World mining giant BHP Billiton on Wednesday announced it achieved a net profit of 13.73 billion Australian dollars (10.45 billion U.S. dollars) in 2005-06 financial year, up 63.4 percent over the previous year.

The company has made its money from the worldwide resources boom, largely driven by China's huge need for metals.

Chief Executive Chip Goodyear said China would continue to need metals going forward, keeping the price of many metals around the current highs.

The company has also a further capital return of 3.94 billion dollars (3 billion U.S. dollars), bringing total for 2005-06 to 6. 57 billion dollars (5 billion U.S. dollars).

"We are also announcing today a further capital return of 3 billion U.S. dollars to shareholders over the next 18 months through a series of share buybacks, and it is yet to be decided the extent to which these will be on or off market," the company said in a statement.

"We expect this will commence with an on-market buyback in BHP Billiton Plc," it said.

BHP will pay a final dividend of 18.5 U.S. cents per share, up 27.6 percent from last year's final payment, taking the total payment for the year to 36 U.S. cents, up 28.6 percent on 2004-05.

The company produced record amounts of aluminum, copper, iron ore, nickel and natural gas in the year 2005-06.

However, it said, like other companies, it also feels the impacts of interest rates and higher fuel costs.

Goodyear said while costs were increasing, the degree of that increase was beginning to moderate, with the majority of costs coming in the first six months of 2005-06.

Source: Xinhua