Nippon Steel annual profit jumps 70.5 percent on higher product prices

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp, Japan's biggest steelmaker, on Thursday posted a 70.5 percent jump in annual profit, led by healthy demand at home and higher prices of steel products, but it gave no forecast for the year just started.

Its recurring profit for the year to March 31 came to 297.54 billion yen ($2.72 billion), just shy of its own forecast of 300 billion yen and down from a mean estimate of 309.95 billion yen among 13 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

($1 = 109.3100 yen)

(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Tom Hogue)