(Bloomberg) — Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. piled on to the bad news for the steel industry Friday, saying that demand remained weaker than expected at the end of the year.
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The biggest culprit was the ongoing chip shortages in the automotive industry that prevented Cliffs’ car customers from meeting demand in the fourth quarter of the year. That dented earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which in October Chief Executive Lourenco Goncalves told analysts would be $5.5 billion for 2021. The Cleveland-based iron and steel maker reported Friday that full-year Ebitda was actually $5.26 billion.
“During the third quarter of last year we realized that our automotive clients would not be able to resolve their supply-chain issues in the fourth quarter, and therefore demand pull from the sector would be weak,” Goncalves said in a statement. “As such, we elected not to chase weak demand, and instead accelerated maintenance forward to the fourth quarter at several of our steel production and finishing facilities.”
The revelation follows a raft of downbeat news in the steel sector, which has seen benchmark prices tumble more than 40% since hitting an all-time high of $1,945 per ton back in August. Signs of cracks in the automotive market, a massive consumer of steel in the U.S., began to surface in the Fall. The head of the largest Canadian steelmaker last month called the North American market a “falling knife” with excess supplies, rising inventories and shrinking demand.
Goncalves remained upbeat about the outlook for the market this year, telling analysts during a conference call that Cliffs is already seeing deliveries to automotive clients improve and that he expects the chip shortage to ebb in 2022. He also said car companies will need more steel in 2022 versus 2021 and that selling prices will increase, too.
Cliffs’ shares fell 6.3% at 1:12 p.m. in New York trading and are down 10% this year.
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