Japanese steelmaker Kobe Steel Ltd (Kobe) has issued its financial results for the third quarter ended December 31 of the fiscal year 2010-11 and its financial forecast for the full fiscal year.
Net income of Kobe Steel was JPY 17.7 billion ($216.8 million) for the three months ended December 31, compared with a net loss of JPY 7.4 billion in the same quarter of the previous year. Net sales revenues in the third fiscal quarter were JPY 433.7 billion ($5.3 billion) up four percent year on year.
Kobe Steel's net income in the first three quarters of the fiscal year was JPY 47.22 billion ($578.3 million), compared with a net loss of JPY 37.9 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year. Net sales revenues in the period in question were JPY 1.36 trillion ($16.7 billion), up 12.4 percent over the same period of the last fiscal year.
Kobe also revised its prediction for the consolidated full financial year results. The steelmaker expects net sales of JPY 1.89 trillion ($23.1 billion) and a net income of JPY 45 billion ($551.1 million) at the end of the current financial year. Earlier forecasts were JPY 1.91 trillion and JPY 45 billion, respectively.
4.76 million mt sales volume in nine months
Kobe Steel produced 5.7 million mt of crude steel in the first three quarters of the fiscal year compared with 4.69 million mt in the same period of the last fiscal year. Kobe's sales volume in the given period was 4.76 million mt, up from 3.98 million mt in the same period of the last fiscal year.
Regarding the economic outlook, Kobe Steel said, "Japan's economy in the nine months ended December 31, 2010 saw a pause in the pace of recovery due to a retrenchment in economic measures and the effect of the high yen from the third quarter (October-December). However, on the back of the improvement in overseas economies, domestic conditions on the whole continued to gradually recover. In overseas markets, too, the Chinese economy expanded and the United States and Europe continued to gradually recover."