Tokyo Steel to Post First Recurring Loss in 8 Years

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing estimates the firm posts recurring loss for Fiscal 2009 ending March 2010, which is the first loss in 8 fiscal years, announced on Friday. The firm revised earning target to 3.4 billion yen of recurring loss for fiscal 2009 from 5.6 billion yen of profit due to the higher material cost and lower product sales. The recurring loss would increase in January-March 2010 from October-December 2009. The firm estimates 58,000-59,000 yen per tonne of averaged steel selling price and 29,000 yen of ferrous scrap cost for January-March.

The sales of Tokyo Steel decreased by 67.4% to 78.743 billion yen for April-December 2009 compared with same period of fiscal 2008 while the operating profit decreased by 96.7% to 1.587 billion yen and recurring profit decreased by 96.1% to 1.948 billion yen. The net loss was 1.702 billion yen while the firm posted 29.746 billion yen of net profit in same period of 2008.

The products sales volume decreased by 44.6% to 1.235 million tonnes for April-December 2009 compared with same period of 2008 while the export decreased to 16,000 tonnes from 267,000 tonnes. Tokyo Steel estimates 420,000 tonnes of sales for January-March 2010 and the sales forecast in fiscal 2009 is 1.67 million tonnes. The firm originally estimated 2.2 million tonnes of sales.