ALROSA eyes growth of rough diamond sales revenue in 2018

MOSCOW, Mar 16 (PRIME) -- Russian uncut diamond mining giant ALROSA expects revenue from sales of rough diamonds to rise in 2018, Deputy CEO Yury Okoyomov said in a conference call on Friday.

The company registered high demand for diamonds in January and February, when its revenue increased in line with growth of physical sales. “We expect sales to remain at the same good level in March,” he said, adding that the world’s sales of jewelry pushed diamond sales higher in the Christmas and the Chinese New Year season.

“We don’t expect such a high demand later in the year as we saw in the first quarter. We expect a stable year, by which we understand that there will be seasonal fluctuations. Generally speaking about the sales forecast for 2018, we expect sales slightly better than we had in 2017, though sales in natural terms may be somewhat smaller, I think,” he said.

ALROSA CEO Sergei Ivanov said that demand for diamonds is always high in the first quarter of a year, but it would not stay high for the rest of the year. “Demand for rough diamonds will be stable until the end of the year, and we don’t expect average prices for raw diamonds to grow. Still, they may grow or fall for some assortment positions,” he said.

ALROSA plans to sell about 40 million carats of diamonds and produce 36.6 million carats in 2018. Last year the company’s revenue from sales of diamonds amounted to U.S. $4.2 billion with physical sales reaching 41.2 million carats of diamonds.

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