NORTH AMERICA HEADLINESNorth America
Cliffs Named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s 50 Top Performers List
Jun. 29, 2010 Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. has been listed ninth in Bloomberg Businessweek’s inaugural “50 Top Performers” list, which ranks U.S. corporations with the highest total returns for shareholders in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index over the past five years.
According to the magazine, Cliffs’ calculated return rate of 306.9% places it near the top of a list of companies that have thrived by “honing competitive edges through good times and bad.”
“Being ranked as one of the 50 top-performing companies is a testament to the dedication of our employees, who have successfully repositioned the company over the last five years, including a laudable response to 2009’s imposing economic challenges,” said Joseph A. Carrabba, Cliffs’ Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. “Cliffs consistently works to create value through every stage of the business cycle, and our view regarding the long-term outlook for steelmaking raw materials remains positive.”
The stocks in the list, which appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek’s June 21-28 issue, returned an aggregate 222.3% return from March 31, 2005, to March 31, 2010, vs. the S&P 500 index average return of 10% during the same period.
Cliffs Natural Resources, an international mining and natural resources company, is the largest producer of iron ore pellets in North America, a major supplier of direct-shipping lump and fines iron ore out of Australia and a significant producer of metallurgical coal.
The company is organized through three geographic business units in North America, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. The company’s North American business unit comprises six iron ore mines owned or managed in Michigan, Minnesota and Canada and two coking coal mining complexes located in West Virginia and Alabama. The Asia Pacific business unit comprises two iron ore mining complexes in Western Australia and a 45% economic interest in a coking and thermal coal mine in Queensland, Australia. The Latin American business unit includes a 30% interest in the Amapá Project, an iron ore project in the state of Amapá in Brazil.
Other projects under development include a biomass fuel production plant in Michigan and Ring of Fire chromite properties in Ontario, Canada. Over recent years, Cliffs has been executing a strategy designed to achieve scale in the mining industry and focused on serving the world's largest and fastest-growing steel markets.