Vale Indonesia produces less nickel in fourth quarter
Saturday, February 18 2012 - 02:46 AM WIB
?While shutting it down, we had an incident that impacted Furnace-1 and the company decided to utilize the situation to move forward scheduled maintenance work on this Furnace -1 initially scheduled for late 2012,? it said.
In the fourth quarter alone, the company sold 15,604 metric tons of nickel. For 2011 and 2010 the company sold 66,815 tons and 75,839 tons of nickel in matte respectively.
The company operated two furnaces in November and December 2011.
The company recorded an average realized price of nickel in matte of US$14,928 per ton during fourth quarter 2011, compared to US$17,735 per ton in 3Q11. Throughout the year, the company?s average realized price of US$18,296 per ton, was about 10 percent more than the 2010 average realized price.
Sales were US$237.0 million for the three months ended December 31, 2011 and US$290.1 million in 3Q11. Sales in 2011 declined by about 3 percent compared to the 2010 net sales.
The company?s total cost of goods sold (COGS) in 4Q11 increased by more than 16 percent to US$194.1 million from US$166.8 million in 3Q11 mainly due to increases in services and contracts.
The company?s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) totalled US$48.0 million in 4Q11, compared to US$134.2 million in 3Q11. EBITDA in 2011 of US$548.8 million was 19 percent less than US$677.6 million EBITDA obtained in 2010.
Lower net earnings and EBITDA in 4Q11 in comparison to 3Q11 were mainly due to higher COGS as well as lower average realized price during the period.
The company recorded net earnings of US$13.1 million in 4Q11 (US$0.001 per share) compared to US$81.7 million (US$0.008 per share) achieved in the previous quarter. Total net earnings in 2011 of US$333.0 million were 24 percent lower than net earnings of US$437.4 million in 2010.
In 4Q11 the Company used 13,009 kilolitres of diesel fuel at an average cost of US$0.85 per liter while in 3Q11 it consumed 18,492 kilolitres at an average cost of US$0.87 per liter.
In this same period the company also consumed 425,089 barrels of high sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) at an average cost of US$105.99 per barrel compared to 697,872 barrels at an average cost of US$105.56 per barrel in the previous quarter.
Editing by Roffie Kurniawan