The fourth quarter earnings season swung into action last week. Sorry for the delay in getting this post out, but I was in Florida making a presentation at the AMM State of Steel Conference. More on that tomorrow.
Three companies reported reported Q 4 earnings last week. Their respective press releases can be found at the following links: AK Q4 2009 earnings, Nucor Q4 2009 earnings, US Steel Q4 2009 earnings.
The Nerds of Steel earnings spreadsheet has been updated to include these companies’ Q4 and 2009 full year operating income and EBITDA per ton numbers. Not surprisingly all three companies achieved much lower levels of EBITDA per ton in 2009 than they did in 2008. US Steel was negative for the year, but AK Steel and Nucor were modestly positive. Given that the US industry ran at close to 50% capacity utilization for the year, positive EBITDA may be considered an accomplishment.