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Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Alpha Metallurgical Resources Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Emily O'Quinn, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.
Emily O'Quinn - SVP of Corporate Communications
Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, let me remind you that during our prepared remarks and the Q&A period, our comments related to expected business and financial performance contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed. For more information regarding forward-looking statements and some of the factors that can affect them, please refer to the company's fourth quarter 2020 earnings release and the associated SEC filing. Please also see those documents for information about our use of non-GAAP measures and their reconciliation to GAAP measures.
Participating on the call today are Alpha's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David Stetson; and President and Chief Financial Officer, Andy Eidson. Also participating on the call is Jason Whitehead, our Chief Operating Officer.
With that, I'll turn the call over to David.
David J. Stetson - Chairman & CEO
Thanks, Emily. Good morning to everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us today. Part of the typical year-end reporting process for the fourth quarter results is also to consider the prior year as a whole, the challenges and opportunities that presented, how the leadership team responded and what might be learned from the past 12 months to help us improve the path ahead.
2020 was anything but normal. And unfortunately, it was a year marked by disruption, uncertainty, and in many cases, extremely difficult circumstances due to the global pandemic. Both our industry and our company experienced tremendous adversity. Despite the headwinds, we weathered the uncertainty and ended the year with a strong sales book, a new record low in cost performance and a clear foundation for leading the business forward.
In fact, 2020 ended up being extremely productive and transformational year for Alpha. We set some big goals for ourselves at the end of 2019, and I'm proud to say we accomplished nearly all of them, even during a global pandemic. This is truly a situation where we put our heads down and did the work to deliver on our stated goals.
Before we dive into the details of the fourth quarter, I want to touch on some of the accomplishments of the last year to put these achievements in perspective. I also want to point out that we have a new investor presentation on our website, and we invite investors to view our new presentation as it contains additional details, which include a number of the points that I'm going to be discussing this morning.
As you've heard me say many times before, we are working to become a pure-play metallurgical producer. In the middle of the last year, we completed our exit from the Powder River Basin, idled the Kielty thermal mine and the adjacent Delbarton Preparation Plant. In December, we divested our largest thermal property, the Cumberland mine, thereby reducing our bonding collateral requirements and eliminating most thermal production from our portfolio.
As a result of these moves away from thermal production, we executed a rebranding effort to better reflect our strategic vision for the future while also returning to our Alpha roots and our brand's rich heritage. We're now proudly hosting our first earnings call under our new name of Alpha Metallurgical Resources.
We were already the largest and most diverse metallurgical coal company in the United States before these actions, but now I believe we are even better positioned to capitalize on a market turnaround. The investments we made in building out low-cost development mines are beginning to pay dividends as these capital expenditures are largely complete, and the mines are now producing. In a few minutes, Jason will provide an update on our Black Eagle, Road Fork 52 and Lynn Branch mines, and our expectations are that these mines will have a cost profile of $70 per ton or less. Our asset base was already favorably positioned relative to our peers. But with the past years fine-tuning, I believe we are even better positioned for success.
In the last year, we've also built on the foundational changes we made in 2019, that being a flatter, more nimble organizational structure that facilitates decision-making. This philosophy yielded the record-setting cost performance that we enjoyed over the last several quarters and reduced our overhead and SG&A by more than $10 million. We also completed a routine succession planning process toward the end of the year and as a result have now 3 important promotions among the executive team with Andy Eidson being named President and CFO. Roger Nicholson was promoted to Chief Administrative Officer, alongside his existing duties; and Dan Horn was elevated to Executive VP of Sales.
Additionally, we have strengthened and diversified the company's leadership at the Board level with 4 new directors: Ken Courtis, Liz Fessenden, Danny Smith and Mike Quillen. As many of you know, Mike founded Alpha Natural Resources back in 2003. Together with our prior directors, I'm proud to have such a highly qualified group of individuals and their vast breadth of knowledge and experience in place to help guide the company.
In addition to the structures we made in transitioning to a pure-play metallurgical coal company and in solidifying our leadership and vision for the company, we also executed on improvement of one of our core tenets: working safely and responsibly. In a few minutes, Jason will share some details about our safety and environmental performance, and Andy will take us through the financial results of the fourth quarter.
Before I hand the call over, I want to take a moment to address the market fluctuations we've seen in the last several months. We have been pleased to see increased demand for our products, along with improved pricing, but we continue to focus on cash preservation while we await the impacts of higher pricing flowing through our sales contracts and ultimately into our accounts receivable.
