TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – A surprise improvement in coal miner Peabody Energy’s revenue for the three months ended June helped it post a loss a share on Tuesday that beat the average estimate of 22 Wall Street analysts.

The NYSE-listed miner, with operations in the US and Australia, reported a 2% year-on-year rise in revenue to $1.76-billion, boosted by a modest 1.5% improvement in total sales of 61.7-million tons of coal.

Peabody's US mining revenue rose 6.2% to $1.03-billion, while revenue a ton increased 1.1%. However, revenue from its Australian mining operations fell 5% to $744.8-million, with revenue a ton down 15%.

Peabody reported a loss of $73.3-million, or $0.28 a share, beating forecasts of a loss of $0.29 a share on revenue of $1.63-billion. This compared with a net income of $90.3-million, or $0.33 a share, a year earlier, which included a $184.7-million gain related to tax provisions.

For the third quarter, the company expects to post a loss of between $0.40 a share and $0.53 a share, reflecting the impact of lower realisations in Australia and the Western US, three longwall moves, improved performance at the North Goonyella mine and the repeal of the carbon tax in Australia. This is much wider than the $0.20 a share loss 20 analysts were expecting for the third quarter.

“US coal demand has been expanding for the last two years and our team continues to respond to seaborne market conditions by improving operational efficiencies, reducing costs and increasing cash flow generation. Peabody expects that accelerating supply cutbacks and rising demand will lead to improving seaborne market fundamentals heading into 2015," chairperson and CEO Gregory Boyce said.

The company is targeting 2014 Australian sales of 35-million tons to 37-million tons, including 16-million tons to 17-million tons of metallurgical coal and 11-million tons to 12-million tons of export thermal coal. In the US, it expects to sell 185-million tons to 190-million tons.

Despite coal sales having shown some signs of a rebound, persistent relatively low natural-gas prices were pressuring coal demand and pricing. Peabody was also dealing with low metallurgical coal prices, as demand for the steelmaking coal remained subdued.

The biggest coal producer in the US, Peabody, also noted that by 2016, the yearly global coal demand was expected to rise to 600-million tonnes. Peabody estimated that about 250 GW of new coal-fuelled generation would be built over the next three years, requiring an additional 750-million tonnes a year of thermal coal at expected capacity utilisation. Over this same period, China and India coal imports were expected to grow 100-million tonnes and ongoing urbanisation and industrialisation was expected to drive a 10% to 15% increase in seaborne metallurgical coal demand.

Peabody’s NYSE-listed stock on Tuesday closed down $0.14 a share at $15.18 apiece.