(Reuters) -Yancoal Australia on Monday posted a near five-fold jump in annual profit, as the miner benefited from a sharp rise in coal prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia is the world’s third-largest exporter of coal and Western sanctions on the commodity had sparked a scramble for alternate supplies, boosting demand for Australian coal and helping local miners post stellar profits.
Yancoal realised an average selling price of A$378 per tonne of coal in 2022, compared with A$141 per tonne achieved a year earlier.
“At the start of the year, supply constraints were already evident in the international coal markets.. the invasion of Ukraine in early-2022 then exacerbated the supply shortfall across the global energy markets,” Yancoal said in a statement.
The company’s profit after tax was A$3.59 billion ($2.41 billion) for the year ended Dec. 31, 2022, compared with A$791 million a year earlier. It also declared a final dividend of 70 Australian cents per share.
Yancoal now expects attributable saleable production of 31-36 million tonnes in 2023. Its output fell 20% to 29.4 Mt in 2022, hurt by unfavourable weather conditions and labour availability.
Cash operating costs for 2023 are expected to be between A$92/tonne and A$102/tonne, compared with A$94/tonne spent in 2022.
($1 = 1.4881 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Harish Sridharan in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V)
