Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Gets Higher Profit in 1Q

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing announced on Friday the sales increased by 21.45 to 61.236 billion yen while the operating profit decreased by 19.7% to 8.523 billion yen and the recurring profit decreased by 19.3% to 8.861 billion yen and the net profit decreased by 21.0% to 5.389 billion yen for April-June compared with the same period of last year. The profit decreased from last year due to increased material price, but was good more than originally expected due to increased sales volume and increased selling price including improved export profit by cheap yen.The output decreased by 3.1% to 896,000 tonnes for semi-finished steel products for April-June compared with the same period of last year, by 0.4% to 853,000 tonnes while the sales volume increased by 5.3% to 829,000 tonnes, which decreased by 4.8% to 119,000 tonnes for export. The average selling price increased by 14.6% to 73,600 yen per tonne. The export price increased to 75,500 yen per tonne from 60,600 yen due to low yen rate.The firm announced on Friday the firm revised the outlook upward to 26.5 billion yen of operating profit, to 27.5 billion yen of recurring profit for the year to March 2008 compared with former estimate at 24 billion yen and 25 billion yen respectively. The sales estimate was left unchanged at 250 billion yen. The firm expects lower profit rate due to increased material price, but higher profit due to good profit in the first quarter accounts. The firm expects to increase net profit to 15.5 billion yen by 1.5 billion yen from originally expected.