Cliffs Natural Resources Skyrocketing, Up 6% (CLF)

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc

is skyrocketing in after hours on a better than expected earnings report. Cliffs Natural Resources reported earnings of $2.82 per share, versus expectations of $2.17 per share. Revenues came in a little lighter than expected, coming in at $1.4 billion versus expectations of $1.43 billion. Joseph A. Carrabba, Cliffs' chairman, president and chief executive officer, said, "Our impressive year-over-year earnings momentum is directly attributable to the strategic efforts to increase our business' exposure to seaborne pricing over the past five years. I expect this trend to continue as we execute on our previously announced acquisition of Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines Limited

, which, upon closing, will further diversify Cliffs' customer base and lever the Company's sales to seaborne pricing." The Company anticipates global steel production will continue to grow in 2011, primarily driven by emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil. Based on these dynamics, Cliffs continues to have an optimistic outlook for its businesses. Subsequent to year end, Cliffs announced it had entered into a definitive arrangement agreement with Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines Limited to acquire all of its shares outstanding in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $4.9 billion Canadian (including net debt), which was unanimously approved by Consolidated Thompson's board of directors. In addition, Cliffs entered into a support agreement with Consolidated Thompson's largest shareholder, Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Corporation of China, along with the directors and certain senior officers of Consolidated Thompson. This transaction is expected to close in early second quarter of 2011, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of various closing conditions. After closing this transaction, Cliffs anticipates including this business in subsequent market outlooks. In after hours, shares of Cliffs were up $6.07 to $98.95‎, a gain of 6.54%‎.