Final Thoughts

July 1, 2018

Good evening from another sunny and warm day in London. Diana and I have been here since Wednesday morning of last week. We spent two full days at the headquarters of the CRU Group and another two and a half days sightseeing around London as this is our first trip to England.

London Eye 3 Having spent a couple of days in New York City prior to coming over to London, the differences between the two cities are enormous, at least in our opinion. New York, especially Manhattan, is about tall skyscrapers and busy streets. We were in Times Square, which has to be about as busy as it gets in NYC.

Here in London, we are in the Bloomsbury section of the city, which is close to the British Museum and about a 30-minute walk to the Thames. In this area, the buildings don’t go over 10 stories high and most are quite old and majestic.

As I stated up front, we spent two full days at the HQ of the CRU Group where we met with a number of the company managers and teammates connected with the steel team, commodities and conferences. We discussed ways CRU could help us immediately, and we discussed how to execute on some of the ideas I have been working on.

Just like last week when I visited the Pittsburgh offices of CRU, I am extremely impressed with the talent and dedication of the entire group. Our SMU Steel Summit Conference attendees will be exposed to some of that talent as the CRU Group will be active participants in this year’s conference at my invitation (not because they bought us). I will have more about the parts they will play in our conference in the coming days.

London 7.1.2018 We leave at 11 a.m. London time (+5 hours ahead of Eastern time) on Monday and will be back in our offices to collect messages on Tuesday of this week. However, the company will be closed on Tuesday as we get ready for the Fourth of July holiday here in the United States. SMU will also be closed on Wednesday, July 4, and will reopen on Thursday, July 5. We will return to our normal schedule on Thursday and will produce our flat rolled and steel plate indices on that date, as well.

We will begin a new survey on Monday morning and will run it through the afternoon of Thursday, July 6. If you receive an invitation to participate, please take a moment to answer the first question, which will be at the bottom of the invitation email, and that will take you to the rest of the survey.

A note about our SMU family, which did indeed grow by one over the weekend. We want to welcome little Molly Anne Linton, daughter of Brett and Tara Linton. Molly is their first child. Perhaps the Fourth of July holiday will help ease the transition from being able to get sleep to those early sleepless nights. Brett will be off for a few days and we will advise when he returns full time.

We have had heavy bookings for the SMU Steel Summit Conference and we are very close to hitting the magic 700 number. We still have 56 days to go before the conference begins and we remain confident we will be close to 800 executives from across the United States, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere around the world. Our conference is known for the number of “decision-makers” that are in one place at one time. We are also known for the quality and diversity of our programs. This year will be no exception. We will have a number of pricing and economic forecasts coming from ITR Economics, CRU Group, IHS Markit, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and others. For more information about what companies are attending and how to register, please go to: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/events/steel-summit

As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, President & CEO