Nippon Steel Gains 19 Times Higher Consolidated Recurring Profit in F2010

Nippon Steel announced on Thursday the firm’s consolidated recurring profit increased by 19 times to 226.3 billion yen in fiscal 2010 ended in March 2011 compared with the previous fiscal year. The recurring profit was even higher than the latest forecast of 220 billion yen. The steel business’ profit turned into black at 181.9 billion yen from red at 28.5 billion yen while the city development business and chemical business’ profits increased. The firm posted extraordinary loss at 23.7 billion yen by Japan Earthquake while kept net profit at 93.1 billion yen from red at 11.5 billion yen.

The recurring profit was 181.9 billion yen for steel business in fiscal 2010. The recurring profit for the engineering business decreased to 14.8 billion yen in fiscal 2010 from 29.2 billion yen in fiscal 2009. Meanwhile, the recurring profit increased to 9.2 billion yen from 1.7 billion yen for the city development business and to 13.2 billion yen from 9.1 billion yen for the chemical business. The recurring profit also increased to 2.1 billion yen from 500 million yen for the new material business and 11.3 billion yen from 11.1 billion yen for the system solution business.

The steel business’ consolidated recurring profit improved up by 211 billion yen year-on-year. The non-consolidated recurring profit turned into black at 80.1 billion yen from red at 94.9 billion yen. The positive factors were steel shipment increase by 4.26 million tonnes at 110 billion yen, selling price improvement by 270 billion yen, cost reduction by 17.5 billion yen, inventory evaluation profit by 135 billion yen and dividend income by 30 billion yen. Meanwhile, negative factors were higher raw material costs by 470 billion yen. Thus the margin shrank by 200 billion yen, said Shinichi Taniguchi, Nippon Steel’s vice president.

Nippon Steel forecasts the non-consolidated crude steel production decreases by about 8% in April against the average for January-March. The firm estimates the production would not increase rapidly in and after May since Japanese manufacturing industry, mainly car makers, are impacted by the earthquake.