Alrosa boosts sales revenue 20% to $694 mln in Jan-Feb
MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax) - Alrosa boosted sales revenue 20% year-on-year in January-February.
The Russian diamond miner said revenue from the sale of cut and uncut diamonds was approximately $694 million in the two months, compared with $574 million in the same period of last year.
Alrosa has said it is targeting sales revenue of $1.123 billion in Q1 2012, 20% more than the $931 million it posted for the same period of last year.
Targeted revenue for 2011 as a whole is $5.074 billion, up from $4.424 billion in 2011.
The company said high demand in the world market for rough diamonds was being sustained and that demand for cut diamonds and diamond jewelry had gone up 8%-12% since the start of the year, while global diamond mine output had edged down.
Considering the positive demand, Alrosa has said it would return to the spot market, where its share of sales decreased in the third quarter of last year amid a slumping diamond market. The company planned this March to conduct auction sales of a wide variety of rough diamonds. It sold 15,000 carats of large diamonds weighing over 10.8 carats each for a total of $46.3 million at 90% above the starting price at one of the first such auctions of this year at the end of February.
Alrosa mined around 34.438 million carats of diamonds in 2011.