The Pittsburgh-based company, which owns and operates both Minntac and Keetac iron ore operations on the Iron Range and has a stake in Hibbing Taconite, brought in $299 million in operating revenue in the third quarter, including a $160 million profit from its flat rolled steel operations

The steelmaker now has $3.5 billion in liquidity, including $1.7 billion in cash.

U.S. Steel reported a third-quarter profit of 92 cents a share, easily topping analysts’ predictions of about 71 cents, on revenue of $3.25 billion, beating expectations for $3.06 billion. The company forecasts it will earn $1.70 a share in 2017, five cents better than analysts’ guess of $1.65.

The company announced a dividend of five cents per share payable Dec. 8 to stockholders of record at the close of business Nov. 10.

In a conference call with industry analysts, company officials said they continued to be optimistic that the federal government would further crack down on “egregious” amounts of illegally imported, under-cost steel being dumped into the U.S. from foreign steel producers. The company also said it was advancing a new generation of galvanized steel for automakers to fend off further encroachment by aluminium into auto and truck parts.

The American Iron and Steel Institute reported this week that domestic steel production so far in 2017 is at nearly 75 million tons, up 3.8 percent from 2016 at this time. Last week’s steel production was up 5.1 percent over the same week in 2016 and up a half-percent from the previous week.

The vast majority of Minnesota’s taconite iron ore goes to domestic steel producers, namely large blast furnaces, which makes steel production the driving force behind iron ore production.

The World Steel Association reported this week that global steel output rose by 5.6 percent internationally in September compared to September 2016. The 66 steel-producing countries monitored by the World Steel Association produced 141.4 million tons of steel in September, almost half of which was made in China.