AK Steel Updates Third Quarter Guidance

AK Steel AKS today said it is revising its outlook for the third quarter of 2010, which was originally issued with its second quarter 2010 earnings results on July 27, 2010. The company's revised third quarter outlook primarily reflects costs associated with the acceleration of planned maintenance work at its Ashland (KY) blast furnace, as well as higher raw material and operating costs than were expected at the time of its previous guidance. The company said it is now planning to take an 11-day maintenance outage on its blast furnace in Ashland, Kentucky, beginning approximately September 20, 2010. This outage was previously planned to occur in the first-half of 2011, but has been advanced due to furnace conditions. Further, the company now anticipates higher raw material and operating costs in the third quarter, as well as a modest increase in the costs associated with an environmental remediation project. The impact of these changes on the company's original guidance for the third quarter would result in an operating loss of approximately $20 per ton for the third quarter of 2010. The company's original guidance was for an operating profit of $15 per ton for the third quarter. Nearly half of the lower expected financial results for the third quarter are attributable to the acceleration of the Ashland blast furnace outage.