Germany-based steelmaker Salzgitter Group has announced a pre-tax loss of €127.8 million for the first half of the current year due to a drop in capacity utilization by between 10 percent and 70 percent in the second quarter year on year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The company had reported a pre-tax profit of €145.3 million in the first half of 2019.
Salzgitter stated that its sales revenues amounted to €3.6 billion in the given period, decreasing from €4.5 billion in the same period of the previous year. The decrease is attributed to volume and selling price reasons.
The company expects the second and third quarters to probably mark the bottoming out of the current crisis. It also said that only a rough estimate is possible for the next period in this volatile environment due to the uncertainty regarding the macroeconomic recovery. Salzgitter also noted that it expects to announce a pre-tax loss in a low-to-mid triple-digit million euro range for 2020.