Japan's Nippon Steel profits to fall short - Nikkei

TOKYO, March 2 (Reuters) - Japan's Nippon Steel Corp (5401.T), the world's second-biggest steelmaker, will likely fall short of its pretax profit forecast for the financial year to March because of rising iron scrap and shipping costs, the Nikkei financial daily said on Sunday.

The company had forecast a rise of 0.4 percent in pretax profit to 600 billion yen ($5.8 billion) for fiscal 2007/2008, but now expects the figure to be about 580-590 billion yen, compared with 597.6 billion yen the previous year.

Nippon Steel's group sales rose in the nine months to December, but as the company raised production it was forced to use more scrap iron, the price of which has been climbing due to increased demand from China and other countries, the paper said.

Japan's three other big steelmakers, JFE Holdings Inc (5411.T), Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd (5405.T) and Kobe Steel Ltd (5406.T) have already said they expect a decline in group pretax profit for the current financial year, the paper said. (Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Jan Dahinten)