US Steel earnings, steel production drop

US Steel's production fell in the third quarter as orders dropped.

The company's US integrated steel mills produced 2.27mn short tons of raw steel, down by 14pc compared with the prior year. The facilities ran at a 68pc utilization rate, up from 61pc in the same period of 2021. The increased utilization rate despite the lower overall production reflects US Steel's smaller overall footprint, which is at 13.2mn st/yr of steelmaking capacity in 2022, down by 22pc from 2021's 17mn st/yr.

During the quarter the company idled a 1.5mn st/yr blast furnace at its Gary, Indiana steel mill, and a 1.4mn st/yr blast furnace at its Mon Valley, Pennsylvania mill.

At US Steel's electric arc furnace (EAF) Big River Steel, production fell by 18pc to 616,000st in the quarter, and utilization was down by 16 percentage points to 74pc.

In Europe, where US Steel operates a mill in Slovakia with three blast furnaces, the company produced 946,000st, down by 26pc from the prior year and at a 75pc utilization rate, down by 26 percentage points. On 4 September US Steel idled one of the blast furnaces for a 60 day maintenance outage.

The company's tubular division produced 173,000st of steel, up by 48pc from the prior year. It operated at a 76pc utilization rate, an increase of 24 percentage points.

US Steel earned a profit of $490mn, down by 76pc from the prior year.

By Rye Druzin