: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 per cent 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)