In looking ahead for what the next several years will hold, I'm optimistic about the need for metallurgical coal, international and global economic recoveries. With growing consensus building around the likelihood of a significant infrastructure spending, met coal will be a critical element of these efforts. And as the largest coal producer in the country, we are poised to play an important role in that work and look forward to doing so.
With that, I will ask Jason to provide an operational update for us.
Jason E. Whitehead - Executive VP & COO
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. As you've already heard this morning, 2020 was a busy year for us, and we've accomplished a lot over the last several quarters. Despite enduring a global pandemic and challenges within our markets, our employees were able to stay focused and achieve safety and regulatory compliance rates that are lower than the national average, all this while maintaining 99.9% compliance with water quality standards.
Each year, the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training, along with West Virginia Coal Association, award Mountaineer Guardian awards to operations with field excellence and safety and compliance performance. For 2020, we're pleased to share that 6 Alpha operations were recipients of that award. On the environmental side, our Republic team, they won 2 awards jointly given by the West Virginia DEP and West Virginia Coal Association. And I'm -- just like to point out I'm very proud of the outstanding work that's been recognized as shown by these awards, and I congratulate everyone at our operations for what they've done to contribute to this.
Referencing our 99.9% compliance with water quality standards, I'm pleased to report to you that we have successfully met the commitments within our EPA Consent Decree, which was officially terminated at the end of January. You may recall in prior earnings calls that we received a partial termination back in February of 2020. And now, thanks to the continued diligent work of our ops and environmental crews, we fully satisfied those commitments. We continue to focus on operating safely and responsibly each day and build on that daily performance into another successful year.
As David mentioned, we're going to provide an update on our portfolio optimization efforts. Over the last 18 months, we've taken nearly $50 million worth of costs out of our operation structure and redeployed capital to projects with lower-cost profiles. We're now at a point where the bulk of our capital expenditures for our new low-cost met mines have been spent, and those investments are providing important optionality for us as we plan for the future. In addition to serving as replacement mines for higher-cost mines that we have and will continue to take off-line, there's room for growth in each of these projects.
In the fourth quarter of 2019 and throughout 2020, we operated 22 deep mines across our CAPP portfolio. Those deep mines had an annual run rate of approximately 10 million tons. As of 12/31/2020, we were operating 15 deep mines. And by the end of Q1 of this year, we'll be fully streamlined and operating 12 deep mines in Central App while maintaining that annual run rate of approximately 10 million tons. These efforts, coupled with our ongoing continuous improvement initiatives at the section or spread level, have yielded record low-cost structures that Andy will speak to shortly.
Bringing you up to speed on the 3 significant development CapEx projects that we've discussed in the past, I'm pleased to announce that Road Fork 52 is now complete, and they are operating with 3 dual continuous miner sections. The third and final section came online in late January. With all 3 sections now operating together in February for the first time, we're seeing preliminary cost of production south of $60 a ton.
As of today, our Lynn Branch mine is now operating with 2 dual continuous miner sections. And with the depletion of reserves at our Aracoma Alma mine, crews and equipment from Alma will be redeployed to Lynn Branch and bolted on as the third and final planned dual continuous miner section. This last step will complete our transformation around the Bandmill Complex.
This week, at Marfork, our Black Eagle mine is operating all 3 planned dual continuous miner sections. 2 of these 3 sections have enjoyed steadily improving coal thickness, and we'll declare them in the thickest part of the reserve in the back half of this year. The other section there will continue development throughout 2021 to sustain long-term ventilation for the other 2 sections. In 2022, all 3 sections are expected to mine in the highest clean tons per foot area.
So with that update on operations and capital projects, I'll turn the call over to Andy for additional detail on our costs.
Charles Andrew Eidson - President, CFO & Treasurer
Thanks, Jason. In measure, 2020 was a uniquely challenging year. But as David mentioned, it was also a very productive year for Alpha as we accomplished many worthy goals: reducing operating SG&A and overhead costs, divesting the Cumberland properties as part of our strategic shift away from thermal production, achieving high standards of safety and environmental performance and enhancing our Board composition.
Going back to -- like this past December, we closed the transaction to divest Cumberland and the related assets. And in addition, transferring ownership of the mine, coal reserves, permits and infrastructure, the closing of this transaction also released Alpha from all reclamation obligations associated with those Pennsylvania entities. That number is estimated to be around $169 million on an undiscounted basis. At closing, Alpha provided $20 million in cash to Iron Senergy, the acquirer, and transferred $30 million in existing cash bonding collateral to Iron Senergy's surety provider.
