Birmingham, Alabama-based coal producer Walter Energy, Inc. said Thursday that performance in Q1 2013 improved over Q4 2012, driven largely by increased metallurgical coal sales volume and pricing, increased production and lower costs.
Walter Energy expects to report Q1 2013 metallurgical coal sales volume of approximately 2.8 million metric tons, up approximately 9 percent compared with Q4 2012. Average realized metallurgical coal sales prices are also expected to improve slightly compared with Q4, primarily due to a higher sales volume of low vol hard coking coal and a slight strengthening in the market. The improvement in pricing in the quarter was tempered by approximately 700,000 metric tons of carryover sales at Q4 2012 pricing.
Q1 2013 metallurgical coal production is expected to total approximately 2.8 million metric tons, up approximately 12 percent compared with Q4 2012. While production volumes early in Q1 reflected the impacts of planned long wall moves in the company's Alabama operations, production performance improved in the latter part of the quarter.
Sales of thermal coal are expected to total approximately 380,000 metric tons in Q1 2013, a decline of approximately 40 percent from Q4 2012.