The loss for the fiscal year that ended September 30 compared with a net profit of 2.3 billion euros the previous year for ThyssenKrupp, based in Duesseldorf.

The company said the drop was due to a number of restructuring charges and the impact of the global economic downturn on the steel industry. At the same time, the company faced construction costs for building up businesses in Alabama and Brazil.

Revenue fell 24 per cent to 40.5 billion euros ($A66.6 billion) from 53.4 billion euros in the previous fiscal year.

Order intake declined to 36 billion euros ($A59.2 billion) from 55 billion euros in the 2007-2008 fiscal year – a 35 per cent decline.

The company did not immediately release fourth-quarter figures.

Chief executive Ekkehard Schulz told reporters the company expected to cut about 5,000 jobs and the rest of the payroll reductions would be made through divestment of units. He didn’t specify what the company planned on selling off.

Last week, the company said it was selling industrial services unit North American Safway Group to Odyssey Investment Partners, a private equity company based in New York.

Safway, based in Waukesha, Wisconsin and Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, has businesses including scaffolding. It had sales of more than $US700 million in 2008 and a work force of about 5,000 across the US and Canada.

In overall terms, ThyssenKrupp said it expected only a slow recovery for this fiscal year.

In a letter to shareholders, Schulz said: ‘Our customers are placing more orders, even if a return to the level of the good years is still some time away.’

‘Now that the world economy seems to have passed the worst of the recession, the new fiscal year 2009-2010 will be characterised by at best slow economic recovery,’ the company said in the report.

‘As a result, there will be only moderate growth in order intake and sales,’ it added. ‘The group’s new organisational structure will make us leaner and more efficient. Together with the optimisation programs we have introduced, this will have a positive effect on earnings.’

ThyssenKrupp said it expected sales to stabilise in the current fiscal year, and said pretax earnings should be in the high three-digit million euro range.

However, it said they would be significantly impacted by project costs and startup losses in the Steel Americas business.

ThyssenKrupp reiterated that construction work on a new steel mill and processing plant near Mobile, Alabama was being adapted to reflect the decline in steel demand.

It said the construction of a carbon steel-processing line is continuing as planned, and that it will start operating in the second quarter of 2010. A stainless steel mill at the site is set to begin production next October.

ThyssenKrupp said the startup of other stainless units in Alabama will be spread out over a longer period, with the possibility of changing start dates.

It said the stainless melt shop, which was to start operating in 2012, could be delayed by two years, but that the scale of the overall project in Alabama would be retained.

‘Once the US economy has recovered, the NAFTA market offers promising growth opportunities,’ Thyssen said.

A new facility in Brazil is expected to start limited operations in mid-2010.

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Pure white marble is the result of metamorphism of very pure limestones. The characteristic swirls and veins of many colored marble varieties are usually due to various mineral impurities such as clay, silt, sand, iron oxides, or chert which were originally present as grains or layers in the limestone. Green coloration is often due to serpentine resulting from originally high magnesium limestone or dolostone with silica impurities. These various impurities have been mobilized and recrystallized by the intense pressure and heat of the metamorphism.

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Source: With permission, selected from listed prices in Platts Coal Outlook, “Weekly Price Survey.”

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Inventories of copper in warehouses monitored by the London Metal Exchange rose 0.1 percent to 432,075 metric tons, the highest since April 23. The U.S. Dollar Index of the greenback against six currencies gained as much as 0.6 percent, making dollar-priced metals more expensive to holders of other monies.

Aluminum fell 0.3 percent to $2,040 a ton, and zinc shed 1.4 percent to $2,275 a ton. Nickel dropped 1 percent to $16,832 a ton and lead fell 0.8 percent to $2,372 a ton.

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Besides, CRC price difference was quite big. The first-tier mill announced the CRC base price is about U.S.$710 per ton, but the second-tier mill quotes the same product at only U.S.$610 per ton. Prices will be depending on different steel grade and order quantity.

CGI base price also increased slightly in line with higher carbon steel price.

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Shares of the company, on Friday (Nov 20), closed at Rs 966.45 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 920 and a low of Rs 383.20 on BSE.Current EPS & P/E ratio of the stock stood at 86.65 & 8.96 respectively.

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