Steel Mills
April 22, 2014
AK Steel Sees Industry Playing Catch Up Throughout the Summer
Written by Sandy Williams
AK Steel reported a net loss of $86.1 million in the first quarter of 2014, compared to a net income of $35.2 million in the previous quarter. Net sales for Q1 were $1.38 billion on steel shipments of 1,262,100 tons, compared to Q1 2013 net sales of $1.37 billion on shipments of 1,289,800 tons, and net sales of $1.46 billion on shipments of 1,420,000 tons for the fourth quarter of 2013.
AK Steel earnings were impacted by the incident at the Ashland Works that resulted in an outage of the blast furnace and an acceleration of planned maintenance that was scheduled for second quarter. The outage reduced production by 100-150,000 tons. The extreme winter caused energy prices to soar pushing electric and natural costs up by $30 million compared to Q1 2013 and by $27 million compared to Q4 2013.
