Steel Mills

SunCoke Energy Performs Well in Q2 on Strong Commodity Markets

Written by Laura Miller

August 2, 2022

Despite lower domestic coke sales in the second quarter, SunCoke Energy is seeing favorable export coke pricing and is increasing its earnings guidance for the year as a result.

“Our domestic coke and logistics segments continued to perform well in the second quarter with the backdrop of strong commodity markets. Although our coke production was impacted due to planned outages this quarter, it was more than offset by higher margins from our export coke sales,” commented president and CEO Mike Rippey in the company’s Q2 earnings report.

SunCoke’s Q2 net income of $18 million was a significant increase from the loss of $8.8 million it incurred in Q2 2021. Q2 revenues of $501.9 million were up 38% year-on-year.

The company’s domestic coke operations shipped just over 1.007 million tons in Q2—a decline of 56,000 tons from the year-ago quarter. The segment is made up of coke-making facilities and heat recovery operations in Jewell, Va.; East Chicago, Ind.; Franklin Furnace, Ohio; Middletown, Ohio; and Granite City, Ill.

For the full year, SunCoke now expects to produce 4.1 million tons of coke domestically and thinks it will continue to see higher export margins.

SunCoke plans to add pig iron production to its raw materials portfolio in the coming years. During Q2, the company entered into a non-binding letter of intent with US Steel to acquire the steelmaker’s Granit City blast furnaces and to build a 2-million-tons-per-year pig iron facility. Permitting and construction of the pig iron plant is expected to take approximately two years.

By Laura Miller, Laura@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a reporter and editor for Steel Market Update. Since 2007, she has held various editorial and marketing positions with steel industry publications, associations, and mills. In 2021, after a five-year hiatus working across other industries, she returned to steel trade journalism, joining SMU in 2022. She is a member of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries and a past-president of the AWMI Pittsburgh Chapter. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at laura@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7869.

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