On Monday, UAE industrial giant, Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) reported a record growth of 1,140 percent in the net profit for the year ending 2021 at a value of $1.5 billion.
EGA said in a statement that the huge increase was driven by the strong market for metal, solid operational performance throughout the value chain, and focus on efficiency improvements.
Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, CEO of EGA, said: “These record results show that our preparations for the next stage of our corporate journey are nearing completion.
“EGA today has strength from mine to metal, an optimized capital structure to continue delivering significant dividends to shareholders in future and grow our business, and a path to greatly reducing our carbon footprint.
“In the shorter term, strong demand has continued in the first quarter of 2022. While like others we are still facing challenges with global logistics, we have adopted new approaches such as breakbulk shipping to overcome them.”
He added: “EGA can still do better. We will focus on maximizing the value of our existing assets by debottlenecking and through Industry 4.0. We will drive further efficiency, and we will focus on unlocking further growth for our business.”
In 2021, the world’s largest ‘premium aluminium’ producer saw revenue of AED25.5 billion ($6.9 billion) compared to AED18.7 billion in 2020.
EGA’s shareholders also received AED735 million in dividends last year.
Production and sales of every commodity in the value chain increased in 2021 compared to 2020 while EGA’s average realized London Metal Exchange aluminium price for 2021 was $2,382 per tonne, the company said.
EGA added that it significantly deleveraged during 2021 and optimized its capital structure, enabling enhanced future dividend payments to shareholders and creating financial flexibility for future growth.
EGA reduced its senior corporate debt facility by AED2.7 billion, made scheduled and then full early repayment of the outstanding AED1.6 billion project financing for the construction of Al Taweelah smelter, and made scheduled repayments on Guinea Alumina Corporation debt.
In total, EGA repaid AED4.4 billion of debt in 2021.
Zouhir Regragui, the chief financial officer of EGA, said: “Higher prices for aluminium have prevailed since the world started rebounding from Covid-19, and this demonstrates the strong long-term outlook for our metal as a key material for the development of a more sustainable future. We will take more bold steps to strengthen our own sustainability.
“Our deleveraging trajectory remains very strong, driven by both market conditions and our own efforts to improve EBITDA. As a result, EGA is increasingly well-set for the next phase of our growth journey.”
Furthermore, the total sales of the cast metal slightly increase to 2.54 million tonnes, owing to the offset of the progress in debottlenecking and the completion of the Al Taweelah expansion project by maintenance shutdowns and global logistics constraints.
