CSC Suffers Sales Decline of 19% in Feb.

Taipei, March 9, 2011 (CENS)--Affected by shrinking domestic demand, China Steel Corp. (CSC), the largest steelmaker in Taiwan, saw its sales revenue for February decline 19.01% from January to NT$16.026 billion, with pretax profits dropping 8.05% monthly to NT$1.822 billion, according to the firm's financial statement.

In February, the firm turned out 694,000 metric tons of various steels, slightly up from January's 681,900 metric tons, its sales plunged 20% from a month earlier to 651,000 metric tons due to waning demand in the domestic market. Institutional investors pointed out weak steel prices also undermined CSC's profit performance in the first two months of this year, and hence estimated the firm's net profits for the first quarter at about NT$6.5 billion.

However, with steel prices bottoming out in March, CSC is expected to witness its sales revenue and profits grow month by month till the end of the second quarter.

So far, CSC's average steel prices for April and May have risen by 12%, which is expected to help the firm score additional earnings of NT$2.5 billion during the two months, indicated institutional investors, who have projected the firm's net profits for the second quarter to grow to NT$8.5 billion. Hopefully, they added, the firm is very likely to rake in NT$15 billion in net profits for the first half of the year.

But, they noted that the growth will moderate in the second half of the year, mainly because prices of such key materials as iron ore and coal are very likely to skyrocket to erode CSC's profit performance.

Sales Revenues and Net Profits by CSC in Past 5 Years
Year	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Sales Revenues	NT$177.758 bn.	NT$207.919 bn.	NT$256.359 bn.	NT$165.409 bn.	NT$239.187 bn.
Net Profits	NT$39.159 bn.	NT$51.264 bn.	NT$24.03 bn.	NT$19.603 bn.	NT$37.587 bn.
EPS	NT$3.56	NT$4.49	NT$2.03	NT$1.54	NT$2.83

Source: CSC