said July 12 that its net profit attributable to shareholdersfor the first half is expected to drop between 77.26% and 92.42% from the 263.9million Chinese yuan, or 2.8 fen per share, recorded a year ago.

Netprofit was expected to range between 20 million yuan and 60 million yuan, orbetween 0.2 fen per share and 0.6 fen per share.

The averagesale prices of some products booked a significant decline in the first half,the company said.

Financecosts also rose because of an increase in interest expenses and exchangelosses. Tongling Nonferrous said it replaced some foreign currency liabilitieswith yuan-denominated debts to offset exchange rate fluctuation risks.

As of July 12, US$1 wasequivalent to 6.69 Chinese yuan.