Today is on Saturday. We went to the Sydney CBD for shopping. There are so many people however still a bit less than before the COVID time. I wore my face musk almost all the time during my stay in the CBD and I need to check in by using apps every time we go into the shop. But other than these, I felt I can do almost anything. Life is going to be normal here. Hope the virus won’t come back.
I am reading a book in Japanese about the vocabulary. The vocabulary is very important to learn language too. I want to work on my vocabulary all the time. How can I increase my vocabulary? That would be by reading books. By writing this blog in three languages, I feel I need to learn more vocabularies in these three languages. I need to keep improving these. The best way is reading good books. As Japanese speaker, I am native, so I just need to increase my vocabulary by reading books. But for English and Chinese, I need to get more of them by using vocabulary list. So I can learn vocabulary to understand better non native languages. I hope I can have better vocabulary when I am writing them too. What is your suggestion to learn vocabulary in English?
I should keep reading what I can especially in English. When I feel the book is difficult, I just need to change the book. I would say, I have read many books and liked reading them, I should restart from what I can read. I need to feel, I am reading books and enjoying them. From my life, I always think, I am a doctor of science so I should be able to read book as a native level but it is not necessary, the goal is to enjoy reading books. If I stop reading them, it does not matter at all. I am reading book about climate change, it is difficult for me so maybe I can change it to something easy to read like self-help or money related books. I also want to improve my vocabulary in the long term. So what can I do? Maybe it takes time to improve them. Let’s spend sometime to improve the vocabulary every day.
Wednesday is gone now. I have been doing experiments but the measurement is remote and automated so I just need to watch the progress while discussing the result with my collaborators. I also prepared a presentation for a conference in Taiwan on Friday. My presentation was recorded and I will be there for just Q&A. Hopefully it goes all smoothy.
Yesterday, I was asked to write a recommendation letter for someone who will be get promoted in China. I think he is going to be in a professor position. I am happy to be asked to write. For my career, I still think I am just a young and early career but it seems I am already in the position to write a recommendation letter. As been helped by other scientists like my previous boss, I am thankful to them. I am glad to do something helpful to other people. I will do my best to write a good recommendation letter.
I just listen to someone talking about the benefit of reading books, and watching movies. What do you actually get from these experiences? The answer is not much. One thing you can get is reminding your past experience. If the experience reminded your past experience and you learned from it, maybe you can have benefited from the experience. But other than that, it is not actually much. Why? He claims you need to take on some action after that, otherwise, you can’t get anything. For example, if you watch the movie some guy who was poor and did hard work to succeed in the movie, maybe you can be moved. But if you don’t do any action based on what you have learned from that movie, you are not actively learning. It is a simple truth but this was a good reminder. If you watch a DVD that teaches you Karate, after watching you might have felt you became stronger, but it is actually not. You have to practice to get stronger.
So we have been experiencing a lot through many forms of virtual experiences like books, movies, Youtube movies, presentations, SNS, and so on. We need to take active action to learn from it otherwise we are not getting much. So let’s try something if you want learn from them. For me, as a scientist, let’s keep doing experiments so I can actually learn something by doing something, not by reading textbooks or papers.
I didn’t feel well today. But it is another blue Sunday. I will need to work on the rest of this year for good science and I will have two weeks off. The experiment is going well with remote control, the data looks fine so far. Hope we can write another paper. I will find way to write my paper as well.
I have been reading a manga called Hunter*Hunter. I haven’t read it for a long time. It is a good manga I am thankful I can read again. Unfortunately, it is expensive to get these books online in Australia.
Also, I wrote a blog in Japanese for another book review. The book is from an athlete who were talking about limits of what we can do. I am impressed and had similar opinions with that book in many ways. Even I could not do it at his level. Even though I am in science and he is in sports, I could find many things to learn from him. The book taught me to have a stronger will to achieve goals. Unconsiouly, we limits ourselves to achieve what we might able to achieve.
Let’s get back to work tomorrow morning. I will have another week to do more good experiment.
Whitehaven Coal is a coal mining and exploration company listed in ASX. The price on Friday, Aug.13th 2021 ended at 2.38 and on Thursday of Sept. 30th, 2021 ended at 3.23 and Nov. 10th ended at 2.48. The share of outstanding is 1.03B so that market capitalization is A$2.55B. The company sells high-quality coal products to the Asian market mainly Japan (55%), Taiwan (16%), Korea (15%) for thermal coal, India (48%), Japan (16%), Vietnam (12%), and Korea (11%) for Metallurgical Coal Sales in FY20. The company’s share price soars because coal is now the highest at least the last 10 years. I am not sure the coal price keeps at this level. The demand for coal surged after the COVID-19 restriction started lifting around the world. In early October, the coal price high an all-time high at 269USD/ton. At the writing in early November, it came back down to about 160 USD/ton. It is still high. Also, there are Chinese demands shrink because the Chinese mining companies are producing coal at a record level since the Chinese government is trying to ease the electricity crisis in China. However, Whitehaven is not selling its coal directly to China.
