United States Steel Corp. (X)
Jun
29
Written by:
6/29/2008 10:16 PM
United States Steel Corp. (X)
Steel prices
continue to rise as China
needs more. US
Steel Corp is riding the rising price of steel to new levels of profitability
and market capitalization.
Better Than the
Competition
This week
the CEO of US Steel, John Surma, explained the rising price of iron ore to the
industry driving prices of the finished product higher. But he also told of the
advantage US Steel has as most of its iron ore comes from internal sources and
therefore the costs are controlled.
Analysts have raised
Expectations
Studying
the earnings expectations by the analysts, US Steel looks like a quickly
growing company in a very strong industry. Analysts have raised the company’s
expected earnings for the current quarter 28% over the past three months. And
they have raised the yearly earnings expectations 41% over the same time frame.
Not Perfect
The company
has managed to miss their last three quarters, by small amounts on two of the
three. If there’s a downside to the growing large cap steel producer, it’s that
they cannot meet analyst’s expectations. In March of the current year, US Steel
missed earnings expectations by 2.2% when analysts were looking for 1.81 per
share and the company delivered 1.77 per share.
The Trade
In spite of
recent quarterly earnings misses, the company is showing incredible growth in an
industry that is one of the strongest is a weak domestic economy.