- Vale (NYSE:VALE) announces a $14.8B capital spending budget for 2014, a third straight year of reductions as the iron ore miner focuses on boosting returns at existing operations.
- The business plan for next year includes investments of $9.3B for new projects, $4.5B dedicated to sustain existing operations and $900M for R&D; Vale will focus 85% of its mineral exploration expenditures in Brazil, Canada, Australia and Peru.
- Vale projects iron ore output to increase to 312M metric tons in 2014 from an expected 306M tons this year, 4.3% less than the 326M tons it was forecasting for 2014 a year ago; copper and nickel production each are seen gaining ~11%, but output for coal and potash is expected to drop.
- Shares -0.6% premarket.