SunCoke Energy Partners (SXCP) Terminal To Manage More Cargo

SunCoke Energy Partners L.P. (NYSE:SXC) announced that it has started to offer barge unloading services at its export terminal located in Convent, LA. The Convent Marine Terminal (CMT) of the company entered in a multi-year agreement with Cooper Consolidated to provide barge unloading facility at the terminal.

Cooper Consolidated has extensive floating crane fleet and its Louisiana Mid-Stream One transload system will efficiently unload coal, petroleum coke and other materials from barges at CMT's dock. This new capability, along with its existing truck and rail offerings will enable the terminal to handle a wider variety of products going forward.

Benefits for SunCoke Energy Partners

The barge handling capacity addition will, in a way, allow SunCoke Energy Partners’ terminal to provide a more flexible range of transport options to new and existing customers at the terminal. The terminal is going to offer services for transloading both bulk materials and liquids.

The partnership is working to increase earnings from its Coal Logistics segment by $5 million to $10 million in next couple of years. The addition of new material handling capacity in its export terminal will help it achieve its new earnings target.

Looking Forward

Per a release from U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. coal exports will touch 89 million short tons in 2017 reflecting a 48% increase from 2016 levels. This in a way will ensure new business for the coal export terminals.

A major portion of the partnership’s earnings comes from its Domestic Coke segment. Thanks to the contribution from new customers at CMT, total revenues from Coal Logistics segment in third quarter 2017 improved to 40.1% year over year to $20.6 million.

The latest ship loading system along with the two existing shiploading system will allow the export terminal to provide cost effective solution to its customers and help the partnership to earn more revenues from its Coal Logistics segment.

Coal Staging a Comeback

Coal was practically ruled out as an important energy source, with natural gas and alternate energy source gaining more popularity due to stringent emission regulations.

However, the coal friendly moves from the new administration have helped the coal producers. In fact, couple of coal operators like Arch Coal Inc. (NYSE:ARCH) and Peabody Energy (NYSE:BTU) have successfully completed their financial restructuring and are trading again.

Price Movement

SunCoke Energy Partners’ stock has returned 2.1% in the last three months, underperforming the Zacks Coal industry’s gain of 6.2%.

Zacks Rank & Stock to Consider

SunCoke Energy Partners’ currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). A better-ranked stock in the same industry is SunCoke Energy Inc. (NYSE:SXC) , sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

SunCoke Energy reported positive earnings surprises in three of the last four quarters resulting in an average positive surprise of 113.52%.The Zacks Consensus Estimate of loss for 2017 has narrowed to 16 cents from 34 cents in the last 60 days.

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