Daido Steel Posts 14B Yen Recurring Loss in F2009

Daido Steel announced on Friday the firm posted the consolidated recurring loss of 13.99 billion yen for fiscal 2009 ended in March 2010. Lower sales volume and selling price impacted the firm‘s profitability. This is the first recurring loss since fiscal 1999. The firm decided to decrease the annual dividend to 2 yen per share from 4 yen in fiscal 2009.

The sales of special steel products decreased by 100 billion yen or 32.5% to 207 billion yen in fiscal 2009 from fiscal 2008. Material costs lowered by 30 billion yen and the firm reduced the constant costs by 16.6 billion yen during fiscal 2009. However, the profits were impacted by 52 billion yen due to less sales volume and by 24.6 billion yen because of lower selling price.

The firm reached the breaking point in October-December and gained the recurring profit at 3.1 billion yen in January-March. The firm expects the sales and the profit could increase in fiscal 2010 when the management circumstances would maintain the level of January-March. The firm tries to increase the annual dividend to 4 yen per share in fiscal 2010.