Austrian steelmaker voestalpine AG has announced its financial results for the first nine months ended December 31 of the fiscal year 2019-20.
Accordingly, voestalpine has posted a €160 million net loss for the first nine months of the fiscal year, despite a €281.3 million net profit in the same period of last year. In the first three quarters of the business year 2019-20, the revenues of the company amounted to almost €9.6 billion, down 3.8 percent compared to €9.9 billion recorded in the same period of the previous financial year. The decline was mainly due to lower delivery volumes. In the given period, the company's EBITDA was €837 million, decreasing by 24.2 percent year on year, while the EBITDA margin stood at 8.7 percent, compared to 11.1 percent in the same period of the previous year.
Voestalpine has struggled with the challenging economic environment during the business year 2019-20 due to trade conflicts’ negative impacts on the global economy particularly the weak performance of Europe’s export-driven industries, which are the company’s key sales market. The company stated that profit margins in the steel industry were affected negatively by low steel prices, unfavorable demand in the automotive segment and also higher iron ore prices all over the world. Voestalpine’s Cartersville plant in Georgia, US, have boosted its efficiency with actions taken by the company, but it still should take some additional optimization steps in order to achieve the initial targets, according to voestalpine.
Voestalpine expects the operating result (EBITDA) for the business year 2019-20 to be around €1.2 billion, depending on the first nine months of the business year 2019-20 and analyses of the changed global economic environment and the results of its key business segments.