Publicly listed Nickel Asia Corp. reported Wednesday a sharp jump in its net income for the first nine months of the year due mainly to higher nickel prices on the world market, coupled with strong demand for the metal from China.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the country’s largest nickel miner said that its earnings at the end of September 2011 rose by 131 percent to P3.26 billion from only P1.41 billion at the end of the same period last year.
“The strong earnings performance during the first nine months of the year was a result of higher sales of nickel ore combined with higher nickel prices, mainly to Chinese customers, which enabled revenues to grow by 74 percent to P10.19 billion from the previous year’s P5.87 billion,” the firm said.
Total volume of nickel sold and delivered from the company’s four operating mines in 2011 reached 8.25 million wet metric tons (WMT) compared with 5.78 million WMT during the same period last year.