Commodities & Metals

ArcelorMittal Earnings Push Stock Price Within Reach of New High

arcelormittal-furnace-crop
courtesy of ArcelorMittal
ArcelorMittal (NYSE: MT) reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2013 results before markets opened Friday. For the quarter, the mining and steel-making giant posted a basic and diluted earnings per share (EPS) loss of $0.69 on revenues of $19.85 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported an EPS loss of $2.47 on revenues of $19.31 billion.

For the full year, the company posted an EPS loss of $1.46 on revenues of $79.44 billion compared with a loss of $2.17 per share on revenues of $84.21 billion in 2012. The consensus estimates for the Luxembourg-based firm that called for an EPS loss of $0.58 on revenues of $80.29 billion are based on a single analyst’s opinion.

ArcelorMittal posted EBITDA of $1.91 billion in the fourth quarter, beating an estimate from a FactSet poll of 10 analysts. Full-year EBITDA totaled $6.9 billion, nearly 11% higher than expected.

The company took $444 million in impairment charges and $552 million in restructuring charges in 2013, far less than the more than $5 billion in one-time charges posted in 2012.

The company guided 2014 EBITDA to approximately $8 billion and forecast steel shipments would rise 3%, compared with 2013’s total of 84.3 million metric tons. Iron ore shipments are forecast to rise by 15% compared, with the 2013 total of 35.1 million metric tons at an average price per metric ton of $120.

The company’s CEO said:

The improvement in the overall economic situation led us to re-start some selected steel growth projects. In addition, we have expanded our ability to serve the growing NAFTA automotive and energy steel markets through our agreement to acquire ThyssenKrupp`s rolling mill in Calvert, Alabama. We are cautiously optimistic about the outlook for 2014 and expect EBITDA for the full year to improve to approximately $8.0 billion.

ArcelorMittal shares were trading up about 2.4% to $17.45 in Friday’s premarket. The stock’s 52-week range is $10.83 to $17.92. The consensus target price for the shares was around $19.90 before this report.

 

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