Alliance Resource lowers coal production and sales volume guidance for 2023

“The recent heat wave has supported additional coal burn this summer for both the domestic and export markets. However, until Henry Hub natural gas prices rise above $3 per million Btu, we do not expect any meaningful gas-to-coal switching domestically. Therefore, we have chosen to reduce our coal production and sales volume guidance for 2023. Production targets have been reduced at our River View and Gibson operations in the Illinois Basin and at our Mettiki operation in Appalachia,” commented Mr. Craft. “Committed and priced sales tons currently represent 96% to 97% of our updated guidance range, and we plan to sell any remaining uncontracted tonnage primarily into international markets from these three mines. We have also adjusted the top end of our coal sales price per ton sold range downward based upon recent market analysis. On the positive side, we are lowering our cost estimates for the year as our team continues to find ways to reduce expenses in a stubbornly volatile inflationary environment.” Craft added, “During the 2023 Quarter, we agreed to sell an additional 8.6 million tons with multiple customers for coal to be delivered over the 2024 to 2026 time period. We expect there will be more opportunities this year to fill out our future contract book.” Mr. Craft closed, “These modest guidance revisions have not changed our view that we remain on track to achieve record financial results this year. As we look beyond 2023, we are encouraged by growth opportunities being pursued by our New Ventures group, the recent increase in the forward oil and gas price curves and acquisition prospects for our Oil & Gas Royalties segment. We are also seeing stability for coal demand over the next several years. Many of our coal customers are projecting significant growth in electricity demand as record numbers of new manufacturing facilities are being announced to come online over the next several years. All of these announced projects require exceptionally large electrical loads, adding to the reliability concerns of the stakeholders responsible for meeting the rising energy needs of their customers. The increased electricity demand should lead to slowing the pre-mature closing of coal-fired power plants in the eastern United States. We also expect the growth in LNG terminals coming online over the next five years will support higher domestic natural gas prices further supporting stable demand expectations for our coal operations over the next five to ten years.”