Algoma Steel has been living through the most disruptive year in its modern history, and the second-quarter print is the first one that actually shows what the company looks like on the other side. The blast furnace that ran the old business is gone - permanently halted on January 18, 2026 after a 50% U.S. Section 232 tariff made its historical cross-border economics untenable. What is left, after a full quarter of pure electric-arc-furnace (EAF) production, is a smaller, Canada-centric, plate-first steelmaker with a cleaner cost structure, a defense and infrastructure angle the tariff did not touch, and a path back to a normalized earnings profile by the fourth quarter. The numbers, once the one-time items are stripped, say exactly that.
Quarter two consolidated revenue fell to $192.0 million (C$267.5 million) from $423.4 million (C$589.7 million) a year earlier - a 54.6% drop that is mostly the lower shipment base, not pricing weakness, since average net sales realization per ton rose 20.2% to C$1,361. Net loss was $68.9 million (C$96.0 million), a smaller loss than the $79.4 million (C$110.6 million) the year-ago quarter posted, and adjusted EBITDA - the metric Algoma and its lender base actually look at - flipped to a positive $9.9 million (C$13.8 million) from a $23.3 million (C$32.4 million) loss a year ago. The year-ago adjusted EBITDA figure included zero capacity-utilization charges; the current quarter includes $39.3 million (C$54.7 million) of that add-back, which management says should fall to zero by the fourth quarter as the second EAF unit ramps. Strip the $32.3 million (C$45.0 million) final insurance settlement and a $13.5 million (C$18.8 million) foreign exchange gain, and the quarter still prints an operating loss; on a clean run-rate basis, the company is essentially at breakeven on the underlying business at the midpoint of a ramp.
The trade environment is still the central problem. The 50% U.S. Section 232 tariff remains in effect, direct tariff costs ran $13.4 million (C$18.7 million) for the quarter, and shipments to the United States have fallen to 23% of total steel shipments, from 54% a year ago and a historical 45-55% range. Algoma's strategic response - concentrating on discrete plate (where it is Canada's only producer), accepting lower volumes, and rebuilding the cost base around EAF - is the entire story, and the second quarter is the first one in which every line of the strategy is observable in the numbers. Plate volumes hit a record for the second consecutive quarter; the EAF unit two is mechanically nearing completion with first steel expected in the third quarter; the capacity-utilization drag is declining on schedule; and the company ended with about $313.8 million (C$437 million) of total available liquidity against a $40.6 million (C$56.6 million) reduction in cash through the half.
At a reference price of $4.46 (August 13, 2026), Algoma trades at roughly $471 million of market cap and a 52-week range of $3.19 to $5.80 - off roughly 23% from the June 1 high, well off the post-EAF optimism peak, and roughly 40% above the late-2025 trough that priced in the blast-furnace shutdown. The stock is priced as a turnaround that is partly through and partly still in front of the market: a successful third-quarter commissioning of EAF unit two, a fourth-quarter elimination of the capacity-utilization add-back, and a continued ramp of plate production are the load-bearing facts that would close the gap between today's price and the June peak. Conversely, a delayed second EAF startup, a renewed leg down in Canadian plate pricing, or a fresh Section 232 escalation could pull the stock back toward the autumn 2025 low. The frame is operational, not financial; the report's monitoring section is the dated milestones that have to land.