ZINC CORPORATION PROSPECTS
Lord Home's picture of the position and prospects of the Zinc Corporation is inevitably one of light and shade. Last year selling prices of lead and silver, the chief determinants of profits, were sharply higher, with the result that gross receipts rose by some £534,000 to Lx,741,815 and the dividend, framed on a conservative basis, was raised from 6o to 85 per cent. Against the rise in gross receipts there was a substantial increase in costs, but even allowing for this the net profit easily established a record. Lord Howe reminded shareholders that conditions today are much less favourable, the fall in metal prices having so far reduced the margin of profit as to indicate a considerable reduction in earnings in 1938. The future is clearly bound up with a recovery of trade in the widest sense, especially in the United States, but shareholders will take a hopeful view of long-term prospects. The Corpora- tion has a great mine, well equipped and efficiently managed, and a substantial interest in the adjoining property of New Broken Hill Consolidated.
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