Dallas, Texas 10/18/2013 (Financialstrend) – AK Steel Holding Corporation (NYSE:AKS) is a mid cap Steel and Iron producer with total annual sales of $5.66 billion. On September 20, the company stock had shed close to 10% of its market value due to a weak guidance it had issued for its 3Q results. This weak guidance came as a surprise to many since by then car manufacturers and other heavy industry players had started to play up increase in their sales activities. On closer reading of the fine print of the guidance, one was able to tie in the forecasted dip in production to an unplanned down time at its Middle town blast furnace factory in Ohio.
Since then the management of this $562 million market capitalized steel maker have initiated host of measures to regain investor confidence. In first week of October the steel producer initiated what many consider to be proactive approach of filing “antidumping duty petitions” with U.S Commerce department and U.S. International trade commission. The petition sought intervention form the agencies by highlighted that U.S was allowing import of unfairly low priced electric steel from 5 Asian countries and Germany which accounted for 92% of imports into the country. The U.S. steel maker has claimed that these producers are able to undercut competition due to the huge subsidy that they get from their respective governments.
AK Steel has made the case that these Asian producers have managed to flood the U.S. market with surplus steel which was produced cheaply due to subsidies. The company is claiming that this is leading to fall in demand for its products and in extension has led to revenue shortfall over the past few quarters. In addition to waging a legal battle, the steel firm has also announced that it is increasing the price of all its “flat rolled steel products” across the board in order to bridge the gap between production and selling costs.
