BlueScope Steel raised its annual dividends to a record high as its net profit jumped, and said it plans to match increased returns to investors in 2027.
The steelmaker Monday declared a final dividend of 65 Australian cents, equivalent to 46 U.S. cents, a share for its fiscal year ended June 30, more than double the 30 Australian cents it paid a year earlier. The board also approved a special dividend of 70 Australian cents a share, converting a previously announced A$310 million share buyback that didn't eventuate.
Including earlier interim and special dividends, BlueScope will pay investors a record A$3.00 a share in 2026, as planned, the company said.
BlueScope intends to deliver A$3.00 per share--roughly A$1.3 billion in total--in shareholder returns again in 2027, comprising a A$1.30 per share annual ordinary dividend and A$1.70 per share via a combination of share buybacks, special dividends or other methods, it said.
The steelmaker earlier this year pledged higher shareholder returns, citing the end of an investment program that it expects to bolster cash flow. It outlined plans for increased returns as it rebuffed a takeover bid by Australian industrial conglomerate SGH and U.S. steelmaker Steel Dynamics.
"With the major investment period ramping down, we're ramping up returns to shareholders with a significant increase in calendar year '26 planned to be repeated in calendar year '27," Chief Executive Tania Archibald told reporters Monday.
Archibald said there has been "no engagement" with SGH and Steel Dynamics since their last takeover offer in February. "We're very focused on what we can control, which is the existing portfolio," she said.
BlueScope said it made a net profit of A$802.0 million in the year through June. That was up from A$83.8 million in the prior 12 months, when its bottom line was weighed by a A$439 million impairment against its U.S. coated-products business.
Profits were bolstered by stronger U.S. steel spreads--the difference between the price of steel products and the raw materials needed to make them--which more than offset low spreads in Asia. U.S. spreads have widened steadily on higher import tariffs, which President Trump last year doubled to 50%.
BlueScope's assets include the North Star steel mill in Ohio, where the steelmaker has been expanding capacity. The company is also Australia's largest steel manufacturer and has operations in more than a dozen countries.
BlueScope intends to keep its North American operations--which Steel Dynamics and SGH argued weren't strategically compatible with its other businesses--as "a flagship part of the portfolio," Archibald said. "It's very important to us" and is "performing well," she said.
BlueScope reported annual underlying earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT, of A$1.27 billion, up 73% from a year earlier. The company, which in February reported first-half underlying Ebit of A$557.5 million, had forecast a second-half result of between A$620 million and A$700 million.
It said it expects underlying EBIT of between A$860 million and A$960 million in the first half of fiscal 2027. Shares were down by 0.6% by midday in Sydney.
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