Based on the results of this week’s SMU steel market survey, lead times have moved out slightly at the domestic steel mills compared to where they were during the middle of January. We are now seeing hot rolled lead times averaging 3.5 weeks, cold rolled and galvanized at just over 5 weeks and Galvalume at […]
Even as prices “firm” a bit from where they were one week ago, our SMU Price Momentum Indicator remains stuck in Neutral for the 10th consecutive week due to the following factors. We always prefer to give the domestic mills an opportunity to sell their price increases into the marketplace, so we automatically move to […]
The bottom end of our range exhibited some “tightening” over the past week – although not as much as one might expect in light of the size of the price increase announcements made by the domestic mills. Based on survey results the bottom end of the range for our benchmark hot rolled coil is no […]
Steel Market Update likes to review the transcripts of the earnings conference calls between analysts and the steel mills to see what we can glean from the comments being made by the top executives at the mills. We found a number of items of interest in the U.S. Steel conference call. USS Running at 90% […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Steel Dynamics doubled its fourth quarter earnings from last year. Net income was $60.57 in fourth quarter 2012 compared to $30.20 million in 2011, and $13 million in third quarter 2012. Results included a positive tax adjustment of $16 million. Steel shipments for the quarter dropped slightly from 1.464 million tons […]
As we made our rounds over the past few days we found a number of the smaller mills who had not yet announced price increases and were continuing to collect orders at the previous prices. We also found a few instances of larger mills continuing to collect prices at the lower end of our scale […]
Based on the most recent data released by the Department of Commerce projects 2012 total steel imports to be 33,347,611 net tons – this represents an increase of just shy 17 percent versus the 28,515,247 net tons imported into the U.S. during 2011. Galvanized tonnage was up by 36 percent, Galvalume by 22 percent, cold […]
December Imports Down 15% Imports dropped by 377,746 net tons compared to the prior month. On a day’s adjusted basis December imports were 15 percent lower than November. Based on preliminary license data January imports are projected to be approximately 2.9 million net tons – well above both the 3-month and 12-month moving average. Semi-finished […]
As was reported over the past week, Steel Market Update found a number of buyers of varying sizes able to purchase hot rolled coil below $600 in the spot market. We did not find every mill or every region participating in the erosion of the bottom end of our range. What we found is the […]
Based on the weighted results from our most recent steel survey which was conducted this past week, SMU found lead times slipping slightly on all flat rolled products followed by our company. Benchmark hot rolled average lead times declined to 3.38 weeks and are much shorter than the 4.76 weeks measured by the SMU survey […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to drift slightly lower as buyers reported a tighter range than what we had seen one week ago. The top end of the range for all of the items declined between $10 and $20 per ton this past week. The net result being our averages adjusted lower by $5 to […]
At the moment we have broken into two camps when it comes to hot rolled coil – the CRU and SteelBenchmarker (which did not report prices this past week) who both pegged their HRC prices in the mid-$630’s – and the rest of the indexes we follow on a regular basis and ourselves (SMU) who […]
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce released final census data for the month of November and preliminary census data for the month of December. Based on that data, SMU forecast 2012 imports will be 17 percent higher than what was imported one year earlier. A large portion of those tons were imported by domestic […]
Mill lead times shrunk on all but Galvalume products according to the results of our most recent SMU steel survey completed this past Friday. On a weighted average basis hot rolled lead times shrunk to 3.42 weeks, cold rolled to 5.25 weeks, galvanized to 5.33 weeks while Galvalume lengthened to 6.17 weeks. We provided the […]
Hot Rolled Coil: SMU Range is $600-$650 per ton ($30.00/cwt-$32.50/cwt) with an average of $625 per ton ($31.25/cwt) fob mill, east of the Rockies. Both the upper and lower end of our range dropped $10 per ton from levels measured one week ago. Our average dropped $10 per ton compared to one week ago. The […]
Based on total projected imports of 33,512,516 net tons for calendar year 2012, imports for this year will be at the highest level since the recession began. The last year imports exceeded what we are projecting based on US DOC license data through December, was 2006 when the U.S. received 45,273,023 net tons. Based on […]
Hot rolled coil average $655 per ton according to Steel Market Update (SMU) monthly average price assessments. SMU was $1 off the CRU ($656 per ton) monthly settlements against the CME HRC contract once all the numbers had been crunched. For those who are unaware, SMU publishes our indices on Tuesdays prior to the CRU […]