FCX again pares capital budgets, suspends common stock dividend

In response to deteriorating market conditions, US diversified miner Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) on Wednesday again cut its capital spending plans for its oil and gas division, while also announcing more curtailments in copper and molybdenum output, while it suspended its common stock dividend. Under pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn, which had recently disclosed an 8.5% stake in FCX, saying the company was undervalued and needed to address several corporate governance and capital issues, FCX stated that, at assumed prices of $2/lb for copper and $45/bl of Brent crude oil for 2016, it expected consolidated operating cash flow would exceed capital expenditure (capex) by more than $600-million.