Is That A Bearish Pattern Forming?

BHP (originally BHP Billiton), which was formed in 2001 through a merger of the Australian Broken Hill Proprietary Company and Anglo-Dutch Billiton plc, is a multinational mining, metals, and petroleum dual-listed public company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. The company is one of the leading global players in this sector. In 2015, some of BHP’s assets were demerged and rebranded as South32. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, BHP Group was ranked as the 93rd largest public company in the world.

- Moxima Gama

Share price history

BHP’s current uptrend commenced in 2016, after losing 70% of its share price value from 2014. In February 2011, BHP announced its arrival as a big and very ambitious player in the US shale oil game when it put down $6bn to buy the rights from Chesapeake Energy to around 500 000 acres of prospective shale gas reserves at Lafayette in Arkansas. This investment proved a bad bet that largely contributed to the record $6.4bn annual loss reported for 12 months through June 2016, compared with a net profit of $1.91bn a year earlier. BHP’s earnings also took hits from a deadly disaster at an iron ore mine in Brazil and weak oil and natural gas markets. BHP’s petroleum business, which was intended to help it through bad times in metals markets, lost $7.72bn after write-downs.

Current outlook