China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), the nation’s largest steelmaker, yesterday posted pretax losses of NT$509.43 million (US$16.94 million) for last month, leading to first-quarter losses of NT$2.57 billion, due to dwindling shipments and lower prices amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
CSC made a pretax profit of NT$5.13 billion in March last year.
Last month’s pretax losses were an improvement from February’s losses of NT$794.43 million.
Photo: Lin Ching-hua, Taipei Times
Sales last month fell 15.74 percent year-on-year to NT$27.75 billion, bringing last quarter’s sales down 19.03 percent to NT$77.92 billion.
Blaming the fall on the pandemic, which cast a pall over market demand, the state-run company said that high costs associated with raw materials, such as coking coal and iron ore, further exacerbated its losses.
The steel industry, which has suffered immensely due to the US and China trade dispute last year as businesses across the globe increasingly shelved investments, has led the company to post 11 consecutive months of annual declines.
The local market remained the company’s biggest source of revenue, as domestic deliveries of carbon steel made up 69 percent of its total shipments, which reached 962,092 tonnes last month.
It shipped 2.73 million tonnes of carbon steel in the first three months of the year.
While the company earlier this year raised quarterly price quotes for domestic deliveries next quarter, it has trimmed prices for next month and June to lend support to downstream customers.
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