Research on the Evaluation of Competitiveness of Steel Industry Enterprises

The steel industry, as a fundamental industry in the organic development framework of China's economy, has been facing the long-standing problems of production exceeding consumption, high asset liability ratio, severe product homogenization competition, and high pollution and carbon emissions in the production process in recent times. At the same time, due to the impact of the sluggish demand caused by the COVID-19, the rapid rise in the cost of raw materials such as iron ore, and the gradual disappearance of a series of policy dividends such as supply side reform, the financial situation of steel enterprises is becoming more and more pessimistic. How to cope with the increasing financial risks and gain competitive advantages through strengthening financial competitiveness in the fierce market competition has become a major issue that China's steel enterprises urgently need to solve. This article selects steel industry enterprises as the research object for analysis. By reviewing relevant literature on enterprise competitiveness, the relevant concepts of enterprise competitiveness are extracted, and the research results and evaluation system are organized. Based on factor analysis, 16 targeted indicators are selected based on scale, efficiency, growth, operational capacity, debt paying capacity, and research and development capacity. An analysis model is constructed and analysis conclusions are drawn. In the analysis results, problems are identified regarding the poor competitiveness of steel industry enterprises. The following research results were obtained: 1) The overall competitiveness score of enterprises in the industry is not high, all less than 1. Among them, operational capability has the greatest impact on the competitiveness of steel industry enterprises, followed by scale, debt paying ability, efficiency, research and development ability, and growth. 2) The worst scoring indicators among the six enterprise competitiveness indicators are the scale indicator and the growth indicator. There is a significant gap in industry scale, with 12 companies scoring positive in the scale factor, accounting for 34.29% of the industry; The scale factor score of 23 enterprises is negative, with an industry proportion of 65.71%. In addition, there are growth indicators, with 12 companies in the industry having positive growth factor scores and 23 companies having negative growth factor scores, indicating a significant head effect on overall growth capacity.