Kazatomprom uranium sales jump 65%

Kazakh uranium miner Kazatomprom expects further revenue growth this year on higher prices, it said on Wednesday after posting a 112 percent jump in 2018 adjusted net profit on higher sales volumes and prices.

London-listed Kazatomprom’s net income adjusted for one-off transactions stood at 66.8 billion tenge (about $177 million), it said in a statement.

The world’s biggest uranium miner said it expected 2019 consolidated revenue of 485-505 billion tenge, with higher prices offsetting lower physical sales.

For 2018, revenue rose 58 percent to 436.6 billion tenge while Kazatomprom’s uranium <UX-U3O8-SPT> sales grew 65 percent in physical terms, it said.

But this year, Kazatomprom plans to sell slightly less uranium in physical terms, its presentation showed – 13,500 to 14,500 tonnes compared with 15,287 tonnes in 2018.

Without one-off adjustments, Kazatomprom’s 2018 profit surged 173 percent to 380.3 billion tenge last year, according to the statement.

The company would stick to the previously announced plans to make dividend payments of no less than $200 million for 2018 and 2019, Kazatomprom chief executive Galymzhan Pirmatov told reporters on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; editing by Maria Kiselyova/Jason Neely and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)