Olympic remains acquisitive despite Q2 earnings slide

Olympic Steel’s earnings fell in the second quarter amid an “unprecedented” environment in the metals industry. However, the company is still mulling future acquisitions.

The Cleveland-based service center logged net income of $5.2 million in Q2’25, down 32% from $7.7 million a year earlier. Net sales fell 6% to $496.5 million in the same comparison.

CEO Richard Marabito said in an earnings call on Friday the company “saw significant buy-ahead activity by our customers late in the first quarter as they reacted to the initial steel and aluminum tariffs and the potential for reciprocal tariffs.”

“As a result,” he said, “there was some sequential volume pullback in the second quarter.”

Olympics sold 214,894 short tons (st) in its carbon flat products segment in Q2’25, off 6% from a year earlier. Tons sold Increased 1% to 32,149 st in its specialty metals flat products segment over the same period. (Tons sold were not available for its tubular and pipe products segment.)

Regarding industry conditions, President and COO Andrew Greiff said on the call, “We continue to navigate an unprecedented environment for the metals industry.”

He also reiterated Olympic’s “robust” cap-ex plan for 2025 that includes $35 million of spending, primarily on organic growth opportunities. (For a list of those, click here.)

Outlook, M&A

“With a strong balance sheet and more than $300 million of borrowing availability, we are in an excellent financial position to make additional accretive acquisitions,” Marabito said.

On the M&A front, Marabito pointed out that Olympic has been “highly successful” and has completed eight acquisitions in the last seven years.

“The integration of our most recent acquisition, Metal Works (purchased in 2024), has gone seamlessly and their results have been accretive to earnings,” he said.

But looking ahead, Marabito said, “we expect the environment will remain challenging.”

Still, he sees a few positive emerging trends like the “resolution of reciprocal tariffs and the new tax legislation that reinforce our optimism for the longer-term outlook for the steel industry, and especially for Olympic Steel.”

Meanwhile, Greiff had an upbeat outlook regarding the reshoring trend in the US.

“Olympic Steel is well positioned to capitalize on the trend to increase US manufacturing in the months and years to come,” he said. “We are a resilient organization with the right strategy to lead us into the future, drive our growth, and help us deliver profitable results under all market conditions.”

As far as what direction he sees flat-roll pricing heading, Greiff said, “I think you’re going to see some stability for the second half of the year.”