Alliance Resources Vs Patriot Coal

Alliance Resources (a kid obsession of mine) is financially the best performed coal society inwards America. The stock is nigh all fourth dimension records - in addition to distributions are large in addition to unimpaired.

Patriot Coal is inwards a spectacular bankruptcy.

I idea it reasonable to compare the best of the best alongside the worst of the worst - only to meet how dissimilar they actually were - peradventure hence I could pivot downward what made Alliance Resources special.

Here the companies are compared yesteryear tons, employees in addition to tons per employee.

	Patriot Coal			Alliance Resources
	tons (millions)	Employees	tons/ employees	tons (millions)	Employees	tons/ employees
2007	22.1	2300	9609	24.3	2600	9346
2008	28.5	4300	6628	26.4	2955	8934
2009	32.8	3500	9371	25.8	3090	8350
2010	30.9	3700	8351	28.9	3558	8123
2011	31.1	4300	7233	30.8	3832	8038
2012	24.9	4100	6073	35.2	4345	8101
2007-11	145.4	18100	8033	136.2	16035	8494
2007-12	170.3	22200	7671	171.4	20380	8410

Alliance is amend - it is smoother for illustration - which way less hiring in addition to firing. And it does non accept the crash inwards productivity at the destination - but that crash happened afterwards the bankruptcy.

But it is non massively different.

It belike makes feel to role the residual canvas information from 2011 (before multiple restatements) rather than 2012 to examine Patriot because that was earlier the bankruptcy mucked everything up. In those days Patriot was even hence humming along (admittedly inwards about distress).

Patriot had considerably less mechanism but to a greater extent than "buildings in addition to improvements" than Alliance. That figures - about of Patriot's operations were open-cut whereas Alliance is solely an cloak-and-dagger miner. Open-cut mining involves lots of "improvements" (although about would debate removing hills does non constituted improvement.)

Patriot produced far better coal. Some of their coal was metallurgical - in addition to most was lower sulfur. This coal should get a massive premium toll - hence that is ane inwards favor of Patriot.

Patriot had inwards 2011 way less debt than Alliance has now. This is form of amazing - yous tin become spectacularly bankrupt alongside an performance this size in addition to this marker of productivity.

The primary deviation is inwards the size of other residual canvas liabilities. Patriot had $238 1000000 inwards workers compensation obligations (2011) versus Alliance having only $68 1000000 (2012). Even to a greater extent than pronounced is the post-retirement obligations where Patriot had $1387 1000000 (2011) versus Alliance at  a mere $31 million. Alliance powerfulness say that this was the practise goodness of a non-unionized workforce but if that is the illustration in addition to hence spousal human relationship concessions would live on plenty to revive Patriot (and that does non expect likely).

There is quite a bargain that is foreign in addition to odd nigh this story.



John