Glut curbs Yancoal recovery
Another big loss by the manager of WA's Premier Coal business has topped the rush of last-day reporting laggards.
Yancoal Australia's annual results reveal a substantially improved bottom line but still left the Chinese-owned miner with a $353 million loss for 2014.
Its underlying performance also reinforced the ongoing pressures placed on the country's coal miners by a glut of supply and weaker demand from Asia.
Premier is managed by Yancoal on behalf of the latter's parent, Yanzhou Coal, which pulled the Collie miner directly under its umbrella in 2012.
Yancoal had bought Premier a year earlier from Wesfarmers for $300 million.
Yancoal, which operates a suite of coal mines in New South Wales and Queensland, provided no comfort to investors about a market recovery, warning the oversupply of coal was expected to restrict the prospect of major price improvements this year.
But there was no update on Premier's performance. That will wait until Yanzhou's own results, which according to Yancoal, are due in the next few weeks.
Scrutiny of Premier intensified in October with a new long-term supply deal in which State- owned power provider Synergy agreed to pay more for its coal to ensure Premier remained viable.
The agreement allows the State to convert the increased prices into equity in Premier.
The Yancoal results lobbed late on Friday amid the traditional last-minute rush by mainly loss-making companies trying to beat Friday's reporting deadline.
Maurice Brand's LNG Ltd recorded an increased loss of $20 million for the December half as it ramped up development of an LNG processing plant in the US.
Chocolate hopeful Yowie Group halved its loss to $996,000 while posting its first, albeit modest, sales from its budding marketing programs with US retailers, including Walmart.
Malaga curtain and blinds maker Kresta Holdings retreated, falling to a small December-half profit of $52,000 from $565,000 for the same period a year earlier, on a 4 per cent drop in revenue to $48.4 million.
Kresta also disclosed that while its $10 million acquisition of Queensland-based Franklyn Blinds was progressing well, closure of the purchase had been delayed to March.
