Financial key performance indicators

The Steel Division’s key performance indicators (KPIs) for the business year 2020/21 mirror the meltdown at the year’s beginning and the sub­sequent improvement through to its end. Division revenue for the business year 2020/21 declined by 7.7% to EUR 4,216.7 million year over year (2019/20: EUR 4,570.5 million). Roughly one half of this decrease is due to the reduction in delivery volumes. Add to that slightly lower prices as well as the fact that, compared with the previous business year, deliveries of high-priced heavy plate products accounted for a smaller share of the overall product mix.

The Steel Division’s EBITDA for the business year 2020/21 is EUR 486.6 million (margin of 11.5%) and thus almost stable year over year (2019/20: EUR 494.0 million, margin of 10.8%). Strict cost management and slightly lower expenditures for raw materials largely offset both the decline in sales and slightly lower contract prices. State-sponsored short time work options helped to buttress these measures. Just as with respect to revenue, the division’s EBITDA improved as well over the course of the reporting period after the sharp downturn early on.

The Steel Division’s EBIT was impacted by non-recurring effects both in the reporting period and in the previous business year. A total of EUR 240 million in impairment losses were taken on the division’s direct reduction plant in Texas, USA, as well as the Foundry Group (cast steel) in the business year 2019/20. A total of EUR 163 million in impairment losses were taken on the Texas direct reduction plant for the business year 2020/21. But the division posted positive EBIT of EUR 9.2 million (margin of 0.2%) for the reporting period nonetheless, compared with EBIT of EUR –100.6 million (margin of –2.2%) for the previous business year.

The quarter-on-quarter comparison (QoQ) of the third and fourth quarters of the business year 2020/21 confirms the Steel Division’s unequivocal upward trajectory. Division revenue climbed in the fourth quarter by 11.9% to EUR 1,260.3 million, up from EUR 1,125.9 million in the third. Because a large number of customer contracts is usually renegotiated at the start of a calendar year, higher prices were realized in the reporting period’s fourth quarter. These price increases resulted from the significant increase in demand for the division’s steel products after the Northern summer, which was also driven by the sharp increases in iron ore prices. Besides full capacity utilization in the fourth quarter of the business year 2020/21, the positive market environment also helped to boost deliveries by 7% compared with the third quarter. on the whole, the Steel ­Division’s EBITDA improved QoQ by 47.3%, from EUR 131.4 million in the third quarter to EUR 193.6 million in the fourth; the EBITDA ­margin rose accordingly from 11.7% to 15.4%. The increase in EBIT was even more pronounced: It skyrocketed by 162.3%, from EUR 49.1 million to EUR 128.8 million, causing the EBIT margin to soar from 4.4% to 10.2%.

Following a reduction in the number of employees (FTE) during the first quarter of the business year 2020/21 due to the difficult market environment, the number of employees rose again ­slightly during the subsequent quarters in tandem with improved capacity utilization. Hence the Steel Division had 10,461 employees as of March 31, 2021, returning it more or less to the level of 10,419 as of March 31, 2020.