Now there are 3 real reasons we were extremely excited about this transaction. First, it got us dramatically close to our goal of becoming a pure-play met company. Again, this strategy goes back really to -- when David came back onboard back in 2019, stated strategy and the ability to move forward on that, particularly with Cumberland, has been a real sea change for us.
Second, it saves us from having to close the mine at the end of '22, as we announced we would, barring any transaction. And then we would have to begin reclaiming the mine in its multiple impoundments, which, as we mentioned earlier, $169 million of undiscounted reclamation spend would have been a significant weight for the company to carry.
And finally, divesting the Cumberland mine did allow us to avoid potential collateral increases on our Northern App bonds. Those increases could have been tens of millions of dollars. Naturally, the -- we've talked in the past about how tough the surety markets are, generally speaking, but the thermal markets have been very, very challenging. So avoiding that situation was a real benefit to the company.
Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flows. We ended the year with approximately $139 million in unrestricted cash and no additional availability on our ABL. Cash provided by operations for the quarter was $56 million. That does include the accelerated AMT tax refund of $66 million. During the quarter, we also reduced our long-term debt by $15 million, down to $583 million. We continue to manage our working capital, which provided a total of $25 million of cash in the fourth quarter. As previously mentioned, we did have the cash outflows associated with the Cumberland deal, which was a total of roughly $50 million. The ABL facility was down to $3.4 million in outstanding borrowings as of year-end and had $123 million of LCs outstanding. Subsequent to year-end, we repaid the remaining $3.4 million of the principal and currently have no borrowings outstanding under the ABL.
Also of note on the ABL, in January, we saw the continued impact of lower sales realizations from Q4 rolling through our AR balances, which requires to post $22 million of cash to meet minimum availability requirements. We have reported this as $25 million of cash which was posted, but that includes the $3.4 million we used to pay off our last outstanding borrowings. As of the end of February, our borrowing base has grown back to more normalized levels, and we just received that $22 million of cash back. So the ABL is back to under normal support with AR and inventory.
However, while AR balances, real time, are recovering from the very tough pricing environment we saw in fourth quarter of last year, cash receipts on export sales do tend to lag by 60 to 90 days, depending on customer terms. So throughout the first quarter, our cash balance has reflected the receipts of the trough pricing that we experienced in that fourth quarter. We've also seen some additional pressure from the disconnect of U.S. East Coast pricing and Australian premium low-vol pricing with our sales into India being tied to the much lower Aussie index.
One more important 2021 cash-related item of note, the NOL carryback tax refund, we still expect that to receive around $70 million sometime in the latter part of the year. It seems like the first stage of the price approval process has been completed, so now we're simply waiting on Congress to wrap up the issuing of that, which I would probably conservatively put early fourth quarter. But again, the timing could shift on us with that.
As to financial results, Alpha reported fourth quarter EBITDA of $7.4 million, down from $12.4 million in the third quarter, primarily due to lower -- solid lower volumes and increased cost of coal sales in our Met segment. Our met costs were up slightly from our record-low third quarter levels, but that wasn't unexpected. Fourth quarter every year includes holidays and vacation time which does tend to pull back productivity and increase costs. So that was as planned. But in spite of that, we continued excellent cost performance in both of the business segments.
Our statement previously known as the CAPP - Met segment, now simply called the Met segment, reported a second consecutive quarter of cost under $70 a ton with the fourth quarter cost of coal sales per ton of $69.25 and a full year 2020 cost of $70.19, down from nearly $88 in 2019. That is a 20% reduction year-over-year, even while including the impact of a nearly month-long furlough in April. So just, again, phenomenal results from the operations team and I think the team will continue to deliver incredible, incredible performance there.
In the CAPP - Thermal segment, we also experienced solid cost performance with the fourth quarter cost coming in at $44.15, while the full year 2020 CAPP - Thermal cost declined approximately $2 year-over-year to $47.20.
I do often get the question, more so now that we've got a full year of comparison '19 to '20, but how are these cost reductions possible? So here's a little bit more color on that. First -- and I think we did a pretty solid job of laying this out in our investor deck when you have a chance to look at it, but we pruned our portfolio to focus on more productive mines, increasing our average production per met mine by 6%. If you exclude the impact of the furlough in April, that's a 12% increase.
