Earnings Preview For AK Steel Holding Corporation (AKS)

AK Steel Holding Corporation AKS will report its Q1 report on Tuesday, April 26, before the bells ring. The results are not expected to be very good, however. Its earnings per share is expected to be in the negative area, making losses of $0.01 per share, sharply down from the $0.25 level a year ago. The upside is that the scale of losses was expected to be higher in previous months. Two months ago the expectations were of a $0.05 loss per share, slightly improved to a loss of $0.03 and $0.02 thirty and seven days ago, respectfully. AK Steel Holding Corporation is a producer of flat-rolled carbon, stainless and electrical steels and tubular products through its wholly owned subsidiary, AK Steel Corporation. AK Holding's operations consist of seven steelmaking and finishing plants located in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania that produce flat-rolled carbon steels, including coated, cold-rolled and hot-rolled products, and specialty stainless and electrical steels that are sold in hot band, and sheet and strip form. Its operations also include AK Tube LLC (AK Tube), a wholly owned subsidiary of the company, which further finishes flat-rolled carbon and stainless steel at two tube plants, one located in Ohio and one located in Indiana, into welded steel tubing used in the automotive, large truck and construction markets. In spite of problems this quarter, the overall picture for the AK Steel seems to be on the positive side. The World Steel Association recently announced it expects the consumption of steel to rise by 5.9% this year. As a result, AK Steel's earnings per share are expected to be much higher in the rest of the year. In the next quarter it is expected to rise to $0.43 and for the whole year to stand at $0.96. In spite of poor performance this quarter, AK Steel's shares rose 14% in the last three months, probably because of expected pick-up in the activity in the rest of the year. At the end of last week, its shares were trading at $16.07. Analysts' predictions have been very unreliable recently, however, at least in the case of AK Steel. In the last three quarters of 2010, analysts have constantly missed AK Steel's reported results by at least 20%. In the second quarter of last year, the market predictions were almost 250% off the actual earnings per share. As a result, investors will be hoping AK Steel can beat expected $0.01 loss per share.