AK Steel Reports Loss on Pension Accounting Costs

AK Steel Holdings Corp. swung to a loss for the fourth quarter, burdened in part by costs related to its pensions, as the steelmaker also reported sharp declines in sales and shipments.

Still, shares of AK Steel, which have fallen 55% over the past year, rose 12% to $2.06 in morning trading in New York as the company's revenue and adjusted earnings beat Wall Street expectations.

"We achieved solid operational improvements during the fourth quarter as a direct result of focusing on the things that we can control," AK Steel Chief Executive Roger K. Newport said.

The company has said its business is being hurt by unfairly priced imports from steelworkers in Brazil, China and India, among other countries.

For the December quarter, AK Steel reported a loss of $147.1 million, or 83 cents a share, compared with year-ago earnings of $13.5 million, or 7 cents a share. Included in the fourth-quarter results were total charges of $200.9 million, or $1.13 a share, related to pension accounting and temporarily idling its Ashland Works blast furnace and steelmaking operations.

Excluding charges, the company reported adjusted earnings of $53.8 million, or 30 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected earnings of a penny a share.

Sales slipped about 23% to $1.54 billion, above the average analyst estimate of $1.5 billion.

Shipments fell to 1.66 million tons in the fourth quarter, down from 2.01 million tons a year ago and 1.87 million tons in the third quarter. AK Steel said the decline was due to its decision to focus on sales of higher-margin products and reduce sales to the carbon steel spot market.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 26, 2016 10:15 ET (15:15 GMT)

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