St. Louis, Missouri-based Peabody Energy, one of the world's largest metallurgical coal mining companies, announced Friday that it expects its Q1 2012 financial results to be negatively impacted by recent storms and flooding in Queensland, Australia. The floods have halted port and rail movements, curtailed production at surface mines and restricted access to underground operations.
Peabody said that early estimates of the impacts are approximately $50 million for Q1 due lower production and sales volumes and higher costs, and it now expects earnings to be near the low end of the original targeted range of $500 to $600 million EBITDA.