By Neetha Mahadevan 
 

FRANKFURT--German steel maker ThyssenKrupp AG (TKA.XE) expects to get a better handle on costs than planned in the current fiscal year ending September, with costs expected to fall by at least one billion euros, Chief Financial Offer Guido Kerkhoff said in an interview with German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung on Saturday.

So far, the company had a savings target of EUR850 million for the fiscal year. Mr. Kerkhoff said the savings program will continue to pay off and help further improve the operating result. "This can then also go far beyond a consolidated EBIT [earnings before interest and tax] of 2 billion euros," which is ThyssenKrupp's medium-term target, Mr. Kerkhoff said.

He didn't specify if this guidance can already be achieved in the beginning of the next fiscal year. However, the company still expects to achieve operating earnings at the upper end of the targeted EUR1.6 billion to EUR1.7 billion for this fiscal year.

Cost savings play an important role for ThyssenKrupp, where Chief Executive Heinrich Hiesinger is overhauling the company's inflexible and disjointed business units to make it more profitable in the long term. In the third-quarter ended June, the company reported net profit increased by nearly five times from the same period last year, driven largely by the company's cost-cutting and restructuring measures.

 

Write to Neetha Mahadevan at Neetha.Mahadevan@wsj.com

 

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 05, 2015 05:41 ET (09:41 GMT)

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