Source: Latin-America's largest steel mill's profit sharply revives

Nov. 6 MetalBiz--Latin America's largest steel company, Gerdau announced the statement that its net profit in the third quarter was BRL655mln , while it made loss of BRL329mln.

Gerdau owed the significantly increasing profit to market warming-up and the reduction in sales, administration cost. In July and September, the total sales amount was 3.9mln tons, up by 15% month on month.

Even so, compared to last year, its profit in the third quarter still fell by 43%. At a matter of fact, affected by the global economic crisis especially North America market's shrinkage, in the first three quarters, Gerdau's net profit was only BRL361mln, down by 92.2% year on year.

However, the warming-up of market make Gerdau react. The statement said that the company will invest BRL9.5bln to expand the production in the upcoming five years, and 80% will be invested in Brazil, and this plan will take place of the previous BRL6.3bln investment plan.

Gerdau's CEO believed that the market pick-up in the beginning of 2009 will last to the end of 2010, among them, Brazil market will become brisk, and America market also shows sign of slowly reviving, and therefore the company will increase the investment.