Tata Steel is trading higher by 5% at Rs 474, bouncing back 10% from day’s low level of Rs 432, after the company’s managing director HM Nerurkar said that an improvement in operating performance, coupled with a number of new marketing initiatives, should increase profitability at the South East Asian operations.

The company expects the steel demand to improve on expectations of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) relaxing monetary policy to aid growth and investment.

Meanwhile, Dr Karl-Ulrich Köhler, MD & CEO of Tata Steel Europe, which reported a net loss of Rs 603 crore in December quarter, compared with a profit of Rs 1,000 crore said “The turnaround programme in our long products business is well on course for completion by the end of the financial year, as planned. Through our step up & save initiative we are accelerating cash conservation in expectation of muted but stable demand in our core markets in 2012."

Tata Steel posted a net loss of Rs 687 crore on a consolidated basis for the third quarter ended December 31, as against a profit of Rs 949 crore in the same period last year. The last time company posted a loss, Rs 2,720 crore, was in the second quarter of FY10.

A combined 13.82 million shares have already changed hands on the counter so far, as against 8.63 million shares that were traded daily in past ten trading days on the NSE and BSE.