ArcelorMittal Posts Loss In Q2, Cuts Full Year EBITDA Forecast - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Steel giant ArcelorMittal (MT) Thursday reported a loss for the second quarter, compared to profit last year, and cut its EBITDA forecast for the year.

The company reported a net loss of $780 million or $0.44 per basic share, compared to profit of $1.016 billion or $0.66 per basic share last year.

EBITDA for the quarter decreased to $1.70 billion from $2.559 billion. Sales declined to $20.197 billion from $22.478 billion in the prior year.

Total shipments of steel products fell to 21.3 million metric tonnes from 21.7 million metric tonnes.

Citing lower than forecast apparent demand and lower than expected raw material prices, the company now expects to report 2013 EBITDA greater than $6.5 billion.

The steel giant said in May that assuming that in 2013 iron ore prices and the margin of steel prices over raw material costs are similar to that in 2012, it expects to report EBITDA above $7.1 billion.

Lakshmi Mittal, ArcelorMittal Chairman and CEO, said, ''Although we have revised our full year guidance, the second half should deliver a clear underlying improvement relative to the second half of 2012, which we believe marked the lowest point in the cycle."

Due to an expected investment in working capital and the payment of the annual dividend, net debt is expected to increase in the second half to about $17 billion. The $15 billion medium term net debt target remains unchanged.