Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
August 11, 2017
I was advised late on Friday afternoon that we should expect a Nucor price increase early next week. With scrap prices firming $10 to $30 per ton our expectation is for the increase to be $25-$30 per ton. Then the question will be will the industry support another increase after tepid (at best) support for the last increase made in July. On July 19, Nucor advised their flat rolled customers of their intention to take prices up by $25 per ton. The other mills followed with similar increase announcements except NLMK USA, which asked for $40 per ton (and UPI on the West Coast asked for $50 per ton).
SMU will begin our mid-August flat rolled steel market trends analysis on Monday, Aug. 14, at 8 AM ET. If you receive an “invitation to participate” please take a moment to click on the button contained in the invitation, which will take you to our questionnaire. Thank you in advance for your participation and feedback.
The following steel mills are registered to attend this year’s SMU Steel Summit Conference at the end of this month: ArcelorMittal Mexico, ArcelorMittal Dofasco, ArcelorMittal/Nippon Sumitomo Calvert, Ternium USA, Ternium Mexico, NLMK USA, Nucor, Nucor Mexico, Nucor Canada, Kandil Steel (Egypt), California Steel Industries, AK Steel, CSN USA, North Star BlueScope, Steel Dynamics Inc., The Techs, U.S. Steel, Worthington Industries, USS/POSCO, Big River Steel, SSAB Americas, Algoma, AHMSA, Stelco. Besides these mills, also attending will be many international trading companies with affiliations with steel mills such as Tata, ThyssenKrupp, Uttam, Severstal and many Japanese companies (many represent Wheeling Nisshin).
If your supplier is not listed, you are welcome to suggest to them that they may want to attend. If you are unsure if your supplier is registered and you are already registered, you can use the SMU Events App to search for their company or the individual’s name.
Just two weeks to go before the start of our 7th SMU Steel Summit Conference. We are working hard to make sure this year’s conference is the most entertaining and educational event yet. We have a great group of speakers, a new look and a record number of manufacturing and steel executives already registered to attend.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final thoughts
What's the tea in the steel industry this week? Here's the latest SMU gossip column! Just kidding... kind of. Yes, some of the comments we receive in our weekly flat-rolled market steel buyers' survey are honestly too much to put into print. Some make us laugh. Some make us cringe. Some are cryptic. Most are serious. We appreciate them all. Below are some highlights from our survey results this week. Some of the comments that we can share with you are also included, in italics, in the buyers' own words, with minimal editing on our part.
Final thoughts
Last week we wrote about a brief lull in price movement, labeling it a period of wait and see. It did, in fact, turn out to be pretty brief. This week... things are little bit different. Perhaps right now we are more in a period of "hope and pray" or "Here we go, hold on to your hats."
Final thoughts
Unless you've been under a rock, you know by know that Nucor's published HR price for this week is $760 per short ton, down $65/st from the company’s $825/st a week ago. I could use more colorful words. But I think it’s safe to say that most of the market was not expecting this. For starters, US sheet mills never announce price decreases. (OK, not never. It has come to my attention that Severstal North America rescinded a price increase back on Feb. 14, 2012. And it caused quite the ruckus.)
Final thoughts
Is it just me, or does it seem like the summer doldrums might have arrived a little early? I could be wrong there. It’s possible we could see a jump in prices should buyers need to step back into the market to restock. I’ll be curious to see what service center inventories are when we update those figures on May 15. In the meantime, just about everyone we survey thinks HR prices have peaked or soon will. (See slide 17 in the April 26 survey.) Lead times have flattened out. And some of you tell me that you’re starting to see signs of them pulling back. (We’ll know more when we update our lead time data on Thursday.)
Final thoughts
Everybody has a plan… until they’ve dealt with volatility in the HRC market. While Mike Tyson’s original quote was about getting punched in the mouth, it’s unlikely the ex-champ has gone many pricing rounds with hot-rolled coil.