Oct 24 (Reuters) - Whitehaven Coal WHC.AX on Friday reported a nearly 7% drop in first-quarter production as planned dragline sequencing, the process of repositioning heavy excavation equipment to new mining areas, slowed output at its Queensland operations.
The Sydney-headquartered firm reported managed run-of-mine (ROM) coal production of 9 million metric tonnes for the three months ended September 30, down from 9.7 million tonnes a year ago.
The results missed the Visible Alpha consensus estimate of 9.3 million tonnes.
(Reporting by Sneha Kumar and Kumar Tanishk in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)
((Sneha.Kumar@thomsonreuters.com))