The broker recently upped its spot thermal coal price by 6% for the 2015 calendar year while also downgrading its Australian foreign exchange forecasts, “driving a sustained uplift in the $A price across the coal product spectrum”.

“The changes to our coal price deck and Australian dollar/US dollar exchange rate drives a 5% to 14% increase in Whitehaven’s revenue over the next five years,” Macquarie said.

“In light of the forecast stronger pricing, we have changed some of our mining assumptions in the expectation that Whitehaven will be incentivised to chase resources that would otherwise have fallen outside its mine plans.

“Consequently, our operating expenditure and capital expenditure forecasts have risen but these are outstripped by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation and EBITDA margin improvements which translate directly to significant earnings upgrades for Whitehaven.”