FY20-1 (million)
FY20-2 (million)
FY21-1 (million)
FY21-2 (million)
Revenue
885.1
836.5
699.3
857.7
EBITDA
177.3
128.7
37.2
167.3
NPAT
27.4
2.6
-94.5
-449.4
Dividend
1.5
0
0
0
Last 4 half-year results
The company was having a hard time last the 4 half-year results because of the coal price. After the coal price came back, the price of the share has been rising. I believe the company will start making money from FY22 in the first half because of the high coal price. I could not see a big picture here so I checked at least 5 years of history as below.
\A$m
FY17
FY18
FY19
FY20
FY21
Revenue
1,773.2
2,257.4
2,487.9
1,721.6
1557.0
EBITDA(underlying)(*)
714.2
1011.9
1041.7
306
204.5
Net profit after tax
405.4
524.5
564.9
30
-543.9
EPS (taken from WSJ)
0.41
0.53
0.53
0.03
-0.55
Operating Cashflow (**)
607.6
883.4
916.5
146.4
138.8
Net debt
311.1
270.4
161.5
787.5
808.5
Dividend (cents)
6
40
50
1.5
0
Last five years of results
Surprisingly, on the day of releasing FY21 results, the share price rose 4.95%. I believe the investor understood this NPAT is the worst last 5 years because of the A$650m impairment of their asset. Revenue went down last two financial years it is because the coal price was low. I will show you later but the coal production does not change much last 5 years. In the last 5 years, FY18 and FY19 they had good NPAT but now the coal price is much higher since the beginning of FY22.
(*)I tried to find information from the company’s financial report but I saw some inconsistency. (**)I took data from the company’s financial report and the WSJ website.
\A$m
FY17
FY18
FY19
FY20
FY21
FY22Sept
Unit cost/ton $Am
58
58(62)(***)
67
75
74
Realized thermal coal Prices USD/t
81
98
100
66
68
142
Matellgurical USD/t
102
119
119
89
85
134
ROM coal production Mt
23.1
23.0
23.2
20.7
20.7
5.16
Sales Mt
20.7
22.1
21.6
20.2
19.8
4.64
Thermal coal (Mt)
16.2
16.1
17.5
17.2
17.2
Metallurgical coal (Mt)
4.4
6.0(****)
4.1
3.0
2.6
0.75
0.78
0.72
0.67
0.74
Last five years of operations
I have updated the information based on the last quarterly report. Both types of coal prices are up.
I have tried to calculate some here. The coal run-of-mine (ROM) production FY21 was 20.7Mt, Managed coal sales were 19.8Mt. The company sells coal about 20Mt each year. The production and sales look stable for at least 5 years even with COVID-19 and bushfires, and floods. So, the average sales of coal are about 20Mt/year = 55kt/day. The gross profit a day would be 55kt*(212USD/0.719-74)= A$12.1 million a day. They are getting 12.1 m/1.03 b = $0.0117 per share a day. If I assume 55kt*(120USD/0.719-74)= A$5.11 million a day. They are getting 5.13 m/1.03 b = $0.005 per share a day. The net debt is 808.5m at the end of FY21, 67 days just needed to pay them all with the current 212USD/ton level. Now it is a level of 150USD/ton, even with this high rate of coal price, it takes some time for WHC to pay off the debts.
Somehow, I am off for about 371m and 321m from Revenues, why? I need to revise here again.
FY21 profit = 17.2Mt*(68/0.74-74)+2.6Mt*(85/0.74-74)=308m+106m=412m, this is also different from EBITDA or NPAT. Maybe I need to understand the account better. I will update these later.
(***) I see the inconsistency of the cost of coal/ton or unit cost/ton (****) I might have missed but I could not find the number in financial reports from WHC.
The data was taken from tradingeconomics.com. Sorry I didn’t have data itself so rough analysis. I put unit cost/ton level, NPAT, and Revenues. Now, we see WHC will enjoy the highest coal price last the 10 years. As long as I see it I will hold it until when the coal price goes down to 120USD/t level. As long as I can see it in the future today (November 2021), it will be until August 2022. As described in the last paragraph, at that level, the company keeps making money.
In the quarterly report on October 14th, 2021, the company said they will keep paying down their senior debt facility, they expect to repay the debt facility early in CY22 and be in the net cash position in March 2022 quarter. So hopefully, eventually the share price will be going up. The highest price in the last 5 years was A$5.89/share @July 6th, 2018. If the coal price is higher than 120 USD/t and keeps it there, they will break this price, I think…..