Coal stocks have been cold in the first quarter, and China Shenhua, the "coal power leader", is no exception, with first-quarter profits falling 14%.
On Friday, China Shenhua released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024, which showed that China Shenhua's revenue was 87.647 billion yuan, a slight increase of 0.7% year-on-year, the profit attributable to the owners of the company for the period was 17.760 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 14.1%, mainly due to the decline in coal prices, and the net cash inflow from operating activities was 28.553 billion yuan, a slight year-on-year decline.
In the first quarter of 2024, China Shenhua's commercial coal output was 81.3 million tons, up 1.5% year-on-year, and coal sales were 117.1 million tons, up 8.8% year-on-year. Affected by changes in market supply and demand, the average selling price of the company's commercial coal decreased by 7.7% year-on-year to 573 yuan/ton, resulting in a decline in the profit of the coal business.
Thanks to the recovery of domestic electricity demand, China Shenhua's power generation business achieved growth against the trend. The company's total electricity sales were 52.16 billion kWh, a year-on-year increase of 7.0%. The average utilization hours of coal-fired units reached 1,254 hours, a record high for the same period in history. The gross profit margin of power generation business reached 16.9%, an increase of 1.1 percentage points year-on-year. The company actively promoted new energy projects, and the installed capacity of photovoltaic power generation increased to 482 megawatts.
As of the end of March, China Shenhua's assets totaled 656.569 billion yuan, and the equity attributable to the owners of the company was 429.119 billion yuan, with an asset-liability ratio of 22.6%, indicating a relatively stable financial position. In terms of expenses, the company's financial expenses decreased year-on-year.
China Shenhua's net profit attributable to the company's shareholders last year was 59.694 billion yuan, and 75% of the net profit was used to distribute dividends, with a total dividend of 44.9 billion yuan.
In the first quarter of this year, the performance of many companies in the industry declined, and some analysts pointed out that the demand for coal in the power industry gradually weakened in the first quarter, especially after the end of the heating season, the daily coal consumption of the power industry decreased significantly, and the long-term coal shipment was guaranteed, and the thermal coal inventory of power plants remained at a high level.
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