OREANDA-NEWS. November 07, 2012. POSCO held its Q3 IR meeting at the Korea Exchange International Conference Room in Yeouido, Seoul, announcing 15,739 billion KRW in sales and 1,620 billion KRW in operating profit, marking 723 billion KRW in net profit based on consolidated statements, reported the press-centre of POSCO.

POSCO alone marked 8.91 trillion KRW in sales and 819 billion KRW in operating profit. Crude steel production and product sales reached 9.66 million tons and 8.93 million tons, respectively. Sales increased slightly compared to the previous quarter through market and product development, but sales and operating profits decreased slightly due to falling product prices.

In Q3, POSCO focused management activities on securing profitability by differentiating products and reducing costs. First, World First World Best products increased from 14.8% last quarter to 15.5%, and automobile steel plate export and steel plates for energy are also forecasted to increase by 8.2% and 30.6%, by focusing more energy on high value-added product sales.

The company will also continue to drive cost reduction, so far achieving 90%, or 959.6 billion KRW, of the goal of reducing 1.1 trillion KRW this year. Major cost reductions up to the third quarter include 575 billion KRW in materials, 127 billion KRW in maintenance costs, and 112 billion KRW in energy. Meanwhile, financial soundness was strengthened in Q3 as the company repaid loans. Debt ratios dropped by 4.3% to 35.9% compared to the previous quarter, and the debt to equity ratio reached 73.6%, a 2.3% increase compared to last year.

Marking its lowest in Q3, POSCO forecasted that the demand industry will slightly recover for stable steel demand, but as uncertainties still exist in external and internal management environments, the company will flexibly carry out investments within the range of cash creation abilities.

Accordingly, the 8.9 trillion KRW consolidated base investment plans were slightly lowered to 8.4 trillion KRW by adjusting execution timing based on investment priorities.

During the remainder of the second half of the year, POSCO will focus more on high value-added product sales, reducing costs, and improving global technology leadership, while continuing efforts to maximize synergy between related companies by gathering abilities to the core business structure.

POSCO announced that this year`s sales goals are 67.2 trillion KRW consolidated, and 36.3 trillion KRW non-consolidated.