Taiwan's China Steel Posts Net-profit Margin of 1.02% for 1st Half of 2012

Taipei, Sept. 4, 2012 (CENS)--The Taiwan-based China Steel Corp., the largest steelmaker on the island by output, reported net-profit margin of 1.02% for the first half of this year, making it the fourth best-performing steelmaker in Asia, according to the company.

China Steel's executives said that Baosteel Group of China ranked No.1 in terms of net-profit margin for the first half of this year, trailed by Korea's Pohang Iron And Steel Co. and Japan's JFE Steel Corp.

To say that China Steel's 1.02% net-profit margin is not easy to come by is not an overstatement, especially at a time when most Asian steelmakers, such as Japan's Nippon Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. and China's Maanshan Iron & Steel Co. and Shougang Group, suffered considerable losses amid a sluggish market in the first half of the year.

China Steel's executives indicated that the global steelmaking industry has been affected by global economic fluctuations over the past few years, causing each single maker in the line to experience downs and ups unforeseeably.

For instance, China Steel saw its full-year EPS (earnings per share) decline to NT$1.54 in 2009 due mainly to the aftermaths of the global financial turbulence, and rebound to NT$2.83 in 2010 on an increasingly stabilized global economy. However, dampened by the outbreak of the EU debt crisis, the Taiwanese steelmaker's EPS dived again to NT$1.36 in 2011, and further slackened to only NT$0.13 in the first half of this year.

Despite EPS fluctuating, China Steel has been one of the best-performing steelmakers in Asia in recent years, which scored net-profit margin of 14.18% to lead the Asian steelmaking industry in 2010, and 4.86% last year to rank No.2, only next to Korea's Pohang with 5.27%.

China Steel's 1st-half EPS by Years
Year	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
EPS	NT$2.35	- NT$0.51	NT$1.86	NT$1.16	NT$0.13