Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) Wednesday said its first-quarter net income nearly tripled on higher contracted prices, but shares fell as the coal company's earnings missed analysts' expectations.

St. Louis-based Peabody, one of the world's biggest coal producers, continues to face weak demand from steel producers and power plants, and again cut its output estimates and declined to issue forecasts for the full year, citing economic uncertainty.

Peabody shares fell $2.30, or 8%, to $27.04 shortly after the market opened on the New York Stock Exchange.

For the first quarter, Peabody posted net income of $170 million, or 63 cents a share, up from $57.2 million, or 21 cents a share, a year earlier. Earnings from continuing operations rose to 50 cents from 28 cents. Revenue rose 15% to $1.46 billion as higher contracted prices more than offset a 2.1% drop in output.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast, on average, per-share earnings of 96 cents on revenue of $1.64 billion.

Analysts attributed the miss to steel producers deferring shipments from Australia of metallurgical coal, which commands a higher price than coal for power plants. Peabody said weather also crimped production from Wyoming's Powder River Basin.

Peabody said global demand, as expected, remained sluggish in the first quarter, but added it expects a future rebound for prices when the economy improves and because of a "lack of current investment in future capacity."

Peabody cut its total output volume estimates for 2009 to between 225 million and 245 million tons, from an earlier forecast for 230 million to 250 million tons, with cuts coming in Australia and the Powder River Basin. Global steel production has decreased 23%, while global electricity demand is on pace to decline 1% to 2% in 2009, the company said.

Amid the industry's woes, Peabody has unveiled growth plans in the U.S. and Mongolia amid optimism about coal markets for the longer term. While coal prices have tumbled from their July peaks, Peabody is benefiting from contracts that locked in higher prices.

Wednesday's earnings announcement by Peabody is the first for the sector, potentially signaling the start to a discouraging earnings season, wrote Daniel Scott, an analyst for Dahlman Rose & Co. in a note to clients Wednesday.

"The wide earnings miss combined with negative sentiment in today's release are not encouraging, in our view," he wrote.

-By Mark Peters and Tess Stynes, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4604; mark.peters@dowjones.com;