Aug 23 (Reuters) - The world's largest manganese miner South32 Ltd S32.AX on Thursday posted a 16 percent rise in its annual underlying earnings, as healthy demand for manganese helped offset tepid coal output due to technical hurdles at a mine.
Underlying earnings jumped to $1.33 billion from $1.15 billion the previous year, better than analysts' expectations of around $1.32 billion.
South32, which was chipped off mining giant BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) BHP.AX in 2015, resolved to pay a final dividend of 6.2 cents a share. It had paid 6.4 cents per share in 2017.