https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/noble-...00808.html
Noble Group Blames Coal Price Collapse as Writedowns Mount
(Bloomberg) -- Noble Group Ltd. blamed the tumble in coal prices for an additional $1.2 billion in charges that will force the embattled commodities trader to post its first full-year loss in almost two decades.
The company said most of the impairments are due to coal, warning that prices may remain at lower levels for an extended period of time, according to a statement Tuesday. Coal is a pillar of the Hong Kong-based trader’s energy unit, which accounted for 85 percent of revenue in 2014. The fuel’s fortunes have waned amid a broader slump in commodities and worldwide efforts to fight global warming, leaving prices near nine-year lows. Shares rose 1.4 percent at the close.
Noble Group endured a tumultuous 2015 as raw material prices sank, culminating in Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s cutting the trader’s debt rating to junk. The shares lost 65 percent and its bonds tumbled as it parried attacks from short sellers and fended off claims that its accounts were misleading.
“The market was likely anticipating some form of writedown and the flat share price may suggest that as well,” Conrad Werner, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Singapore, said by e-mail. “Banks may see an incrementally ‘cleaner’ balance sheet as a positive factor when they make their lending decision vis- a-vis Noble.”
Noble had positive cash flow in the second half and ended the year with a cash balance of $1.95 billion, the company said. It expects to post a net loss in the fourth quarter and for the full year, which would be its first annual loss since 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The $1.2 billion in non-cash impairments and exceptional charges are in addition to a loss of $546 million from the sale of its Noble Agri Ltd. unit, which shareholders cleared last month.