business benefited from higher selling prices and volumes while the group’s results were impacted by various once-off transactions,” Exxaro said.
The coal producer also benefited from the sale of its stake in U.S. titanium products company Tronox.
Annual diluted headline earnings per share (HEPS) from continued and discontinued operations fell to 450 cents from the re-presented figure of 1,294 cents in the previous year.
HEPS is the main profit gauge in South Africa and strips out certain one-off items.
Exxaro declared a final dividend of 400 cents per share, compared with 410 cents in the year-ago period. ($1 = 11.8316 rand) (Reporting by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri)