Teck Resources beats profit estimates on energy business

(Reuters) - Canadian miner Teck Resources Ltd, the world's second-biggest exporter of steelmaking coal, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Monday, boosted by its energy business and a slight increase in commodity prices.

The miner said even though commodity prices were lower than a year ago, prices rose during the first quarter and closed higher than prices at Dec. 31, 2018. (http://bit.ly/2XybtZV)

The profit beat comes as Teck Resources undertakes de-bottlenecking initiatives at Fort Hills oil sands mining, where its energy business unit operates, to increase production capacity.

Fort Hills, which achieved commercial production last June, has performed well during start-up and commissioning and there is further potential to de-bottleneck and expand production capacity, the company said.

Chief Executive Officer Don Lindsay said the company is reiterating its 2019 forecast, adding that focus for the rest of the year is to develop the QB2 project, an expansion of its Quebrada Blanca copper mine in Chile.

The Vancouver-based company said adjusted profit for the quarter ended March 31 fell 24.6 percent to C$568 million ($425.12 million), or C$0.99 per share.

Revenue rose about 0.5 percent to C$3.11 billion.

Analysts on average were expecting the company to earn C$0.95 per share and revenue of C$3.00 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Akshay Balan and Arundhati Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Shounak Dasgupta)