Steel Dynamics Inc. on Monday said earnings for its current quarter would come in at the low end of analysts’ expectations as margins have been hurt by steel imports remaining higher than anticipated.

The company expects to earn 20 cents to 24 cents in per-share profit, excluding severance costs and charges stemming from idling operations. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters have anticipated 24 cents in earnings per share. A year earlier, Steel Dynamics reported per-share profit of 31 cents.

Improved second-quarter shipments will be offset by unexpected metal margin compression, driven by steel imports remaining much higher than originally anticipated, the company said Monday.

U.S. steel companies, struggling with sluggish steel prices, earlier this month filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking punitive tariffs for alleged unfair pricing of imported steel from China, India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan.

Imports have “devastated pricing in the U.S. market, increased their share of the U.S. market by undercutting U.S. producers’ prices and caused injury to U.S. producers and their workers,” lawyers for the six steel makers have said.

A decision from ITC is expected by mid-July; the Department of Commerce will issue a preliminary ruling by the end of 2015, and final rulings by both agencies are due by mid-2016.

Shares of Steel Dynamics have risen about 6% in the past three months and were inactive premarket.