Australian airline Qantas Airways Ltd
(ASX:QAN) says group passenger numbers for August increased 6 per cent over the previous year.
The Qantas group includes; Qantas Domestic, QantasLink, Jetstar Domestic, Qantas International and Jetstar International.
The airline says group Revenue Passenger Kilometres, a measure of sales volume of passengers, fell 1.4 per cent.
Available Seat Kilometres, a measure of flights scheduled and seats available for the month, dropped 4.8 per cent.
Revenue seat factor of 80.5 per cent was 2.8 percentage points higher than the year before.
Qantas says Group passenger numbers for the financial year to August 2009 rose 5.2 per cent from the previous year.
The company says total domestic yield for the financial year to August 2009 was 12.8 per cent lower than last year, while international yield decreased by 22.9 per cent compared to the same period last year.
In an update on hedging , Qantas says it hedged 81 per cent of its expected fuel requirement in 2009/2010 at a worst-case crude oil price of US$89 a barrel.
Qantas says it has 74 per cent participation in falling oil prices for the remainder of the year. Qantas recorded net profit of $117 million for 2009 a massive drop from its high of close to one billion dollars in 2008.
Provider of specialist services to the underground coal mining industry, oil, gas and maintenance sectors in Australia, WDS Ltd (ASX:WDS), has announced a $45.7 million capital raising and the acquisition of Titeline Energy.
The raising comprises of a placement to institutional investors of approximately $18.2 million and a one for seven non-renounceable $27.5 million entitlement offer.
Both the institutional placement and entitlement offer will be conducted at the same offer price of $1.70 a share, an 18.7 per cent discount to the company’s last closing price on September 28.
The proceeds will be used to fund the cash component of the Titeline acquisition, to contribute to expansionary capital expenditure for new drilling capacity and to contribute to working capital needs for future projects and pursue future strategic opportunities in the coal seam gas sector.
WDS has also entered into a share sale agreement to acquire all the issued shares in Titeline Energy for around $29.3 million.
CEO Gareth Mann says WDS believes that the acquisition of Titeline positions the company to broaden its service offering and capitalize on our position in field activities in the growing coal seam gas market. WDS profits have been increasing year on year for the past four years.
Australian based gold mining and exploration company Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd (ASX:KCN) has increased the ore reserve estimates at the Chatree Mine in central Thailand.
The company says interim ore reserves increased to 1.5 million ounces of gold in 37.1 million tonnes of ore at a grade of 1.2 grams a tonne of gold as at June 30 2009.
This equates to a rise of 14 per cent after mining depletion over the past year, replacing the ounces of gold mined at almost twice the mining rate of the past year.
The company says it re-commenced drilling at the Chatree North mine in late 2008 after a hiatus of over two years.
Kingsgate says the estimates are still interim as the ongoing drilling program is projected to continue for another 2-3 years within the mining leases. Kingsgate Consolidated reported net profit of $32.52 million for 2009.
Australian base metals companies Vulcan Resources Ltd (ASX:VCN) and Universal Resources Ltd (ASX:URL) have agreed to merge.
Under the terms of the scheme of arrangement, all shares in Vulcan will be transferred to Universal and Vulcan shareholders will receive 6.58 Universal shares for each share in Vulcan.
In a joint statement to the market the two companies say the merged group will seek to progress development and finance of two advanced development stage projects, the Kylylahti copper, cobalt and nickel project in eastern Finland and the Roseby copper project in Queensland.
In the statement the Vulcan and Universal boards believe that the combined corporate, management and technical strengths of both companies will result in increased capacity to successfully develop existing projects, and will fast-track the merged company to become a substantial copper producer.
Vulcan Resources has posted losses in the last five years. And looking back Universal Resources is also yet to post a net profit.
