Rourkela: Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) declared its performance results for the 3rd quarter of Financial Year 2019-20 (Q3 FY’20) on Saturday. During the quarter, the Company reported a 5% growth in its topline over CPLY. Despite the reduction in prices, SAIL has been able to achieve higher revenue through its continual push towards higher volumes which saw production (3.9 MT) and sales (4.1 MT) grow by 3% and 26% over CPLY respectively. However, the reduction in prices, which has hurt the financial performance of all major domestic steel producers during the quarter, impacted the profitability of SAIL as well with the Company posting a net loss of Rs 429.62 crore in Q3 FY’20.

Shri Anil Kumar Chaudhary, Chairman, SAIL commented that, “The quarter had been quite challenging for the entire industry in terms of subdued realisations thereby impacting the financial performance of all major producers. However, utilising this as an opportunity, we have accelerated our efforts towards stabilizing the production from the new mills and continuously improving process efficiencies. The Company is enriching its product basket with more focus on cost minimization to improve its bottom-line.”

He further added, “Despite lower steel prices amidst stiff competition during the third quarter, we could achieve significant growth in sales and saleable steel production. The recent improvement in the market conditions combined with the efforts towards cost reduction, we are hopeful of doing better in the 4th quarter”.

SAIL has made good ground in the 3rd quarter towards improvement in techno-economic parameters viz., BF Productivity, Coke Rate, CDI Usage, Specific Energy Consumption and production through Concast Route which improved by 12.4%, 5.3%, 40%, 2.4% and 8.5% respectively over the previous quarter.