Whitehaven Coal Limited (WHC) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everybody. Thanks very much for taking the time to dial in today to the half-year results for financial year 24. As usual, I'm joined by a couple of my colleagues here on the leadership team here, Kevin Ball, our CFO, and Ian Humphress, our EGM of operations. And I've also got here, of course, Kylie and Karen from our investor relations team. Kevin and I will go through the presentation as we normally do, and then we'll move over to Q&A for further questions. Flicking the pages, go to our disclaimer, of course. There are some forward-looking statements included in this pack, so I'll draw your attention to that important statement. Over to the half, I'll just go through the highlights as we usually do. There's been a solid result from us, as you saw, with the quarters that we've released over the last two quarters, first half of the year, and consistent performance from our open-cut operations, resilient thermal coal pricing, which has been very positive, The realised coal prices for the period, $220 Aussie, was a very good result. Rise to revenues of $1.6 million for the half. We have maintained, of course, a strong balance sheet in anticipation of the transformational acquisition of Dornier and Blackwater, which I'll talk about a little bit further. That clearly was the highlight for six months in terms of the news flow from Whitehaven with our October announcement. We are on track for the 2nd of April in terms of completion. In this packet, I'll obviously give you insight into the costs associated with the transition and transaction related costs. A total of $164 million. The tax effect of that is $1,155 million. Our underlying EBITDA for the period was $623 million for the half and our underlying NPAT at $372 million for the half. Safe performance ha...