Bukit Asam's Profit Drops To IDR 2.4 Trillion, Managing Director: Alhamdulillah, It Is Quite Encouraging

JAKARTA - PT Bukit Asam Tbk (PTBA) still has a positive performance until the end of 2020 even though it is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fluctuation and sluggishness of world coal prices. The company managed to book a net profit of IDR 2.4 trillion until 31 December 2020.

Despite posting positive performance, the mining BUMN's profit fell by approximately 41.23 percent throughout 2020 when compared to 2019's profit of IDR 4.05 trillion.

President Director of Bukit Asam, Arviyan Arifin said that in terms of revenue, PTBA booked IDR 17.3 trillion. The company's assets as of December 2020 were recorded to be still strong at IDR 24.1 trillion, with the composition of cash equivalents and time deposits over 3 months amounting to IDR 5.5 trillion or 23 percent of total assets.

"This is quite encouraging. Because in the pandemic era, many companies are experiencing difficulties and Alhamdulillah we were able to get out of the company's financial problems," he said in a virtual press conference, Friday, March 12.

Furthermore, Arviyan said PTBA's performance throughout 2020 was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic which caused a decrease in energy consumption due to the imposition of lockdowns in several export destination countries such as China and India.

Meanwhile, this condition also occurs in the country, which is the majority market for PTBA. The decline in electricity consumption in large areas of Indonesia such as DKI Jakarta, Banten, Java and Bali also has an impact on the decline in domestic coal absorption.

"Due to the decline in demand for industrial electricity consumption, production has decreased, so we do not want to reduce our sales," he said.

Moreover, continued Arviyan, the price of coal during 2020 is also a challenge for the company. Based on data from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM), the reference coal price (HBA) fluctuates greatly throughout 2020. Starting at USD 65.93 per ton in early January 2020 and briefly touching a point below USD 50 per ton in September 2020.

Then, the HBA began to creep up in the last 3 months in 2020 and touched the figure of 59.65 US dollars per tonne in December 2020. This increase was in line with the recovery of coal demand in the global market.

Even so, said Arviyan, the average HBA throughout 2020 was the lowest in the last 4 years at 58.17 US dollars per tonne.

"Efficiency is one of Bukit Asam's strategies to maintain and record positive performance amidst price volatility and reduced demand for coal supplies," he said.

Arviyan said that the efficiency strategy that has been carried out by PTBA in all lines is to continue to make efforts to reduce business costs and control the cost of production through the implementation of optimization in each line of operation.