The Nickel Industries Ltd (ASX: NIC) share price has started the week strongly.
At the time of writing, the nickel producer's shares are up over 4% to 73 cents.
At one stage, the Nickel Industries share price was up as much as 6% to 74 cents.
Why is the Nickel Industries share price rising?
Investors have been bidding the Nickel Industries share price higher today after the company released its quarterly update.
According to the release, Nickel Industries delivered a 30.2% quarter on quarter increase in nickel production to a record of 20,275 tonnes. This includes 9,994 tonnes of nickel from the Angel Nickel operation, which commenced commissioning in late July.
Another positive was that the company recorded an average cash cost of US$13,597 per tonne, down 6.2% since the previous quarter.
Things weren't quite as positive for its sales and earnings. Although nickel sales volumes rose 26.7% to 20,045 tonnes, a 20% decline in the realised nickel price to US$15,950 a tonne led to sales growth of just 1.2% to US$319.2 million.
It was even worse for its earnings despite its lower cash costs. The company revealed 46.6% decline in RKEF EBITDA to US$45.3 million. This represents EBITDA per tonne of US$2,261, which is down 57.9% from the June quarter.
Nevertheless, the company still generated underlying cash from operations of US$54.9 million for the quarter. This boosted its cash balance to US$513.2 million at the end of September.
The Nickel Industries share price has now trimmed its year to date decline to approximately 50% following today's gain.