Second, and as a result of the reduced mine count, we were able to rationalize our operations workforce needs and lower both our overhead and labor counts. We were able to implement these reductions in mine count workforce without affecting our production levels. So the math on that is really simple, but the execution of such a plan is not. It's very difficult, in fact. And this approach rely heavily on the leadership of Jason, the operations VPs for implementation. In spite of all of those improvements and the cleaning up -- the continued cleaning up of the portfolio and optimization activities, we still think there are some further gains to be made. So naturally, we will continue to pursue all the improvements that we came in.
As for segment contribution, overall, the Met segment generated $19 million of coal margin during the quarter, down from $24 million in the prior quarter, while the CAPP - Thermal segment contributed $8 million of margin, which is roughly flat with the third quarter.
On the revenue front, our met shipments remained strong in the fourth quarter with total volume of 3.2 million tons shipped, down about 100,000 tons Q-over-Q. On the positive side, the Met -- or the pricing improved with met average realizations of approximately $1.50 to around $70 a ton. CAPP - Thermal volumes were also down about 100,000 tons to 500,000 tons in the fourth quarter, while pricing improved $2 a ton, approximately $60.
SG&A, excluding noncash stock comp and onetime items, was $14.4 million in the fourth quarter compared with $13.5 million in the third quarter. And our CapEx for the quarter was $35.1 million versus $27.8 million in the prior quarter. For the full year 2020, our year-over-year SG&A declined by nearly $10 million to $51 million. And as we show in our guidance, we expect additional cost reduction in 2021, further highlighting the effectiveness of our cost-reduction initiatives.
Shifting to 2021 guidance, we are reiterating our updated operating guidance that was issued on December 10. We expect to ship a total of 14.8 million to 16.2 million tons in '21, consisting of 12.5 million to 13 million of pure met in our Met segment and 1 million to 1.5 million tons of thermal by-product within the Met segment. For the All Other segment, we are guiding to 1.3 million to 1.7 million tons of thermal coal sales.
Just to give some additional perspective on the magnitude of our strategic shift away from thermal, we shipped nearly 11 million tons of thermal in 2019. And furthermore, we expect to have thermal shipments only as met by-product starting in 2023. Our last remaining standalone thermal mine, Slabcamp, we expect it to deplete near the end of 2022. So going into '23, there will be no more standalone thermal production.
Based on the midpoint of our met guidance, the met-only portion is 53% committed and priced at $85.47 with an additional 32% committed without firm pricing. Some of that is priced based on index. Some of it is priced without a true price attached to it. But regardless, it's still fluctuating pricing on that 32%. The thermal by-product portion of the Met segment is 86% committed and priced at an average price of $50.80. In the All Other segment, we are fully committed and priced for '21 at an average price of $57.57.
On the costs side, our '21 met cost per ton is anticipated to be in the range of $68 to $74 with our All Other segment expected to come in between from $25 and $49 per ton.
SG&A, excluding noncash stock comp and onetime items, is forecasted to be in the range of $44 million to $49 million, representing a $1 million decline from our initial guidance as a result of the Cumberland divestiture.
We expect our '21 CapEx to be near maintenance level of $80 million to $100 million as most of our growth CapEx was spent in the past 2 years on the project Jason highlighted earlier. The '21 CapEx guidance represents a $5 million reduction from our initial guidance for this year, again, reflecting a reduction in numbers due to the Cumberland divestiture. Idle operations expenses are expected to be about $3 million lower than the initial guidance, now between $24 million and $30 million.
Cash interest, we expect to come in roughly between $51 million and $55 million, while DD&A is now expected to be in the range of $125 million to $145 million for '21. And lastly, the cash tax rate should be near 0.
So with that, operator, I believe we're ready to open the line for questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And the first question comes from Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities.
Lucas Nathaniel Pipes - Senior VP & Equity Analyst
Thanks so much for all the detail. This is very helpful. And also, congratulations on managing really this incredibly uncertain time very well.
My first question is on the market. We've had a few of your peers report results thus far. And frankly, there's been a bit of a mixed message as to the strength of the met coal market today. And I wondered if you can provide a little bit more color as to what you're seeing. Do you expect to be able to sell all your product this year on the met coal side?
And then on pricing, obviously, we can look at the assessments from Platts, et cetera, but it would be really great to kind of hear other discounts versus those assessments. And then on a net-back basis, there would be pricing coming in, in today's environment.
