Kobe Steel announced on Monday the firm’s consolidated recurring profit decreased by 21.9% to 38.5 billion yen in first half of fiscal 2011 started in April from same period of fiscal 2010. The profit was 13.5 billion yen higher than the forecast announced in July due to firm demand for construction machinery, aluminium, copper and machinery. However, the firm left the full year recurring profit forecast unchanged at 50 billion yen, which is 43.9% lower than fiscal 2010 level, as announced in July due to economy uncertainty and historical high yen rate.
The firm posted 3.5 billion yen of the recurring profit from steel business in first half of fiscal 2011. However, the firm estimates 3.5 billion yen of the loss for second half. Kobe Steel’s half year recurring profit decreased by 10.8 billion yen from same period of fiscal 2010 due to negative factors of 44 billion yen from raw materials and 7 billion yen from inventory valuation while the firm gained 32.5 billion yen from higher output and shipment, 2.5 billion yen from cost reduction and 1 billion yen from subsidiaries. The firm posted 100 million yen of the recurring profit from steel business for July-September and 3.3 billion yen of the profit for April-June. The steel shipment was 1.54 million tonnes with the averaged selling price at 91,800 yen per tonne in July-September compared with 1.44 million tonnes of shipment with 85,200 yen of price in April-June. The firm estimates 3.2 million tonnes of the shipment in second half of fiscal 2011, which is 220,000 tonnes higher than the first half.
