Freeport converted $16 million 7% convertibles into stock in first half of year

By Jennifer Chiou

New York, July 18 - Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. further negotiated the conversion of an additional $5 million of its 7% convertible senior notes due 2011 into 0.1 million of its shares in open-market transactions during the second quarter.

As already announced, the company had issued 0.4 million shares for $11 million of the convertibles in the first quarter.

On June 15, the company announced the final mandatory redemption of its silver-denominated preferred stock and the 4.76 million of depositary shares representing 0.003125 shares of the preferreds.

The redemption date is Aug. 1.

For each depositary share, the company said it will pay a cash amount equal to the value of 0.5 ounce of silver, calculated using the average of the London silver fixing spot price for an ounce of silver in the London bullion market on each of the 20 trading days ending on June 28.

Shareholders will also receive the final regular quarterly dividends.

As already reported, Freeport redeemed $236.4 million of the preferreds based on the average gold price of $548.92 per ounce for the 20 trading days ended Jan. 30, which resulted in a $69 million loss during the first half of the year.

As previously reported on April 18, the company purchased $11.5 million of its 10 1/8% senior notes due 2010 for $12.6 million.

Mellon Investor Services LLC is the redemption agent (800 777-3674).

New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan mines copper, gold and silver in Indonesia and smelts copper in Spain and Indonesia.

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