Daniel E. Horn - EVP of Sales
Lucas, this is Dan Horn. There's a lot to unpack there, but I'll start. The demand we're seeing for our products is really good. Both here in the North American markets and abroad, steel plants have rebounded surprisingly well from last year's low pandemic levels. The demand for coke and for coking coal is really good.
I guess the mix messages that you're referring to is there is a disconnect between the Aussie low-vol indices and the U.S. East Coast indices. We're dealing with that in India. We ship -- as we've indicated, we shipped coal into India based on those indices. But at the same time, to counteract that, the U.S. indices have been quite strong. And as far as the demand, we expect to hit our numbers. In fact, we're shipping all we can, and we're turning down some business here. We're not able to even chase every opportunity right now that we see. Is that...
Lucas Nathaniel Pipes - Senior VP & Equity Analyst
Very, very helpful. Any color you'd be able to provide kind of on a blended basis what we could expect in today's environment for your unpriced tons?
Daniel E. Horn - EVP of Sales
I would say that -- yes. I'll just say that in this strong environment, we're not seeing much discounting at all to the indices. In a weaker market, you tend to see discounts to the index. But here at late, we're selling out or, in some cases, slightly above the index, generally speaking.
Lucas Nathaniel Pipes - Senior VP & Equity Analyst
Very helpful. Really appreciate that color again. My second question, maybe more for Andy, but when I kind of look at your balance sheet, there is an unrestricted cash balance there that's quite sizable. And how should investors think about that? And maybe if you could take that to kind of comment on liquidity more broadly and what other ways there may be to enhance liquidity outside, of course, the recovering market and generating cash.
Charles Andrew Eidson - President, CFO & Treasurer
Sure. Lucas, it's Andy. Yes. So the unrestricted cash balance on our balance sheet is that's really -- I would say the vast lion's share of that money is being held to support surety. It's cash collateral for different surety. And in some instances -- and this goes for our ABL as well, $123 million of LCs, that combined with the unrestricted or the -- you're asking about unrestricted or restricted cash?
Lucas Nathaniel Pipes - Senior VP & Equity Analyst
I was asking about unrestricted, sorry.
Charles Andrew Eidson - President, CFO & Treasurer
Unrestricted. I'm sorry.
Lucas Nathaniel Pipes - Senior VP & Equity Analyst
I'm sorry. I think I said unrestricted, I meant restricted, sorry about that.
Charles Andrew Eidson - President, CFO & Treasurer
Okay. That's what I was thinking. So I'll stick with the restricted cash discussion. So between restricted cash and the ABL LCs, that covers surety collateral. It's collateral for workers' comp. It's collateral for FBL. In some instances, we've got regular property assurance collateral, but the vast majority of the actual restricted cash is on bonding surety collateral. So that cash is basically tied up until end of mine life, end of reclamation and complete phase release from the different regulatory agencies. So that's -- that cash will be seen again for quite a while. A similar story on workers' comp and black lung, those are basically end-of-wash type collateral arrangement.
As far as other sources of liquidity, again, under our debt documents, we don't have a whole lot of flexibility. But we do have a $50 million basket that we could raise additional period to do debt, if we wanted to. We do have -- after getting through the trough pricing in Q4, our ABL is trending upward as of today, which, today, is just anecdotally 1 data point. We're probably looking at around $50 million of availability on the ABL, and that's after receiving our $22 million of cash back last week. So we're trending in the right direction.
That being said, it's still is still pretty tough. As I mentioned earlier, the impact on our working capital of the low pricing in Q4 is just something that we're having to manage through. As I would imagine, all of our peers are also dealing with them. The links to this, we'll call it, a malaise is on the Aussie low-vol pricing and how it impacts a relatively significant amount of sales going into India continues to create some pressure for us. So it's -- we can always -- we always want more liquidity, but I think we're doing pretty good managing things right now. And it is helpful to see our ABL pushing back in the right direction and giving us a lot more liquidity than it has the past couple of quarters.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The next question comes from Nathan Martin with Benchmark Company.
Nathan Pierson Martin - Coal and Railroads Senior Equity Analyst
Congrats on another great cost quarter. Two quick questions kind of related to the mix within your Met business. First, I guess, from a sales standpoint, any idea what percentage of tons you guys might expect in some of the domestic market this year and if you've seen any of this domestic steel producers back in the market looking for additional tons? And if so, can you give us maybe an idea of what pricing might look like there?
Daniel E. Horn - EVP of Sales
Sure, Nate. This is Dan. I think when you look at our domestic seaboard split, it's about 1/3, 2/3, $4 million, plus or minus, into the domestic market. The other $8 million to $9 million, seaboard.
