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Cliffs Natural Resources officially highlighted its massive 2014 sell-off on Monday, releasing the company’s fourth quarter and year-end results that show millions of dollars lost as it shuttered and sold large swathes of its holdings.
Cliffs recorded a net loss of $7.2 billion in 2014, or $47.29 per diluted share, thanks largely to selling U.S. coal mining operations at a loss and then declaring bankruptcy at its Bloom Lake Canadian iron ore operations.
Fourth-quarter 2014 consolidated revenues of $1.3 billion were down 15 percent from 2013. The company said the decline was driven by lower revenues from the Asia Pacific Iron Ore and Eastern Canadian Iron Ore segments hit hard by a 45 percent drop in the price of seaborne iron ore as a worldwide oversupply develops.
There was good news from the company’s U.S. iron ore operations, however, as the company moves toward becoming an all-U.S., all-iron ore business.
U.S. Iron Ore’s pellet sales volume in the fourth quarter of 2014 hit 7.8 million tons, a 26 percent increase when compared with 6.2 million tons sold in the fourth quarter of 2013. The increase was primarily driven by increased customer demand from Great Lakes steel mills. But the extra sales also were spurred by “catch up’’ efforts in the summer and fall after ice delayed the start of the 2014 shipping season on the Great Lakes.
The company sold 21.84 million tons of U.S. taconite iron ore in 2014, up from 21.29 million in 2013, although lower prices for ore results in a lower margin.
Cliffs said it expects to produce and sell about 22 million tons of U.S. iron ore in 2015, up just a bit from last year. The company said it expects no overseas sale of U.S. ore this year.
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