Peabody CEO has no worries where market concerned

摘要

It's kinda nice right now to be Peabody Energy - and maybe a few other coal producers here and abroad. "With respect to the coal markets, there aren't many lingering worries," Irl Engelhardt, the company's CEO, acknowledged during the company's quarterly earnings call. That goes both for this year and for next year, Engelhardt said. The price environment for current utility coal supply discussions is high enough that analysts on the Peabody conference calls seemed to gasp a bit at Engelhardt's description. They were sort of rubbing their palms together, hoping to hear the Peabody boss say that contract talks were poised to result in pricing four to eight dollars up from what it was a year ago. "Certainly, that is the low end of the range, I believe," Engelhardt said. "The numbers are quite strong." We all sort of picked ourselves up off the floor.