Privately owned miners declare billions in dividends as coal prices stay high

Strong coal prices have kept the cash flowing to Chris Wallin and other Queensland coal barons – but their accounts also show the massive impact of the state’s royalty grab.

Reclusive Queensland coal billionaire Chris Wallin has raked in $575m in dividends from his privately-owned QCoal, despite softening coal prices undermining profits throughout Australia’s coal sector.

Mr Wallin’s main mining company paid out the strong dividend on the back of a $444.5m net profit for the 2023 financial year, down 24 per cent on the $582.1m net profit booked a year earlier.

QCoal Group has an interest in four coal mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, producing a mix of metallurgical and thermal coal. Coal prices softened last fiscal year – compared to record levels in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the previous period – but remain high compared to historical levels.

The coal miner paid out $375m in fully franked dividends last financial year, and said it had declared and paid another $200m on the back of the latest full-year results.

Mr Wallin’s wealth was estimated at $3.22bn when the 2023 edition of The List – Australia’s Richest 250 was published by The Australian in March, and the dividend total will be one of the highest paid by privately-owned companies to any member of Australia’s billionaire cohort so far this year – beating the $364m paid to Chemist Warehouse founders Jack Gance and Mario Berrocchi into a distant second place.

Coal billionaire Chris Wallin. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The QCoal accounts do not detail the total exports made by the company for the year, so it is not clear what impact production levels had on the company’s total revenue, which rose 15 per cent to $987.4m for the year.

But they detail the extraordinary impact of the Queensland state government’s royalty grab, with royalty payments made by QCoal up $48.5m for the year – or 53 per cent – to $140m for the year.

By comparison, QCoal paid $111.5m in corporate taxes on its annual profits for the year, down from $204m the year before.

Queensland’s royalty hike introduced three new royalty tiers to capture windfall mining profits from soaring prices, and delivered a staggering $15 billion in coal royalties in 2022-23. But the cash grab also angered the state’s big miners, with global giant BHP vowing to avoid new investments in the state’s mining sector.

This week Jellinbah Group, the private miner founded by little-known Brisbane billionaire Sam Chong, lodged its financial results, declaring a $1.28bn profit for the year and handing over $900m in dividends to its owners.

Jellinbah owns its Queensland mines with subsidiaries of Japanese group Marubeni and global mining giant Anglo-American.

Jellinbah’s results were also down on the previous year on softer coal prices, when the company booked a $1.9bn profit and declared $1.2bn in dividends to its shareholders.

The coal miner paid a $342m dividend in March 2023, along with a $108m special dividend a few days later. It declared and paid another $300m dividend, along with a $150m special dividend, on October 31 after delivering its annual results.

Originally published as Privately owned miners declare billions in dividends as coal prices stay high