JFE Holdings Increases Recurring Profit for Apr-Jun

Japanese major steel maker, JFE Holdings announced on Monday the consolidated recurring profit increased by 58.8% to 145.222 billion yen for April-June compared with last year. The firm improved the prospect of recurring profit for year-end settlement of the account to increase by 20 billion yen to 540 billion yen compared with the previous forecast in April.The profit of steel business increased 56.9% to 146.1 billion yen due to increased sales of high grade steel products, increased selling price for mainly export and the reduction of production cost though increased material price and increased cost depreciation. The firm revised up the profit to 530 billion yen from 510 billion yen for year-end settlement of account compared with the previous forecast because the assumption for yen rate in the last half of fiscal 2007 at the ended of March 2008 changed to 115 yen per dollar from 110 yen with cheaper yen rate. The firm expects the production and shipment is expected to keep flat from the first half of fiscal 2007, and the selling price keeps flat at the present time.The firm’s subsidiary, JFE Steel increased the crude steel output by 460,000 tonnes to 7.38 million tonnes compared with the same period of last year for April-June, and increased the shipment by 530,000 tonnes to 6.61 million tonnes. Average selling price of steel products increased to 78,800 yen per tonne by 5,300 yen. The firm expects to increase the crude steel output to 7.6 million tonnes, the shipment to 7.1 million tonnes, and the selling price to 81,000 yen per tonne.