The willingness of the steel mills to negotiate flat rolled steel prices with end users and service center customers remains high based on the results from the Steel Market Update flat rolled steel survey. The issue is weak order books (see lead time article in today’s issue) and the domestic steel mills are looking for […]
The energy markets, especially oil and natural gas, are major users of flat rolled steel and plate products. As oil prices have fallen the production of pipe & tube and related products for the energy segment of the economy have fallen significantly. This has had a major impact on hot rolled coil production and pricing. […]
With Nucor CEO John Ferriola commenting today about the surge in steel plate imports over the last two months into the United States, Steel Market Update thought we would do a piece showing plate imports over the last few years and how they compare to recent levels. The monthly average import rate of plate in […]
Nucor Corp. announced net earnings of $67.8 million. Consolidated net sales decreased 14 percent year over year to $4.4 billion in the first quarter 2015. Earnings were down 12 percent compared to fourth quarter 2014. Total tons shipped to outside customers were 5.6 million tons, down 7 percent from Q4 and 9 percent from Q1 […]
As much as the steel industry would like to see foreign steel imports shrinking so far in April, that is not the case. Based on steel import license data through Tuesday, April 23rd, imports are on pace to come close to repeating March’s 3.7 million tons. At this point in time Steel Market Update believes […]
March vehicle sales brought welcome new by bouncing back vigorously to 17.15 million units on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, up from 16.23 million units in February. The March 2015 sales pace was 4 percent higher than the March 2014 pace. Cars had the greatest growth from 7.2 million units in February to 7.7 in […]
The following is the Chicago Federal Reserve statement followed by our own graphical analysis. The CFNAI is an excellent reality check for much of the economic analysis that we routinely provide at Steel Market Update. An explanation of the index is provided at the end of this piece. This is normally an article reserved for […]
Steel Dynamics Inc. reported high levels of steel import and customer inventory reduced shipments for first quarter resulting in a 44 percent drop in consolidated operating income compared to fourth quarter. SDI adjusted net income was $40 million for first quarter 2015 with $2 billion in net sales. The adjusted income excludes $17 million in […]
US Steel announced another round of production adjustment cuts that affect the company’s tubular operations. Notice of potential layoffs were issued to 1,404 employees on Friday, April 17. The latest round of notifications impact 404 management employees in Houston and other U.S. Steel tubular operations, 579 employees at Lone Star Tubular, 166 at Offshore Operations […]
We have been receiving a number of inquiries regarding changing Executive level memberships and upgrading them to Premium level. This is something we can do for any company or individual at any point in time during the year. It does not have to wait until your membership is up for renewal. If you want to […]
The monthly value of the Federal Reserve Broad Index of the US dollar against our major trading partners is reported about one month in arrears. Through early March this index continued to strengthen and reached 94.686, after breaking 90 in December for the first time since July 2009. The monthly BI is a “Real” inflation […]
The spread between world hot rolled export pricing and that of the domestic average here in the United States continues to be reduced from what we were measuring a couple of months ago. This analysis is based on our review of world export prices and the hot rolled index produced by SMU earlier this week. […]
NLMK Group reports steel output was down 6 percent in first quarter 2015 to 3.87 million tonnes (4.27 million tons). The decrease was due to scheduled maintenance at NLMK USA and the Lipetsk plant. Group utilization rates were 96 percent for Q1. Sales grew by 3 percent quarter over quarter to 3.96 million tonnes (4.37 […]
SMU Service Center Apparent Excess The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) released U.S. steel distributor shipments and inventories earlier today. We have a separate article which goes into detail in both flat and long products in this newsletter. This article focuses on our flat rolled steel Service Center Inventory Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast for the month […]
On Tuesday, April 14, China announced it will terminate antidumping and countervailing duty tariffs on grain-oriented electrical steel exports from the U.S. U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rob Portman (R-OH), who have been leaders in pushing for fair trade practices, applauded the decision. “This announcement is great news for Ohio steel producers like AK […]
A little more than two weeks have passed since Steel Market Update adjusted our forward looking Price Momentum Indicator from “Lower” to “Neutral.” Looking back on the historical trend for flat rolled steel Price Momentum you have to go back a year before you would see our Price Momentum Indicator pointing toward “Higher” flat rolled […]
Based on the first two weeks of steel import license data collected by the US Department of Commerce, total steel imports coming into the U.S. during the month of April continue to trend well over 3.0 million tons. We are still early in the month and our opinion is the import number should be slightly […]
One of the questions asked during the flat rolled steel market analysis we conduct twice per month is regarding the spread between domestic and foreign steel pricing. When spreads are large, as they were for most of calendar year 2014, then you can expect a surge in imported steel. As the spread subsides the need […]
Another steel mill bites the bullet and lays off employees as a result of poor market conditions. Alton Steel laid off 88 union workers at its melt shop and bar mill for a period of at least three weeks or more. According to a union member in report by local news source The Telegraph, the […]
The following article is was provided to our Premium customers on Friday afternoon, and we felt it would be a good article to share with our Executive members as an example of what a Premium level membership has to offer. We also published Imports by Product, Port, and Country and our Market Survey Results to […]
The following article was released by ArcelorMittal this past week to the greater steel community. The article deals with the challenges that ArcelorMittal says are “eerily similar” to those seen in 1998 which resulted in the bankruptcy of several steel mills, including LTV and Bethlehem Steel. Steel Market Update has a separate article normally produced […]
Licensed data for March was updated on April 7th through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department. The SMU publishes several import reports ranging from this very early look using licensed data to the very detailed analysis of final volumes by district of entry and source nation which is available to our […]
This report compares domestic mill shipments and total supply to the market to enable a side by side comparison and the degree to which imports have absorbed demand. Sources are the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Department of Commerce with analysis by SMU. Table 1 shows both supply and mill shipments of sheet […]
Another steel mill bites the bullet and lays off employees as a result of poor market conditions. Alton Steel laid off 88 union workers at its melt shop and bar mill for a period of at least three weeks or more. According to a union member in report by local news source The Telegraph, the […]
During my conference call with Cowen & Company and their customers last week I mentioned that I thought we could see a domestic mill price increase by the middle of May. My reasoning is inventories should begin to drop at the service center level and many of the end users want to tie up steel […]
According to the latest data released from the US Department of Commerce and the American Iron and Steel Institute, apparent steel supply for the month of February 2015 is 8,968,831 net tons. Apparent steel supply is calculated by adding domestic steel shipments and finished US steel imports and subtracting total US steel exports. February supply […]
Vessels transporting iron ore on the Great Lakes are encountering heavy ice in the Whitefish Bay area. Breaking the ice has been challenging for US and Canadian Coast Guard vessels. Strong winds over the weekend pushed ice from Lake Superior to the bay, covering about 35 square miles. Broken ice plate 24-30 inches thick clogs […]
This week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our early April flat rolled steel market survey. Based on the results of our inquiries we learned that domestic mill lead times continue to be quite short and well below the lead times seen one year ago. However, when looking at last year’s lead times, we must remember […]
In the twelve months of 2014, scrap exports totaled 15,308,000 tonnes, down by 17.1 percent from the same period in 2013. In the first two months of this year exports were 2,026,675 for an annual rate of 12,161,050 tonnes. Figure 1 shows that the monthly average declined for three consecutive years, 2012 through 2014 and […]
Steel buyers in the March 2015 ISM Steel Buyers Survey were a bit more consensus about economic activity in the next six months. In February, respondents were evenly split on whether conditions would go up, remain the same or go down. In the March survey, 46.2 percent expect conditions to remain the same while 30.8 […]