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Show UTAH COPPER COMPANY AND DIVIDEND STATUS cents to cover y cent per pound for property charges and taxes and indicates that notwithstanding notwithstand-ing copper has advanced sharply sharp-ly since late in 1922 Utah Copper Cop-per and the same must hold true for the rest of the dividend paying .producers is earning no huge margin over dividend requirements. Because it adopted the policy a year ago of not publishing its monthly production of copper, Utah Copper company's resuts can be gleaned only from its quarterly reports That for the three months ended March 31, 1923. showed an increase injjut-put. injjut-put. -ln "that period Utafr-pffc' duced 43,489,073 pounds of copper, cop-per, compared with 2,716,291 pounds in the preceding three months. In March of this year the company made 12,60,955 pounds of copper, the largest month's output in four and a half years. The expansion being made in reduction facilities at both the Magna and Arthur plants is beginning be-ginning to bear fruit. In the March 31 quarter Utah milled 1,774,700 tons of ore. This is at the rate of 7,098,800 tons annually, an-nually, . and indicates rapid strides toward capacity of 3,-600,000 3,-600,000 tons quarterly available bv the end of this year. At its current selling price and paying $4 annually, Utah copper yields 5.1 per cent. An increase to $5 annually, if the metal market in the coming weeks should justify it, would still call for a per pound profit of over 6 cents to cover dividend requirements, allowing for an output of over 152,000,000 pounds annually, the rate indicated indi-cated in the month of March. Notwithstanding copper's advance ad-vance costs have kept pace and it is this situation that is causing caus-ing those companies which are not paying dividends to be cautious cau-tious in resuming them; those that are paying have not much latitude for increasing. Virtually all of Utah's operation opera-tion is by. steam shovel mining, making for very low costs. But the rising tide of mining wages is apparent in the results for the first quarter of this year. Average Av-erage cost was 882 cents pjr pound, compared with 7.82 cents per pound for all of 1922. These figures are before depreciation taxes and depletion, and not-witstnading not-witstnading in the first three months of 1923 production showed an increase and recovery of metal values increased from 79.27 per cent to 83 per cent, costs jumped 1 cent a pound. Utah's "sale price" for its metal last quarter was 15.59 cents compared with 13.89 cents in the December three months. This figure is the result of averaging actual sales at prices made and unsold copper at 13 cents. It indicates that the company came close to selling all its first quarter production. Utah Copper in March 31 quarter earned net profits of $1.37 per share on its 1,624,490 shares before depreciation, depletion de-pletion and taxes, against dividends divi-dends requirements of $1 per share. On its production Utah had to earn a per pound profit of 6Va |