JFE, which competes with South Korea's POSCO, China's Baosteel and Japan's Nippon Steel, said its recurring profit, which is before tax and excludes extraordinary items, came to 165.8 billion yen ($2.01 billion).

A consensus estimate in a poll of 20 analysts in Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S for the 2010/11 profit was 172.02 billion yen.

A quake-related extraordinary loss cut net profit to 58.6 billion yen, although that was above the 45.66 billion yen booked a year before.

Japanese steelmakers were largely unscathed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but automakers, their biggest clients, have been forced to cut output after the disaster devastated their parts supply chains and triggered an ongoing nuclear crisis.

Shares in JFE have fallen 23 percent this year, compared with a 2 percent gain in POSCO and a 14 percent jump in Baosteel.