Australia's largest gold miner Newcrest Mining is expected to report a first half loss as production continues to wane.

Analysts are expecting a dip in revenue and profit when the company reports its first half financial results on Friday.

The forecast loss comes a year after Newcrest made a first half profit of $40 million, down from $323 million in 2013.  The company recently reported stronger than expected quarterly production thanks to upgrades at its largest Australian operation, its Cadia mine in central NSW.

But on a first half basis Newcrest produced around 1.13 million ounces of gold in the six months to December down from 1.2 million ounces in the previous year. Fat Prophets resources analyst David Lennox said Newcrest’s production rate continued to fall which would affect profit in the first half.

“It’s marginal but it doesn’t take much in this environment when you’re only playing around with $40 million,” Mr Lennox said.

“We’re not expecting anything positive from what we’ve seen from these production numbers in the past two quarters.”

Newcrest shares have risen 60 per cent in the past three months as the Australian dollar lost 10 cents against the greenback.  The company’s Lihir operations in Papua New Guinea have underperformed while Cadia in Australia has improved.

“The dollar helped them and that’s out of their control and it does depend how much cost they have been able to extract from the system which they’ll tell us about when they report,” Mr Lennox said.