Puda Coal sees 80 pct profit rise in 2011 on new coal biz 03/24 05:42 PM
(Refiles to change dateline to Yuncheng, China)
YUNCHENG, China, March 25 (Reuters) - Puda Coal Inc (PUDA:$11.31,00$0.1300,1.16%) , an independent coking coal producer in northern China'sShanxi province, expects net income this year to increase by more than 80 percent with the addition of its new thermal coal business, a company executive said on Friday.
The company won government approvals during the past two years to take over nine thermal coal mines and four metallurgical coal mines in the southern part of Shanxi, China's largest coal producing province after Inner Mongolia.
The company has completed purchases of the nine thermal coal mines, and construction and expansion of some of the mines are under way, which would add some 840,000 tonnes of coal output this year, Chief Financial Officer Laby Wu told Reuters while visiting one of the mine shafts.
"Purchase negotiations of the four metallurgical coal mines were continuing," she said.
Wu said she expects the company will double its revenue and triple its net income by 2012 from the levels in 2010 when the thermal coal business reaches its full production capacity of 3.5 million tonnes per year.
Puda made $23.5 million in net income on revenues of $324.8 million in 2010, a sharp rise from a year earlier, as coking coal prices recovered from the lows in 2009 when demand weakened amid the global financial crisis.
The Shanxi government selected and aided bigger coal miners, many state-owned, to take over smaller peers in the past several years, in a bid to improve industry safety and efficiency. Most small and private miners have since been forced out of the business or have given up control of the business. (Reported by Jim Bai and Chen Aizhu; Editing by Ken Wills)
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