The supply and demand balance in the high-grade product business continues to be tight.

We’ve made a big step, but I don’t think this means we can relax our guard.

The three firms’ alliance has been quite fruitful… We’ve decided to strengthen the partnership so that our interests will not be damaged in the event of a hostile bid emerging for one of us.

Surging delivery prices of our steel products helped us more than offset the adverse impact of rising procurement costs.

We had originally aimed to complete the latest inventory adjustments for common-grade steel by the end of March, but we now think we need to extend de-stocking efforts in the first quarter (to June).

Our cost structure is solid, and demand for high-quality sheet steel is good. We’re in the process of breaking out of the industry’s usual boom and bust cycle.