Cleveland-Cliffs loses $1.4B in 2025

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., a Cleveland-based steelmaker and iron mining and production firm, has reported its sixth consecutive quarterly loss in the fourth quarter of 2025.

In the final three months of 2025, the steelmaker reported a net loss attributable to shareholders of $235 million. For all of 2025, Cliffs experienced a net loss of more than $1.42 billion.

The company’s revenue was nearly stable (down 0.3 percent) in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the same period one year earlier. However, the company was able to narrow its net loss late last year, with the $235 million figure being 48 percent lower compared with the $434 million Cliffs lost in the last three months of 2024.

“Our performance in 2025 was negatively affected by persistently weak production levels from the automotive sector throughout the entire year, an expiring five-year slab contract becoming value-destructive during its last year, and a newly adverse dynamic in the Canadian market,” states Lourenco Goncalves, board chair, president, and CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs.

In Canada, Cliffs operates the Stelco integrated steel mill in Ontario, which it purchased in late 2024. With the advent of a 50 percent tariff on inbound Canadian steel in the United States just a few months later, the Stelco mill has been cut off from some of its former customers.

Regarding that circumstance and the others he mentioned, Goncalves remarks, “Fortunately, as we started 2026, these negative situations have all improved. At the same time, the trade environment in the U.S. continues to move in a very constructive direction, setting the stage for dramatically improved results this year.”

Continues the CEO,  “We took the necessary actions in 2025 to set us up for future success. We optimized our footprint and exited non-core assets with minimal impact to flat-rolled output, signed multi-year contracts with all our major automotive customers, reduced unit costs year-over-year, extended our debt maturities, and lowered capital expenditures, among several other initiatives.”

On the divestiture side, Cliffs has sold at least two of its Ferrous Processing & Trading (FPT) metals recycling facilities, with the two sites in Florida being purchased by California-based SA Recycling.

A bigger ticket divestiture involves the potential sale or lease of assets in Pennsylvania and Illinois to South Korea-based steelmaker Posco.

“Posco continues to conduct due diligence as part of our recently announced strategic partnership,” says Goncalves. “This remains the number one strategic priority for both Cleveland-Cliffs and Posco, and engagement between the teams is active and ongoing. Both parties are focused on structuring a transaction that is highly accretive and strategically compelling for each company. The duration of these negotiations reflects the seriousness and potential scale of the opportunity. We are targeting signing a definitive agreement in the first half of 2026.”

In a brief summary of how it sees 2026 shaping up, Cleveland-Cliffs predicts steel shipment volumes of between 16.5 and 17 million tons, which would represent an increase from the 16.2 million tons shipped last year.