Bumi Shares Fall Most in a Week After Sales Target Is Cut

By Leony Aurora

Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- PT Bumi Resources, Asia's biggest exporter of power-station coal, fell in Jakarta trading after the company cut its sales target and first-half profit missed some analysts' estimates.

Bumi, the most actively traded stock today, dropped as much as 8.9 percent, the biggest decline in a week, to 6,150 rupiah. The shares traded at 6,200 rupiah at midday while the benchmark Jakarta Composite Index fell 1.7 percent. Bumi is today's worst performer among 46 stocks in the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Energy Index.

The coal producer cut its full-year sales target by 1.6 percent to 60 million metric tons after rainfalls reduced first-half deliveries. Bumi's reduced target may prevent the Jakarta-based company from fully benefiting from rising coal prices. Prices of benchmark thermal coal have more than doubled on demand from Asian electricity producers.

``Bumi has a lot of catching up to do'' to reach the sales volume target by year end, Erindra Krisnawan, an analyst with Citigroup, said in a note to investors today.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, in the first half of the year nearly doubled to $454.7 million from $233.4 million a year earlier, Bumi said in a statement late yesterday citing preliminary figures. Costs of diesel rose to $1 a liter, compared with an initial assumption of 80 cents a liter, the company said.

Bumi's Ebitda ``disappointed'' as it accounts ``for only 25 percent of our full-year forecast and 24 percent of consensus,'' Yoke Fong Chee, a Singapore-based analyst at Goldman Sachs, said in a note to investors today. ``We believe the market will react negatively to the weaker-than-expected results from Bumi,'' said Yoke, who put the estimates and the company's ``neutral'' rating under review.

Sales Dropped

Coal sales fell to 25.4 million tons in the first half from the year-earlier's 28.3 million tons, including 4 million tons of stock, because of ``higher prolonged rainfall'' and some delayed arrivals of new heavy machinery, Bumi said.

Net income before one-time items in the second quarter of the year doubled to $198.5 million from $92.9 million while sales gained 44 percent to $830 million. Coal sales in the period fell 6.5 percent to 12.9 million tons.

First-half net income excluding one-time items rose to $302 million from $173 million a year earlier. Sales in the six-months ended June 30 climbed 30 percent to $1.49 billion, Bumi said in the statement.

Weekly prices at Australia's Newcastle port, a benchmark for Asia, reached a record $194.79 a ton in the week ended July 4, according to the globalCOAL NEWC Index. The index fell 3.4 percent from a week earlier to $174.7 a ton in the week ended July 25.

Today's earnings figures are preliminary and final data will be released by the second-half of August, Bumi said today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Leony Aurora in Jakarta at laurora@bloomberg.net