Datang Power 1H profit plummets

Datang International Power Generation saw its first-half net profit plummet by 75.4% year-on-year to US$80.73 million due to high coal prices and reduced capacity utilization, the South China Morning Post reported. The reported profit nonetheless bested analyst expectations ranging from US$51.1 million to US$65.8 million. Revenues grew by 14.14% to US$2.6 billion due to a 10.96% rise in sales to 58.6 billion kilowatt-hours, a power price increase and the commissioning of new plants in coastal regions. Datang said profits would improve in the second half, but that the firm would continue to face a difficult operating environment. But the company did not issue a profit warning for the third quarter, indicating that any profit decline would be less than 50%. Datang is one of China’s five flagship power producers, and the largest power supplier in the Beijing-Datang-Tianjin area.