Warrior Met Coal

Warrior Met Coal Inc. is a public company formed in 2015 to own and operate the Brookwood Mines and Blue Creek Mine, a series of underground metallurgical coal mines accessing the Blue Creek Seam of the Warrior coal field near Brookwood in Tuscaloosa County. In addition to coking coal, the mines produce methane, which the company processes and sells as natural gas. The company's CEO is Walter Scheller III, who was also the CEO of predecessor Walter Energy from 2011 to 2016.

Warrior Met Coal was formed on September 3, 2015 with backing from private equity firms Apollo Global Management, Blackstone Inc., KKR and Franklin Mutual Advisers, in order to buy the coal mining assets of Walter Energy, which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July. As part of the restructuring agreement, Walter Energy's collective-bargaining agreement with workers represented by the United Mine Workers of America, as well as its pension and health obligations to 2,800 retired miners and their dependents, were terminated. In their renegotiated 5-year contract with the new company, miners agreed to a 20% pay cut and reduced benefits to help the business emerge from bankruptcy. The UMWA has estimated that those concessions represented a $1.1 billion savings for the company.

Warrior Met Coal went public on April 13, 2017. Its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol HCC (for "Hard Coking Coal"). Since its public offering, the company has paid investors more than $4 billion in dividends and stock buybacks, and offered bonuses to upper management of up to $35,000, while also borrowing $350 million on the bond market. These moves bolstered the company's share price over the next two years, during which time the private equity investors cashed out all of their holdings. Nearly 15% of the company's outstanding shares were acquired by the asset management firm BlackRock (not related to Blackstone)

When Warrior Met Coal and the UMWA began negotiating for a new contract in 2021, the company offered only employees a 6% raise over five years, or about a third of the wages they gave up during the 2016 bankruptcy, with no increase in other benefits. When talks failed, the union declared a strike, which went on for several months.

References

• Volkman, Eric (April 13, 2017) "Warrior Met Coal IPO: What Investors Need to Know." The Motley Fool
• "US met-coal Warrior continues to weigh growth." (August 1, 2019) Mining Journal
• Patterson, Scott & Jonathan Randles (May 1, 2020) "Coal Producers Struggle After Years of Investor Payouts." The Wall Street Journal
• Thornton, William (November 23, 2021) "Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders: Equity firms ‘made off like bandits’ while striking Alabama coal miners struggle." The Birmingham News

External links

• Warrior Met Coal website