Centennial digs in for the long haul The newly acquired Tahmoor operation is vital to the miner's future, writes Jamie Freed.
At tomorrow's annual meeting in Sydney, Centennial Coal managing director Bob Cameron is likely to note it's been a challenging year for his company.
Despite record coal prices, the company's shares have fallen to close at $3.80 on Friday - down 30 per cent from a record high of $5.44 in August and off 5 per cent from the $4.01 price at the time of last year's annual meeting.
The recent share price dive comes after a solid track record of annual gains since the company floated in 1994 and grew to become Australia's biggest independent coal producer with a $1.1 billion market value.
In the last few weeks the news from Centennial has not been as encouraging.
Throughout October Centennial warned it was experiencing difficult geological conditions at its Newstan mine near Newcastle. A vandalism incident compounded the problem, making it dangerous for miners to stabilise a collapsing roof at a critical time.
And, just before 8 pm on October 31, Centennial released its quarterly production report warning that annual production of Newstan's thermal and semi-soft coking coal would be about 38 per cent lower than last year.
Because Centennial has a history of releasing production reports by 10am, investors and analysts did not appreciate the late-night surprise.
"The conspiracy theories are unfounded," Cameron says.
"The simple reason is logistics. I flew in from overseas and could only get involved in the drafting of [the report] and confirmation of all of the information on the day."
It's not surprising Cameron's explanation was backed by other sources because, despite the recent hiccups at Newstan, Centennial's management team is well regarded by the market.
"The management is very conservative and professional and experienced," Wilson HTM analyst Andrew Pedler says.
Cameron, a veteran underground coalmining engineer, has led Centennial since it was founded as a one-mine private company in 1989. After growing substantially over the years - including the purchase of Powercoal from the NSW Government in 2002 - Centennial now owns 15 mines in NSW.
The vast majority are underground mines, because that's where the opportunities have presented themselves as the company has grown. Underground mining is substantially more difficult - and riskier - than open-cut.
"If [underground] mining was easy, everybody would be doing it," says ABN Amro Morgans analyst Roger Leaning.
Cameron recognises that Centennial's heavy dependence on underground mining can produce nasty production surprises such as the recent one at Newstan. Therefore, the company is developing its largest mine, the open-cut Anvil Hill mine in the upper Hunter Valley. If all goes as planned, the mine should begin producing more than 7 million tonnes of saleable coal a year, beginning in 2008.
"Certainly our portfolio is heavily biased toward underground mining at the moment but Anvil Hill will re-weight that portfolio towards a more even balance between open-cut and underground," Cameron says.
The Anvil Hill project is so big it accounts for $1 of UBS's $5-a- share price target and will provide about one-third of Centennial's coal sales when it opens.
Apart from the difficulties at Newstan, there have been recent problems at its underground Myuna mine. These should be resolved when it mines a lower coal seam - the current one has become too thin to mine.
Centennial's Munmorah mine, a marginal operation acquired as part of the 2002 Powercoal purchase, had a major impact on the company's earnings when rapidly declining geological conditions and coal quality forced the company to close it earlier than expected in June.
The resulting pre-tax closing costs of $21 million meant Centennial did not meet its forecast of a 15 per cent rise in annual profits made at last year's annual meeting. Instead, earnings for the year ended June 30 fell 31 per cent to $36.5 million.
As for next year, so far Centennial has only said it was confident profits would be significantly higher.
Cameron is cagey as to whether the company will release a more detailed profit guidance at tomorrow's meeting. Analyst estimates range from UBS's $88 million to Deutsche Bank's $127 million.
The one thing that is clear about next year's earnings is that the majority will come from its newly acquired Tahmoor mine, a hard coking coal operation located about 100 kilometres south-west of Sydney.
Centennial beat rivals such as Xstrata to acquire the mine's owner, Austral Coal, through a friendly scrip bid earlier this year.
Commissioned by a private American group in 1979, the mine has since passed from British Petroleum to Rio Tinto to Austral to Centennial.
Austral bought the mine - its only asset - in 1997 from Rio and experienced near-constant production problems.
The mine had a track record of missing shipments which meant that, despite this year's record benchmark coking coal prices of $US125 a tonne, Centennial has sold the coal at an average of less than $US90 a tonne since taking over operations in mid-April. Much of it had to be delivered into old contracts at prices as low as $US50 a tonne.
"It really hurts," says Centennial's general manager of southern operations, Gavin Taylor, who has been in charge of Tahmoor since the handover to Centennial in April.
During a visit to the Tahmoor mine last week managers tried to be diplomatic about the skills of the Austral team. But it was clear that since Centennial took over and replaced the top managers, there has been a renewed focus on occupational safety and on commissioning the equipment necessary to maximise production.
The shift schedule has changed from the outdated seven-hour, four shift a day system popularised by the union movement in the 1970s to a standard working day of three eight-hour shifts. This has saved 20 per cent in labour costs due to the lack of overlap.
And now the mine has the benefit of being part of a larger group, allowing managers like Taylor to consult the managers of Centennial's other mines to discuss common problems. "We put a lot of focus on the expertise we have throughout the group with respect to mining engineering, geology and engineering generally," Cameron says.
And Taylor is well-aware that Tahmoor is particularly important to the company's financial situation.
"The reality is that if we sneeze, then Centennial's got a cold," Taylor says.
After completing three planned longwall moves this year - each of which costs a month of production - Tahmoor's run of mine output should increase to 2.7 million tonnes next year from 2 million tonnes this year.
Coking coal prices could fall slightly after contract negotiations are completed but are expected to remain strong when they are settled with Asian steel mills early next year.
Because Tahmoor will have delivered on all of its commitments from the Austral days, the mine will finally be able to earn the full contracted price for its coal and be a major contributor to Centennial's profits.
Export thermal coal prices are expected to fall from this year's $US54 a tonne to as low as the $US40 a tonne spot price next year, although most observers expect prices to settle at about $US44-48 a tonne.
But news on Friday that Xstrata had settled for $US40 a tonne with Taiwan Power was not encouraging, although some have questioned the quality of that particular coal.
As for Centennial, most of its coal is sold domestically under long-term contracts to NSW power stations at an undisclosed price below the $US40 a tonne spot price.
Cameron admits there has been an opportunity cost to his company due to those contracts but says when coal prices fall, Centennial's more defensive posture could be an advantage.
"With the export market coming off the boil a bit - more so, of course, in thermal coal - I imagine some investors will say we should look again at Centennial because it's less leveraged to the export prices and does have a very strong underpinning Australian dollar cashflow from these very secure long-term contracts," he says.
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