wes-agm<\/title><\/p>\nBy Chris Shaw<\/p>\nThe major announcement at the annual general meeting of Wesfarmers \n((WES)) was the news the Curragh coal mine will be expanded from its \ncurrent output rate of 6.2-6.7 million tonnes of exports to 8.0-8.5 \nmillion tonnes, at an expected capital cost of $286 million. <\/p>\nAccording to Deutsche Bank the expansion adds around $1.30 per share to \nits net present value of Wesfarmers, as it expects the expansion will \nadd around 30% to earnings before interest and tax for the resources \ndivision from FY13, which equates to around 4% in total net profit \nafter tax terms for the group.<\/p>\nFactoring this in sees Deutsche lift its valuation on the \nstock to $37.60 and this is where it has set its price target, \nup from $31.00 previously. Its earnings forecasts are unchanged however, \nas the company has not updated guidance from that given at its investor \nday in late October.<\/p>\nThe price target increase by Credit Suisse was less dramatic, moving \nfrom $25.00 to $25.85, reflecting increases to its earnings \nforecasts of around 3% beyond FY12 on the Curragh expansion news and \nsome minor adjustments elsewhere in the resources division. With the \nshare price above its target, Credit Suisse continues to rate Wesfarmers \nas Underperform on valuation grounds.<\/p>\nThe other announcement of interest by Wesfarmers was the decision to \ncommence a FEED study into expanding ammonium nitrate output at Kwinana \nby 260,000 tonnes per year, which would lift output to 780,000 tonnes \nand cost up to $500 million. Any decision is 12 months away, but as UBS \nnotes, it does suggest management is positive on the outlook for \nammonium nitrate, which is used in the iron ore production process.<\/p>\nFollowing the update, UBS has actually cut its price \ntarget on the stock to $25.80 from $26.35 while retaining its view the \nstock is fully priced at current levels, especially leading into the \nChristmas period given what should be more challenging competitive \nsales numbers for its discretionary retail operations and what are \ncurrently high market expectations for Coles in general.<\/p>\nOverall the FNArena database shows Wesfarmers is rated as Buy three \ntimes, Hold five times and Sell twice, with an average price target of \n$28.78, up from $27.96 prior to the AGM. The target reflects consensus \nearnings per share (EPS) estimates, according to the database, of 128.3c \nin FY10 and 170c in FY11. <\/p>\nShares in Wesfarmers today are higher and as at 2.05pm the stock was up \n62c or 2.3% at $28.05, while over the past year it has traded between \n$14.81 and $28.97. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wesfarmers AGM comments included confirmation its Curragh coal project would be expanded, which brokers see as modestly positive for earnings longer term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[89,35,88],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

##{"id":56038,"date":"2009-11-11T14:36:54","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T03:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/11\/curragh-expansion-the-big-news-at-wesfarmers-agm\/"},"modified":"2009-11-11T14:36:54","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T03:36:54","slug":"curragh-expansion-the-big-news-at-wesfarmers-agm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/11\/curragh-expansion-the-big-news-at-wesfarmers-agm\/","title":{"rendered":"Curragh Expansion The Big News At Wesfarmers AGM"},"content":{"rendered":"