Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF) continues to get hit as the price of iron ore has fallen 45% year to date, and hit $38 per ton earlier this month.
The Ohio-based company supplies iron-ore pellets to the North American steel industry, which has also been hurting due to low commodity prices. Shares of the company are down 77% for the year and trading around $1.60, despite a modest uptick on Tuesday.
In November, the company announced that it was idling its iron-ore pellet production at its Northshore Mining facility in response to low prices and pressure from steel being dumped from abroad. The decision came just a day after Moody's announced that it was placing the company under review for a possible downgrade. Since Cliffs Natural Resources cut production, the shares are down 32%.
"I'm beginning to feel like this portion of industrial America, that is, oil, natural gas, steel, iron, anything we make, it's almost like they're folding like the dotcoms," Jim Cramer said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Tuesday.
Cliffs Natural Resources was a target of Donald Drapkin's hedge fund, Casablanca Capital. Casablanca maintains a 4.7% stake in the company, which has come at a great cost. As of November 13F filings, Cliffs Natural Resources was the only holding in Casablanca's portfolio.
Casablanca was successful in getting Lourenco Goncalves named as Cliffs Natural Resources CEO, after Drapkin described the company's former management as "asleep at the switch" on CNBC in February 2014. Since then, it's only gone downhill for Casablanca -- and Cliffs Natural Resources -- as the company's stock has fallen 92.95% since Drapkin's comments.
"You don't go in because you want to lose money, you go in because you want to make money for shareholders," Drapkin said in an interview with broadcast news program, "Wall Street Week," in September.
At current iron-ore prices, it may be some time before that shareholder value is unlocked.
