Analysis of cost differences and influencing factors in China’s coal enterprises

Reducing cost and increasing efficiency is the eternal theme pursued by coal enterprises. With the proposal of new quality productivity and carbon neutral policy, the high-quality development of coal enterprises faces severe challenges, under the condition of coal price restriction, efficient and environmentally friendly production requirements make enterprises face huge cost pressure, how to optimize management at the cost side becomes the key to improve the competitiveness of enterprises. In this paper, the coal industry listed companies as the research object, comprehensive application of theoretical analysis and multiple regression method, selects key nodes in the development of the coal industry in recent years, systematically compares and analyzes the cost per ton of coal and its composition of the sample companies. Meanwhile, based on the sample data from 2019 to 2023, six cost influencing factors including environment level, location condition, resource endowment, technology, operation and management, and policies and laws are selected as explanatory variables, then empirically analyzes the significant factors affecting the cost difference of coal enterprises. The study finds: the cost of coal enterprises has strong particularity and complex composition, including material cost, fuel and power cost, staff salary, ground collapse compensation cost, maintenance cost, shaft and roadway engineering cost, safety cost, etc, and it has the cost characteristics of large fixed cost, strong natural conditions, and more investment in safe production; there are significant differences in the cost per ton of coal in different coal enterprises, among which labor cost is the main component of the cost per ton of coal, and it has great differences in different periods and different enterprises; the empirical results show that among the six cost factors of coal enterprises, the factors of location condition, technology, policy and law are the significant factors affecting the cost difference of coal enterprises. At the same time, focusing on the development status of coal enterprises, development suggestions such as promoting intelligent construction of coal mines, optimizing production layout, improving research and development level are put forward to provide strong support for the sustainable development of coal enterprises.