СТРАТЕГИЧЕСКОЕ УПРАВЛЕНИЕ ФИНАНСОВОЙ УСТОЙЧИВОСТЬЮ МЕТАЛЛУРГИЧЕСКИХ КОМПАНИЙ: КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНЫЙ ПОДХОД

Abstract:
The article develops the theoretical and methodological foundations of strategic management of financial sustainability in metallurgical companies. The relevance of the study stems from the fact that sanctions pressure, volatility of commodity markets and the rising cost of borrowed financing create an environment in which traditional approaches to assessing financial sustainability based on individual groups of ratios lose their diagnostic value. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of strategic management of financial sustainability that combines short-term and long-term circuits. Based on a critical review of Russian and foreign studies, including the line of matrix typologies, the concept of a dual circuit of financial sustainability is proposed and a typology of four company types is built. The empirical verification was carried out on open data from the consolidated statements of the largest Russian metallurgical companies for 2024-2025 and on industry-average data of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. It is shown that in 2025 none of the three largest companies maintains its long-term circuit at a threshold calibrated to the industry-average level; two companies are classified as liquid but stagnating, and one as strategically vulnerable; sensitivity analysis showed that the classification of PAO MMK remains stable across the whole considered range of D-circuit thresholds (3-12%), whereas switching corridors exist for PAO NLMK (5-9%) and PAO Severstal (3-5%); this substantiates the explicit calibration of the threshold against industry-average data of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. The scientific novelty lies in the development of matrix typologies of financial sustainability with respect to open consolidated reporting data under sanctions instability. The practical significance of the study lies in a matrix of differentiated strategic priorities that supports a targeted selection of financial recovery measures depending on the identified type of financial state. Future research directions include verification of the proposed typology on an extended panel of companies using external criteria of classification quality and the development of a quantitative integral indicator of financial sustainability.