US Steel reports net loss for Q3

United States Steel Corp. (U.S. Steel), Pittsburgh, has reported a third-quarter net loss of $234 million, or $1.06 per diluted share. According to U.S. Steel’s latest earnings report, this compares with a third quarter of 2019 net loss of $84 million, or 49 cents per diluted share. In the third quarter, U.S. Steel reports that its adjusted net loss was $268 million, or $1.21 per diluted share, which compares with an adjusted net loss of $35 million, or 21 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2019.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were a loss of about $49 million in the third quarter of 2020. According to the company’s earnings presentation Oct. 30, third-quarter adjusted EBITDA was better than in the previous quarter. U.S. Steel’s adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $264 million in the second quarter of 2020.

U.S. Steel President and CEO David B. Burritt says the company’s third-quarter results “exceeded” its earnings guidance that came out in September. He says the company has had “dramatically improved results” in its flat-rolled segment, positive EBITDA in its U.S. Steel Europe business and cash from operations of about $213 million.

“We expect to generate positive adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter with excitement about our ‘Best of Both’ future,” Burritt says. “This month, we are celebrating the successful startup of our electric arc furnace at [Fairfield, Alabama], and the one-year anniversary of our investment in Big River Steel. Both of these investments expand our sustainable steel offerings for our customers. It has only been a year and we are confident and enthusiastic that the strategic rationale of our partnership with Big River Steel is being validated. Our teams of leading steel technologists are already proving that sustainable, high-end steel grades previously thought to be impossible for mini mills to produce can indeed be made at Big River with U. S. Steel R&D and know-how.”

According to the company’s earnings presentation Oct. 30, U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel expansion project is near completion. That facility is doubling its steelmaking capacity from 1.65 million tons per year to 3.3 million tons per year.

U.S. Steel reported in its earnings presentation that its executives are optimistic about the future, particularly as steel utilization rates are improving from the drop-off at the start of the pandemic.