Peabody Energy Corporation (NYSE:BTU) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Lucas Pipes: Very helpful. Thank you for that color, Jim. My second question stays with North Goonyella. You raised the CapEx guidance this morning. We’ve seen obviously across the industry pretty material increases in capital costs. And at this stage how far down the rabbit hole are you in terms of derisking the capital for North Goonyella? I would appreciate a sense for your confidence level and were maybe some risks linger in this broadly inflationary environment. Thank you.

Jim Grech: Yes. Lucas as you said, we’re not immune to cost increases just like the rest of the industry. But given the relatively short time frame we start development mining here in the first quarter. We’ve got the miners on order to be delivered here in the first quarter. The conveyor structure that’s all in place. There’s still some more capital to be spent, but a lot of it has been ordered or on order or been spent already. A big part of the increase we have has been in labor cost which at this point is also capitalized. And so those have increased and we think we’ve captured that in our forecast. That’s a big part of the change in the capitalization is on the labor expense. So given the short time frame and the amount that’s already been ordered or spent we feel pretty good about those numbers and then being accurate based on all those reasons.

Labor is still a bit of a wildcard but we think we’ve captured everything with the labor cost that we could see going forward.

Lucas Pipes: Thank you, Jim. Very helpful. I’ll squeeze one last one in. On the met coal side for 2024 a few moving pieces. I know it’s a little early to ask for guidance. But just between development coal that — the good update on Shoal Creek what is a reasonable range for your coking coal volumes in this transition period before North Goonyella is fully ramped?

Mark Spurbeck : Yes, Lucas, it’s Mark. We’re not giving guidance for 2024 yet. Obviously Shoal Creek has done a really good job with some of the continuous minor development coal we’re getting now and we expect that to be ramped back up beginning Q1 of next year. That did about 800000 tons last year. It’s probably a high point with two million tons. They’re probably somewhere in the middle there for next year. That’s the big change.

Lucas Pipes: And all the other operations no major changes that you would expect there?

Mark Spurbeck: That’s right.

Lucas Pipes: All right. Thank you very much. I’ll turn it over. Best of luck.

Mark Spurbeck: Thanks, Lucas.

Jim Grech: Thanks, Lucas.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Nathan Martin with Benchmark Company. Please go ahead

Nathan Martin : Hey, good morning everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just one last one on North Goonyella. Now the project is fully approved. We’ve got the CapEx update. Can you guys give us any idea on the cadence of that spend? It looks like roughly $400 million or so left between now and 2026. And then also you mentioned something in the release about regulatory costs that increase there. I know you previously said the reentry was the major approval needed. But is there anything else from a regulatory perspective that we need to be mindful of? Thanks.

Jim Grech: Yes. Nate, I’ll answer the regulatory side of that and then Mark can address the cadence question that you had. In Australia the Safeguard Act was passed the legislation I think it was end of July which affected many industries in Australia but us included. And so we just got the detail of what that involves and the compliance costs that go along with it. So those regulatory impacts were something that we had to work into and do our forecast for the mine. That’s the main one. There’s been some other changes legislatively potentially that we see with the work rules and so on that we’ve accounted for but the main regulatory impact that we’re talking about is that Safeguard Act that came into effect there late in the summer.