Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation reached $571.3 million for the recent quarter.

The EBITDA from Peabody’s Australian operations was $323.2 million, nearly three times higher than a year ago.

Peabody’s EBITDA from its American operations increased 6% from the previous quarter to $292.9 million.

US customer inventory levels have fallen by around 22Mt not on the basis of economic activity, but increased global demand for thermal coal plus a higher rate of hotter and cooler days in the country.

Construction for the $70 million expansion of the Metropolitan longwall mine in New South Wales is underway which will increase by 1 million tons per annum of hard coking coal production capacity by 2014.

Procurement activities have started for the $90 million Wilpinjong mine expansion in the state expected to boost capacity by 2-3Mtpa in 2012-13.

Peabody is also working to get state government approval to expand its Millennium mine in Queensland by up to 3Mtpa of metallurgical coal in 2013-14.

As a 17.7% stakeholder of the Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group consortium, Peabody already has a 5-6Mtpa port allocation through the new export terminal.

But Peabody recently received financing to gain another 2Mpta allocation from the next terminal expansion.

Over to the Illinois Basin in the US, Peabody added a second dragline to its new Bear Run Mine in Indiana, lifting production from September.

The Gateway North project is approved and should extend the Gateway mine life by 16 years and increase production capacity 40% to 4.5Mt in the next few years.

Peabody remains bullish on growing coal demand from China and India, with “initiatives advancing in China, Mongolia, India and Indonesia”.

“Peabody continues to differentiate, delivering another quarter of robust performance and targeting full-year results that may rival our previous record,” Peabody chairman and chief executive officer Gregory H Boyce said.

"Peabody believes that the global coal industry is in the early stages of a long-term supercycle, led by China and India. Peabody's access to these key markets represents significant value creation opportunity."

The major American coal producer expects demand for an extra 1.2 billion metric tonnes of additional annual thermal coal over the next five years on the back of growing coal-fired power generation around the world.

Peabody expects global steel production to increase more than 30% in this timeframe, which will need more than 300Mtpa of metallurgical coal supply.