NEW YORK, February 8 (FinanceEnquiry.com) - Global mining company BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) reported a decrease in its first-half profits by 5.5 percent to $9.94 billion. The decline has been seen, mainly due to instability in commodity prices, which is expected to continue. However, the result in the six months to December 31 was one of the largest in Australian corporate history. Regardless of the decline in profit, which was to some extent poorer than analysts estimated, revenue climbed by 9.7 percent to $37.48 billion from $34.17 billion previously.

According to BHP, alarms about Europe's debt crisis saw a general drop in demand for commodities during the first half that resulted in lessen prices for most of BHP's products. The company also mentioned that as copper, its important steelmaking raw material iron ore also continued to be well supported by strong demand from emerging economies, such as China and India in the first half. This is expected to support the fundamentals for iron ore and metallurgical coal. On the contrary, the outlook for the aluminium, nickel and manganese alloy industries remained challenging. BHP confirmed its interim dividend of 55 US cents, compared to 46 US cents at the same time last year.