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LONDON (Alliance News) - Bisichi Mining PLC on Monday reported solid growth in both revenue and earnings after a "strong" performance from its Black Wattle coal mine in South Africa.
Bisichi's revenue for 2018 was GBP49.9 million, up from GBP40.4 million the year before.
This led to pretax profit climbing to GBP5.9 million from GBP1.5 million, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation to GBP8.6 million from GBP3.7 million.
Bisichi is paying a special dividend of 2 pence, from 1p a year before.
This is on top of a final dividend of 3p, meaning its total for 2018 is 6p from 5p year-on-year.
Chair Michael Heller said: "These results can be attributed mainly to the strong performance from Black Wattle which continued to benefit from the infrastructure improvements to the coal washing plant that were reported to shareholders in 2017."
"These improvements have enabled the group to wash at consistent levels of production and achieve an increased overall yield compared to prior years. In addition, the mine was able to benefit from significantly improved coal prices achievable for our coal during the year."
"Looking forward, although we have seen global economic factors impact coal demand in some international markets, the demand for South African coal has remained strong and we expect overall levels of production from Black Wattle to remain consistent with 2018," he continued.
"Accordingly, we continue to be confident about the ability of our South African coal mining operations to contribute strongly to our group earnings and cash generation for the foreseeable future."
In 2018, output from Black Wattle was 1.3 million metric tonnes, marginally higher year-on-year, and Bisichi expects to maintain this in 2019.
Shares were 6.1% higher on Monday at a price of 116.75 pence each.
