RUSAL’s Q1 2017 aluminium sales grow 6.8% QoQ as inventory moves fast

The leading global aluminium producer United Company RUSAL Plc announced its first quarter 2017 operating results on a high note. The company's Q1 2017 aluminium sales totalled 985 thousand tonnes, up 6.8 per cent from the previous quarter. Value added product (VAP3) sales rose by 7.8 per cent QoQ to stand at thousand tonnes.

RUSAL attributes the total quarter-on-quarter sales dynamics to the increased level of inventories in the last quarter of 2016 which were subsequently sold out in the first quarter of the current fiscal.

On the production side, RUSAL failed to outdo its last quarter figures. Total aluminium production in Q1 2017 was estimated at 910 thousand tonnes, down 2.1 per cent from Q4 2016; the aluminium smelters in Siberia represented 94 per cent of the company's total aluminium output. RUSAL's total smelter utilization remained on average at a high of 95 per cent.

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In Q1 2017, RUSAL succeeded in improving its average aluminium realized price by 8.3 per cent from the previous quarter to US$1,949 per tonne. The increase was driven primarily by the positive dynamics in London Metal Exchange QP5 component and average realized premium component growth (+1.4 per cent QoQ to US$153 per tonne), the company mentioned in the statement.

RUSAL's Q1 2017 secondary aluminium alloy production totalled 7.2 thousand tonnes, up 13.9 per cent from Q4 2016 volume of 6.3 thousand tonnes. The output increased by 29.2 per cent from the same quarter previous year when the volume stood at 5.6 thousand tonnes.