Freeport McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) is well on its way to making up for cutting what was formerly a nice dividend in dollar in terms. The bellwether commodities name and largest U.S. copper miner cut its $2 per share annual payout in December 2008, but reinstated a 60-cent per share annual dividend on February 1st this year. On Wednesday, the company said it will double its annual dividend to $1.20 a share.

Freeport said its first-quarter profit surged to $897 million, or $2 a share, from $43 million, or 11 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts were expecting the company to earn $1.90 a share.

Sales almost doubled to $4.4 billion from $2.6 billion. The new quarterly dividend of 30 cents is expected on August 1st. The new dividend would give the stock a yield of about 1.49%.

Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson said during an interview with CNBC today that he thinks his company can boost the dividend even further because the company will generate $6 billion in operating cash flow this year compared with just $1.7 billion in capital expenditures.