POSCO announced business results for January 2003
South Korean steelmaker POSCO having been able to maintain a stabilized growth since 2002 also showed a great performance last month. Although a decrase in steel prices were expected at the beginning of 2003, prices have increased and due to a favorable exchange rate raw material costs have decreased. Together with these two factors, the strong
production and sales numbers and company's efforts to drop overall costs played an important role in POSCO's significant performance for January.
According to the business results for January, company increased crude steel
production in January 10'000 ton to about 2.36 million ton when compared to the same period last year. Also, sales showed an increase of 133.2 billion Won from last year and reached to 1.057 trillion Won(approximately $881.4 million). Company's operating profit increased to 275.6 billion Won, up 158.3 billion Won when compared to 2002. Furthermore in the financial statement of the company the debt ratio decrased from 52.3% to 51.5% while ROIC (Return on Invested Capital) increased to 25.1% from 21.1% due to the increases in
production and sales.