BHP shareholders have about 15 billion reasons to be thankful to their American chief executive, Paul Anderson, who delivered around 1.6 billion of those reasons to the market on Thursday.
The 15 billion equates to the increase in market capitalisation since Mr Anderson was brought on board.
The 1.6 billion is the annual profit in dollars that he unveiled to appreciative shareholders last week.
The figures are significant for several reasons, including the proof that everything has been tipped upside down at BHP since the departure of John Prescott, Jerry Ellis and a raft of senior executives nearly two years ago.
The $1.61 billion profit included a further $400 million of write-offs that can be sheeted home to previous management, which means the getting-bigger-again Australian pulled in around $2 billion from its year's work.
That's a big result, but shareholders shouldn't get too excited about it just yet. It is roughly what BHP should be pulling in in a year during which oil prices have soared and the bleeding from other operations stopped.
Getting the annual profit to $1.6 billion is probably beyond the abilities of the proverbial drover's dog.
But Mr Anderson knows the real test of his stewardship will come in the next few years, when he tries to work the company's assets to the maximum and help lift the share price to his ambitious target of $40.
So far, he has done all the right things. Disastrous investments and projects such as the HBI plant, Beenup mineral sands, the Hartley platinum mine in Zimbabwe and Magma Copper in the United States have been overcome in some form or another.
The number of operating divisions has been reduced to four, and the company has half a dozen projects which can be considered truly world class - namely the Escondida copper mine, the Ekati diamond mine, the Pilbara iron ore operations, the Cannington silver mine, the Queensland coal mines and its petroleum division.
Mr Anderson professes to be in no great hurry to expand the group through acquisition.
Considering BHP's unhappy experiences in the past few years, that should be a reassuring position. But for some reason last week, the market wasn't happy, because it is convinced BHP needs to go out and buy new projects or businesses to achieve the 20 per cent growth that the market wants.
Even at his $40 target, BHP will not be the Big Australian again. But, in the words of Anderson, it will be proud-to-be-BHP. And for shareholders, it will be profitable-to-be-a-BHP-shareholder too.
For once, the skimpies and the capuccino girls weren't the centre of attention at the Diggers and Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie last week.
The South African gold miners, desperate to broaden from their high-cost domestic industry and attracted by the low Australian dollar, were out in force, and dropping plenty of hints that they were sizing up a few of the locals.
The main focus was AnglGold, the world's biggest gold miner, which won the deal of the year award at the conference for the way it outbid Delta Gold for control of Acacia.
That deal was worth $832 million, and there is a lot more where that came from.
Some brokers were convinced Anglo would use the conference to launch its much-anticipated $1.30-a-share offer for Normandy Mining, but they seem to be getting ahead of themselves.
Anglo has made it clear that Acacia was merely the first step in its strategy to build a major presence in Australia, but time is on its side.
Harmony Mining, another of the South African majors, also has time on its side as it contemplates making a bid for Goldfields, in which it bought a 19.9 per cent stake last year, while South Africa's Gold Fields (no relation) says it is keen to buy Australian as soon as it beds down its merger with Franco Nevada.
Little wonder the Australian gold miners were forming queues whenever a South African mining executive was spotted at the conference and other entertainment venues during the week.
It's about time the skimpies had some competition.
* Giles Parkinson is the deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
<i>Sydney view:</i> BHP provides billions of reasons to celebrate
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