BHP just posted a 30 per cent profit jump, and the timing could not be more awkward

BHP just told shareholders it made $13.2 billion in profit this year, up 30 per cent, in the same week households are being warned to brace for more cost of living pain.

The world's biggest miner posted underlying attributable profit of $13.2 billion for the 2026 financial year, up from $10.2 billion the year before. Underlying EBITDA climbed 27 per cent to $32.9 billion, and revenue hit $58.8 billion, up 15 per cent.

Copper did the heavy lifting. Underlying EBITDA from BHP's copper division rose from $12.3 billion to $18.2 billion, and for the first time, copper overtook iron ore to contribute more than half of the company's total earnings. Higher realised prices across copper, iron ore and steelmaking coal, plus stronger operations, pushed the numbers up across the board.

Shareholders are getting rewarded for it. BHP declared a final dividend of 99 cents a share, taking the full year payout to 172 cents a share, its biggest annual dividend in four years, worth roughly $8.7 billion in total.

The timing is the awkward part. BHP's results landed in the same stretch commentators and regulators have been warning that Australian households are still under real cost of living pressure, from grocery bills to mortgage repayments. A record year for one of the country's biggest companies next to warnings about squeezed budgets is not a great look, regardless of what actually drives copper prices.

To be fair to BHP, the profit surge is largely a story about global copper demand, driven by data centres, electrification and renewables, not something the company invented out of thin air. Copper is genuinely in a supply crunch, and BHP is simply the biggest Australian company positioned to benefit from it.

But optics matter, and record profits sitting next to a cost of living crisis is the kind of headline pairing that writes itself, whether or not it is entirely fair.

Expect this profit result to show up in every argument about windfall taxes, wage growth and who actually benefits when commodity prices spike. BHP will keep mining copper. The rest of us will keep watching our grocery bills.