American primary aluminium producer Century Aluminum Company released results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021 this week. A strong fourth quarter for the firm was unable to save it from widening the net loss for the year from that of 2020.
In the fourth quarter last year Century Aluminum shipped 200,961 metric tons of product, up from 196,095 metric tons the prior quarter. Net sales totaled US$659.1 million in the quarter, increasing from US$581.4 million in Q3. Century reported a net income of US$60.4 million in the quarter, reversing a net loss of US$52.4 million in the previous quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was also improved in the quarter, rising from US$70.3 million in the third quarter to US$82.2 million in the fourth quarter.
For the full year, Century Aluminum shipped 783,647 metric tons of aluminium product, down from 811,176 metric tons in 2020. Net sales rose from US$1,605 million in 2020 to US$2,212.5 million in 2021, but the net loss rose from US$123.3 million in 2020 to US$167.1 million last year. Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled year over year, rising from US$11.7 million to US$174.2 million.
President and Chief Executive Officer Jesse Gary said in a press release that his firm will continue to claw back from the various setbacks it and the industry as a whole experienced in 2021.
“Century had a transformative year in 2021, expanding production at our Hawesville and Mt. Holly facilities, and breaking ground on our new billet casthouse in Grundartangi. The investments we made and hard work our employees accomplished in 2021 leave us in excellent position to take advantage of the uniformly strong market conditions that we are experiencing throughout the aluminum sector.”
“We continue to recover well from the cyber attack that we suffered last week. Our operations and IT teams have done an excellent job maintaining production throughout the attack. While we continue to rely on manual operations in some areas, our teams are increasingly returning to normal operations across our locations.”
“Aluminum prices have continued to strengthen as we enter 2022, with demand continuing its strong growth path while supply conditions, driven by energy shortages throughout the world have continued to tighten,” Gary continued. “As supply deficits have become particularly acute in our two core markets in the U.S. and Europe, Century is increasingly becoming the supplier of choice for our value-added product lines due to our secure, short supply lines to our domestic customer base.”