Nickel Asia earnings up 63.4% on higher revenues

Listed mining company Nickel Asia Corp. (NAC) reported that its net income in the three months ending March surged by 63.4 percent, capitalizing on higher revenues and prices of nickel ore.

In a disclosure on Friday, NAC said first-quarter earnings rose to P1.6 billion from P969.2 million year-on-year.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization amounted to P2.20 billion, up by 30 percent from P1.69 billion.

“Coupled with continued strong demand for stainless steel and the accelerating trend in demand in the electric vehicle market, these factors have been beneficial to our metals and mining business,” said NAC president and CEO Martin Antonio Zamora.

Nickel ore sales volume decreased by 10 percent to 2.39 million wet metric tons (WMT) from 2.65 million WMT. Revenues, however, climbed by 17 percent to P3.32 billion from P2.85 billion.

In 2022, the weighted average realized price of ore sold increased by 22 percent to $27.03 per WMT from $22.21 per WMT.

Breaking down the ore sales, the company exported 651 thousand WMT of saprolite and limonite ore to Japanese and Chinese customers at the weighted average price of $46.90 per WMT in the first three months of the year.

This was contrary to last year’s shipment of 845 thousand WMT priced at $45.60 per WMT.

It also shipped 1.74 million WMT of limonite ore to the Coral Bay and Taganito high-pressure acid leach plants, the prices of which are linked to the London Metal Exchange, the global marketplace for trading industrial metals, and realized an average price of $11.80 per pound of payable nickel.