Japan's JFE Holdings first-quarter profit down 74%, misses forecasts
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a signboard of JFE Holdings Inc. outside its headquarters in Tokyo October 24, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo
TOKYO :JFE Holdings, parent of Japan's second-biggest steel maker, posted 7.1 billion yen ($48 million) in net profit on Monday for the three months ended on June 30, down 74 per cent from a year earlier and missing analysts' forecasts.
An LSEG poll of analysts had expected JFE Holdings to report 16.1 billion yen in quarterly net profit. The company recorded 27.5 billion yen in profit in the same period of last year.
It said its crude steel production for the period was 5.28 million metric tons, down from 5.48 million tons a year ago, while it also faced weaker export profitability and was hit by foreign exchange fluctuations.
JFE Holdings kept its profit forecast for the year ending next March unchanged at 75 billion yen.
In a separate statement on Monday, JFE said that, together with India's JSW Steel, it will invest 120 billion yen to expand production capacity at two plants in India.
The investment will increase output of cold rolled grain-oriented electrical steel - a specialised product used in transformers, generators and motors - to 350,000 tons per year.
One of the plants is set to start full production in 2027, and the other has current capacity of 50,000 tons annually.
The expansion aims to help satisfy rising demand from new power infrastructure, the growth of renewable energy use and an increase in the number of data centres in India, JFE said.
($1 = 147.8000 yen)