As far as the answer to your question, did we see some domestic people in the market? The answer is yes. And those tons are essentially spot tons, and they would move at a price reflective of the indices. So if a netback for high-vol B was $110 or so, that would be the ballpark where you'd be selling those tons.
Nathan Pierson Martin - Coal and Railroads Senior Equity Analyst
Got it. And then I guess on the export side, Dan and -- you guys made a comment specifically in India. I know they're an important customer for you guys. But obviously, with China still -- the ban on Australian coals. I know you guys are not traditionally selling any coal into China, but have you seen any changes in your typical customer base as the global trade flows have kind of altered?
Daniel E. Horn - EVP of Sales
Yes, Nate. It's -- just when you think you've seen everything, something like this comes along. We actually did move a cargo into China. We go there last week, so we are participating in that. We have -- the opportunities there, we'll do that. But certainly, the -- we'll follow the price. If the markets -- right now, our strategy is to continue to shift to our core customers in the Atlantic Basin and in India. That's -- they're the customers that were with us all last year. We stayed with them. They stayed with us, but we'll certainly look for new opportunities if they arise, which they did here in the last 2 months.
Nathan Pierson Martin - Coal and Railroads Senior Equity Analyst
Got it. Dan, that cargo to China, what quality? And I'm assuming, obviously, that would be priced up with the China index, correct?
Daniel E. Horn - EVP of Sales
Yes. And it was a mix of a few different products, actually.
Nathan Pierson Martin - Coal and Railroads Senior Equity Analyst
Got it. Got it. And then kind of just shifting, when you guys look at production mix on the met side, obviously, we've had some shifts around. You guys have moved towards more productive lines, and we've got Road Fork 52, Lynn Branch, Black Eagle ramping up. How should we think about your quality mix this year and even going forward?
David J. Stetson - Chairman & CEO
Yes, Nate. This is David Stetson. We put out an investor deck this morning. On Page 14 of that, you'll see our view of where our quality mix is going forward, which is -- so it's -- a high-vol A is about 39%, B and mid vol would both be right to 25%, and then low vol around $13.
Nathan Pierson Martin - Coal and Railroads Senior Equity Analyst
Okay. Got it. Yes, saw that in there. I was -- 2020, I was just wondering if that was going to change much given the fact that you guys are bringing on those 3 different mines.
Daniel E. Horn - EVP of Sales
I think, Nate, as we ramp up Road Fork 52, we'll have opportunity to put more low vol in the market year
Charles Andrew Eidson - President, CFO & Treasurer
this 12 million to 13 million ton run rate of met coal. So again, the -- all the pieces have fallen into place to implement David's strategy, and we're really, really happy to be where we've gotten it to.
Nathan Pierson Martin - Coal and Railroads Senior Equity Analyst
Got it. And then I guess just one more. And Andy, you kind of went through the puts and takes of the $25 million you guys had to post. I think just to recap, I mean, the $3.4 million you paid back, that went towards your borrowing, the $22 million. It sounded like you just said you've already got back last week. I just wanted to get your final thoughts on future bonding requirements maybe for your business or the industry and maybe even you could give us an update on your total kind of post the Cumberland sale.
Charles Andrew Eidson - President, CFO & Treasurer
Sure, sure. Yes. I mean the bonding market is still kind of tough for coal across the board. As I mentioned, thermal is really tough. I think just -- everything ebbs and flows with the market. Those are the broader coal markets. So as the met markets went into the trough, the surety providers got a little bit more nervous, and we're looking for extra collateral.
Now that we're trading the other direction, it feels like things are in a good place. We -- even in tough times, we continue to maintain really good relationships with our surety providers. So I think we're in pretty solid shape right now. And we do continue to pursue some smaller transactions to exit some potential reclamation items transactionally that can get us even more, I guess, you'd call it, headroom or extra capacity from a bonding perspective. A couple of one-offs in the hopper, nothing that really moves the needle a lot. But again, it just gives us some extra headroom on the bonding.
But I think post Cumberland transaction, undiscounted amount of our bond exposure or ARO exposure with kind of equivalent case to our bond is basically -- I would say $210 million down from about $370 million year-over-year.
Operator
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to David Stetson for any closing remarks.
David J. Stetson - Chairman & CEO
I just want to thank everyone for getting on the call today. I encourage our stockholders and others to review our investor presentation that we put on our website this morning. So thank you all very much, and have a wonderful day.
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.