Tokyo Steel Posts 45% Lower Profit for 1H

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing announced on Thursday the firm posted 45% lower recurring profit at 12.3 billion yen for April-September from same period of 2006. The net profit decreased by 44.7% to 7.5 billion yen with 12.7% higher sales at record 118.2 billion yen. The firm reduced the profit for 3 consecutive half years due to higher raw materials cost while the sales hit record due to higher selling price. The firm tried to ship more plate for high priced export market to improve the profitability in the first half. However, the recurring profit for sales decreased by 11 percentage points to 10.4% compared with same period of 2006. The firm shipped 1.588 million tonnes for the first half as same period of 2006. The export increased by 46.3% to 297,000 tonnes. The averaged selling price increased by 12.6% to 74,200 yen per tonne while the export price increased by 19.7% to 76,100 yen. The firm revised the full year outlook downward to 23 billion yen of recurring profit and 14 billion yen of net profit with 243 billion yen of sales compared with 250 billion yen sales, 27.5 billion yen recurring profit and 15.5 billion yen net profit announced in July.