I appreciate all the kind comments we have been receiving over the past few weeks. It appears the addition of Sandy Williams and Peter Wright are net positives for Steel Market Update and I am pleased with the work both of them are doing for SMU. I received the following email from a large Midwest […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Nucor is expecting shares to drop by half in the first quarter of 2013, falling to $0.20 to $0.25 per diluted share from $0.43 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012 and $0.45 per diluted share in first quarter 2012. Weak performance in sheet steel offset by improved profitability […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Dr. Ulrich Lehner will be elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board of ThyssenKrupp Ag at a special meeting on March 19. Shareholders and employee representatives of the Supervisory Board have agreed though separate discussions to support Lehner, an internal candidate, for chairman. Lehner has been a member of the Supervisory Board […]
The chart below is for prepainted flat rolled steel imports. What we like to do is to show the base bare substrate and then the prepainted item as separate line items. As with many of our reports, to take the “noise” out we show the 3-month and 12-month moving averages, the change compared to the […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released ferrous scrap export data a little earlier this week. Total exports of scrap in January 2013 were 1,532,498 metric tons (1,689,288 net tons) to all countries. This is a little less than December shipments but above the January 2012 total. Below is a chart of the top 10 countries […]
Utilizing a trailing average hot rolled coil (HRC) price, the SMU Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S. remained below zero percent this week for the ninth week after eight consecutive weeks of positive momentum readings. MoMo is based upon the current hot rolled coil price weighed against the previous 12 week […]
Written by: Peter Wright Rolled steel imports through February 2013. The Steel Import Licensing system is so predictive of the final numbers that it’s quite valid to incorporate licensed tonnage into a current report. This means that by mid month a detailed import report can run for the previous month. License data does not include […]
Written by: Peter Wright Producer price indexes, (PPI), of sheet steel and competing materials. Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts out its series of producer price indexes, for thousands of goods and materials. The latest release on Thursday reported February results. Some of the PPI are helpful in monitoring the competitive price […]
Written by: Peter Wright Rolled steel exports in January increased 11.6 percent from December but were down by 193,000 tons from January 2012. The table below summarizes export steel trade by product with trend comparisons. Percentage changes are all on a three month moving average basis to reduce the noise in the data. Total exports […]
The following article is from one of our close trading sources located in Asia. This person is actively trading iron ore and ferrous scrap into China and is also trading steel out of China into Europe. He is able to provide us a view of the Asian market not normally seen by outsiders. Here is […]
Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk LLC The S&P 500 market today was higher still up to 1563 on the index. As I mentioned our long awaited target was 1542, but as the all time high was 1572 it was hard to imagine that the market would just turn back and correct being only 30 points from […]
Our SMU Price Momentum Indicator continues to be at Neutral and has been for 14 weeks. We do not yet see enough momentum to cause prices to rise or fall quickly. The market appears to be in a slightly over-supplied basis and demand – at the moment – is flat. Not dead by any means, […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending March 9, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,828,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents a decrease of 1.6 percent compared to the week earlier and is 7.8 percent lower […]
We had a couple of readers ask how our graph would look if we used the CRU hot rolled price assessments versus our own. As you can see by the updated graph there can be some variations between CRU and SMU HRC price assessments but, essentially we follow the same track. The blue line is […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Severstal has suspended plans to build a DRI facility in Trinidad & Tobago, citing a drop in profits and weak global demand. The proposed $600 million facility would have supplied DRI for the Severstal Columbus electric arc furnace. The company also canceled a planned investment of $5 billion with India owned […]
Written by: Sandy Williams This year Nucor plans to spend $280 million on its Louisiana DRI facility and approximately $260 million towards its natural gas related investments. Essar Steel Minnesota is in talks to build a joint venture DRI plant. Voestalpine and Northstar Bluescope Steel are both considering DRI facilities. Severstal just postponed a DRI […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Start up of the Esmark Yorkville cold-rolling plant is on hold waiting for “a less volatile steelmarket” according to Esmark. Esmark acquired the renamed Ohio Cold Rolling Company from defunct RG Steel along with a 50 percent interest in the nearby tin plate production plant Ohio Coatings Co. in October 2012. […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Steel buyers plan to shed excess inventory but are cautiously optimistic that business conditions are improving, according to the February ISM Steel Buyers Survey. More inventory was on hand with most buyers (71.4 percent) holding enough to cover shipping levels for 1-2 months. Compared to inventory levels a year ago, tons […]
Domestic mill shipments declined in January 2013 compared to the same month one year earlier. Shipments fell by 3.38 percent. Imports also declined in January 2013 versus January 2012 by 7 percent, led by a 22 percent drop in semi-finished (slabs, billets). Exports during the month of January were 14.64 percent lower than last year. […]
Written by: Peter Wright Sheet steel shipments in January were 4,343,000 tons, an increase of 322,000 tons over December’s volume. These figures are shipments to domestic locations plus exports based on the AISI AIS10 and Commerce Department trade reports. The following table breaks the total down into individual products and measures the growth and contraction […]
The domestic mills are trying to collect increases – some are a little more adamant than others – but there does appear to be an effort. Lead times continue to be relatively short for this time of year. Demand levels are inconsistent with a number of service centers reporting slower shipments than anticipated for the […]
A note to those attending the SBB/Platts North American Steel Conference in Chicago this week – take a moment to find Andre Marshall and Jack Marshall as well as Bradley Clark. Andre and Bradley take turns writing articles for Steel Market Update about the hot rolled, ferrous scrap, iron ore and billet futures markets. Andre […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Dr. Gerhard Cromme is resigning as Chairman of the ThyssenKrupp Supervisory Board effective March 31. Cromme, 70, has held the post for 12 of his 27 years with ThyssenKrupp. The resignation has been called for by shareholders angry over the Board’s investment disaster with Steel Americas. “I want to support a […]
According to Baker Hughes data from March 8th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,752 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This number represents a decrease of 5 rigs from last week. Compared to last year the 1,752 count is a decrease of 221 rigs. Canadian rigs decreased by […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce has released final January import data (Census Data) and Preliminary License data for the month of February 2013. January imports grew by 6 percent over the previous month. When looking at the data closer SMU notes – only two products (of those we follow closely) were significantly higher than the […]
This week, the SMU Fair Value HRC (hot rolled coil) Model has spot HRC pricing below Fair Value for the fourth consecutive week after rising above the Fair Value price in the week of February 8th. This is due to the SMU average spot HRC index increasing $5 per ton last week to $605 per […]
With the exception of the CRU, all of the other indexes followed by Steel Market Update showed a change in the price direction on all of the flat rolled products followed by SMU. Steel Orbis and Platts both had items increase by as much as $20 per ton where SMU and CRU were a bit […]
Written by: Peter Wright Net job creation in January exceeded expectations with a headline value of 236,000. Built into this number is data that can validate, (or not) other statistics of interest to steel producers and processors. The big picture is 1,966,000 jobs have been created in the last 12 months and we are tracking […]
Based on the results from this past week’s steel survey, demand remains relatively stable with 70 percent of our respondents (all companies) reporting demand as “remaining the same.” The number of companies reporting demand as “improving” dropped from the low to mid 20 percent range down to 15 percent. Those reporting demand as “declining” increased […]
Batting average is around .500 – Half Stick, Half Don’t Remember the good old days when the domestic steel industry would announce price increases based on the flow of business – when order flows increased to a point where mill books were strained and lead times became extended and industry prices moved higher? The “new […]