The American Institute for International Steel (AIIS) put out there monthly newsletter to their members today (Thursday) and they had an excellent article on the Conflict Minerals Act which has a potential to impact steel mills, trading companies, service centers and manufacturing companies (publically traded). They recommended reading what Metal Miner (www.agmetalminer.com) had on their […]
Our apologies to SSAB and our readers–the earnings for SSAB reported Sunday by SMU were in error. The corrected figures are as follows: Operating loss of 665 million SEK in Q4 of 2012 ($104 million) compared with a operating profit of 50 million SEK ($7.82 million) in Q4 of 2011 and for the whole year […]
Dear Editor, While not currently a subscriber I did receive your February 13th newsletter earlier this morning. I’ve been active in the steel industry out here on the west coast since 1974 and since you’ve invited comments I’d like to make a few. You note that a lack of service center support for mill increases […]
Written by: Sandy Williams General Motors nearly doubled its fourth quarter earnings while posting big losses in Europe. GM reported fourth quarter earnings of $898 million, up from $468 million in the same period in 2012 due in part to a variety of gains from special items. A number of one-time accounting gains and losses […]
Written by: Sandy Williams John Deere earnings set a record in the first quarter of 2013, topping out at $650 million with a spectacular rise in earnings per share of 27 percent. John Deere net sales of the worldwide equipment operations rose 11 percent in the first quarter of 2013 to $6.793 billion. John Deere […]
The following table shows bare and prepainted cold rolled, galvanized, electro-galvanized, Galvalume, bare aluminized and bare Terneplate imports for the month of December 2012. We show the comparison to November 2012 and the three-month moving average (3MMA) and twelve-month moving average (12MMA) with the change year-over-year (YOY).
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 fifth 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 […]
With scrap prices taking a bit of a tumble during the month of February – which did not lend a helping hand to the domestic mills who wished to raise prices – all eyes are now already focused on March. What will March bring for the industry? Will the month come in like a lion […]
Written by: John Packard & Sandy Williams “Clear preference for cash” ThyssenKrupp AG officials declined to talk about the Steel Americas sale during their 1st Quarter 2013 earnings conference call, but CFO Guido Kerkhoff said he can say that the company has a “clear preference for cash” and that the bidders understand that message. The […]
Written by: Brad Clark, Director of Steel Trading, Kataman Metals U.S. Midwest #1 Busheling Ferrous Scrap (AMM) Softens as Prices Drop 13.73 in February The physical market came in this week down $13.73 to $375.24 in line with expectations. Mill order book’s remain weak for the most part outside of auto industry demand (the major […]
Written by: Brad Clark, Director of Steel Trading, Kataman Metals It appears that the market finally capitulated this week with the physical market taking a turn south as recent price hikes seem to have failed. After a couple of weeks with consumers, distributors, producers of coils eyeing each other up to see who will blink […]
Our Steel 101 workshop for Columbus, Mississippi is sold out. We will advise when our next workshop is available for registration. We hope to put on a total of four workshops this year. We will leave the program on our website so you can learn more about it but just note our registration is full. […]
Written by Sandy Williams Essar Steel Minnesota LLC announced it will supply 3.5 million metric tonnes of standard and fluxed iron ore pellets annually to ArcelorMittal North American operations. The agreement is for a ten year period and will commence during the second half of Essar’s fiscal year ending March 31, 2014. Essar Steel Minnesota, […]
SMU noticed the USDA boosted its forecast for domestic supplies of corn this past week. The USDA estimated stockpiles will total 632 million bushels before this year’s harvest. This is a 5 percent increase over the forecast provided by the USDA last month. We wanted to know how this would affect the steel industry and […]
Written by: Sandy Williams A blast at the Vorkutinskaya coal mine, owned by Russian steelmaker Severstal, killed 18 people on Monday and left nine missing. There were 259 men in the mine when a methane build-up ignited. Most of the miners were able to escape on their own while others were rescued from the site. […]
Written by: Sandy Williams SMU has noticed a rise in zinc prices on in the spot market over the past six months. Zinc is used as the anti-corrosion coating for galvanized steel. Over the past six months, Zinc spot pricing on the LME hit a low around $0.82 per pound at the end of October […]
Apparent steel supply for the month of December 2012 came in at 8,317,920 net tons. This represents a decrease of almost 2 percent compared to the previous December. We found imports rose by 19 percent (semi-finished – which are brought in by the domestic mills – rose by 39 percent) while exports dropped by 19 […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending February 9, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,822,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents an increase of 1.2 percent compared to the week earlier but is 9.2 percent lower […]
Falls Church, VA, February 12, 2013 – Steel exports continued to fall in December, declining another 2.9 percent compared to November after declining nearly 16 percent in November compared to October, according to government data. “Steel exports softened at the end of 2012 due to economic uncertainty in many international markets, very much mirroring the […]
In one corner we have ArcelorMittal scratching and clawing and trying to hold on to at least a portion of their price increase. One week ago they were trying to collect $650. As the week progressed the number slipped a bit. This week…well, it slipped some more. In the other corner we have a group […]
Written by: John Packard “The key to the steel industry is you have to put steel in the hands of people who want to make money with it.” Quote attributed to Service Center Executive. Earlier this week Steel Market Update (SMU) wrote an article about the break-down of the pricing cycle as service centers were […]
We have room for one (1) more person in our next Steel 101 workshop which will be held in the Columbus, Mississippi area (Starkville, MS) and include a tour of the Severstal Columbus steel mill. We will close registration on Wednesday of this week. You will note our new banner ad at the top of […]
Written by: Sandy Williams ThyssenKrupp announced it will reduce its European workforce by 2000 employees with a possible 1800 dismissals to follow. The reduction is part of its “Best in Class—reloaded” (BiC) optimization program aimed at saving $670 million by the next fiscal year and improving competitiveness in the European market. The program includes restructuring […]
“’Europe’s steel mills face obsolescence and steelmakers may quit the region if politicians continue to prevent restructuring and capacity cuts in the sector’ said Wolfgang Eder, the chief executive of Austrian specialty steelmaker Voestalpine and president of the European Steel Association, or Eurofer.” (Wall Street Journal) Eder’s comment comes on the heels of the announcement […]
According to Baker Hughes data from February 8th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,759 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 1,759 count is a decrease of 230 rigs. Canadian rigs increased by […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Swedish steelmaker SSAB reported EBIT for its American division of $17.6 million in the fourth quarter, down 73 percent from $64 million in 2011. Earnings for the full year were reported at $243 million, down from $327 million in 2011. Demand in the fourth quarter was in line with the third […]
This week, the SMU Fair Value HRC (hot rolled coil) Model has spot HRC pricing above Fair Value for the first week after three consecutive weeks of being below the Fair Value price. This is due to the SMU average spot HRC index increasing $10 to $620 per ton and scrap inputs slightly decreasing $5 […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released final census data for the month of December and found that total steel imports were down 9 percent when compared to the previous month. Major drops were reported in hot dipped galvanized (HDG) which fell by 30 percent compared to November, cold rolled which dropped by 17 percent and […]
Written by: John Packard Steel Market Update did not move our Price Momentum Indicator out of Neutral where we have been “stuck” for the past 10 – now going on 11 weeks. The market lacks clear direction – or maybe a better way to view it is the market lacks personality. This is perhaps best […]
Prices crept up on most of the indexes watched by Steel Market Update on a regular basis – even the straggler, Steel Orbis, raised their indices last week. CRU and Steel Orbis are at the low end of the range for Benchmark hot rolled with SMU and SteelBenchmarker somewhere in the middle and Platts at […]