Net income for Nickel Asia Corporation increased to P 4.22 billion in 2018 due to upsurge in shipment volumes and added profits accumulated from its two processing plant, the firm said Thursday through a disclosure.
The total amount of the net income increase in 2018 is a growth of six percent from the year it followed where a profit of P 3.85 billion was recorded.
Combined additional profit from Nickel Asia’s Taganito and Coral Bay processing plants is said to be 75 percent higher from P 198 million in 2017 and P 348 million last year.
Meanwhile, from P 15.74 billion in 2017, revenue earnings for last year reached P 18.65 billion due to increased shipments of its higher-value saprolite ore and a stronger US dollar.
Saprolite ore’s amount sold last year was 11.54 million wet metric tons (WPS), 19.7 percent more compared to 9.64 million WMT. On the other hand, from 17.7 million WMT in 2017, 19.3 million WMT of nickel ore was sold by the company last year.
Prices received for sales of the two ore types was at an average of $ 16.86 per WMT in 2018 which is 4.26 percent higher than 2017’s $16.17 per WMT.
“As we look at the medium-term prospects of our company, we believe that LME-linked nickel has the [greatest] potential to outperform the commodity market, given the evolution of battery technology. We are fortunate that a sizeable segment of our market is able to capture this,” Nickel Asia President Martin Antonio Zamora was quoted in an article by The Manila Times.
Zamora said they are very pleased by the company’s performance for 2018. This is despite the challenges Indonesia brought up with the country’s ore supply increase.
