Global Ferronickel Holdings Inc. said net income in the first nine months of the year surged to P780 million from just P7 million year-on-year, boosted by increased production and higher metal prices.
Global Ferronickel said in a disclosure to the stock exchange nine-month revenues jumped 72 percent to P4.64 billion while EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) amounted to P1.4 billion.
“We are in a business with high degree of operating leverage. We have successfully addressed both the revenue and cost side which directly translate to our bottom line,” said FNI president Dante Bravo.
“Such brisk growth reflects good progress on our previously announced productivity initiatives which drove higher shipped volume. We also benefited from improved selling prices, better product mix, and favorable foreign exchange rate,” he added.
Shipped volume rose 43 percent in the first nine months to 4.9 million wet metric ton.
Average realized price also climbed to US$18.77 per WMT, as more medium-grade ore that commanded higher market prices were sold.
The product mix was 58 percent low-grade ore and 42 percent medium- grade ore compared with the previous year’s mix of 65 percent low-grade and 35 percent medium-grade ore.
“We continue to balance capital investments through our mineral exploration program as well as share buybacks. We have repurchased over P636 million worth of FNI stock year-to-date and we did this without raising debt levels. We financed the share repurchases from free cash flow because we are focused on long-term shareholder value,” Bravo said.
The mining company earlier announced the completion of its exploration drilling activities at the Cagdianao deposit areas 2 and 3.
Measured and indicated mineral resources at CAGA 1 to 5 increased to 54 million DMT with an average grade of 1.1 percent nickel and 31.4 percent iron.
Mineral reserves increased to 36 million WMT with an average grade of 1.22 percent nickel and 31.7 percent iron.
“We are encouraged by current strong trends for fixed asset investments in China particularly real estate development and water, environment and public facilities infrastructure. We are also positive on long-term prospects for new energy vehicles which saw double-digit sales growth year-to-date. I’m confident that we’ll finish the year strong and we’ll continue to invest in opportunities we see ahead for 2018 and beyond,” Bravo said.
