Warrior Met Coal reports Q4 EPS $2.47, consensus $2.50

Reports Q4 revenue $363.8M, consensus $394.6M. “Our fourth quarter results reflect the culmination of a highly productive year where we made meaningful progress on strategic priorities to build significant, sustainable shareholder value,” said Walt Scheller, CEO of Warrior. “We were pleased to end the year on a strong note, delivering within the top half of our full year guidance which would have been slightly better by 129,000 short tons of shipments had our last two customer vessels made it to the terminal on their original schedule. Moreover, as a result of our operational expertise in combination with market pricing, we were gratified to deliver on our financial targets and guidance for the year. We also generated strong cash flow from operations which allowed us to fund the 2023 investment in the world class Blue Creek growth project from our operations, while reducing leverage by nearly 50%. We continue to make excellent progress in developing Blue Creek. We remain on track for the first development tons from continuous miner units in the third quarter of 2024 and the longwall is scheduled to start up in the second quarter of 2026. We expect approximately 200,000 short tons of production of High Vol A coal from the continuous miner units in 2024. Looking ahead to the global markets for steelmaking coal, we believe the tightness in supply, especially of premium quality coals such as those in our Mine 7, is supporting higher pricing. While spot demand from our customers in the Atlantic Basin is weak, overall demand from our contracted customers is stable and demand continues to grow in the Pacific Basin. Our full-year outlook encompasses this favorable landscape, and we expect that 2024 could be another strong operational year for Warrior, driven by expected higher coal production and sales.”