The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) released their service center shipment and inventory data for the month of October 2013. Total steel shipments (all products) were reported to be 3,791,600 tons. October, which had 23 shipping days compared to September with 20 days, had a daily shipping rate of 164,900 tons down from September’s 169,000 […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) asked those distributors participating in our twice monthly steel market survey to advise us how many months of flat rolled steel they have on hand. We do not pretend to possess the data base of the MSCI and we defer to their data base – especially in the case of the […]
SSAB Americas had sales of SEK 3,639 million ($575 million) in the third quarter of 2013 on shipments of 628 thousand tonnes (692,239 tons). Niche products accounted for 166 thousand tonnes (182,980 tons) or 26 percent of total shipments. In comparison, shipments were 16 percent higher year over year and 9 percent higher quarterly. Sales […]
Reliance Steel & Aluminum increased sales 18.9 percent to $2.44 billion in the third quarter 2013 from $2.06 billion in third quarter 2012. Tons sold were up 31.3 percent year-over-year to 1.45 billion tons. Net income was $95.1 million, down 3.1 percent from $98.1 million in the third quarter of 2012 and up 17.4 percent from […]
Buyers are telling Steel Market Update (SMU) that there have been some spot price offers which were held through the end of this past week. Most, however, are informing us that those mills who publicly announced new pricing are asking for increases and holding the line. We don’t doubt that there could be some orders placed […]
Flat rolled steel service centers held 2.17 months of inventory on their floors, according to the results from our latest steel market survey completed on Thursday of last week. This is essentially unchanged from the 2.15 months measured at the beginning of the month and in line with the MSCI data reported at the end […]
According to just released Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) data, total steel inventories at the distributors as of the end of July were 7,642,600 tons. This is 12.2 percent below the 8,953,900 tons held by service centers at the end of July 2012. The daily shipment rate dropped to 157,500 tons per day (22 day […]
Based on the results from our steel survey conducted this past week, service center inventories dropped to 2.09 months and have been declining over the past couple of months. Steel Market Update does not weigh larger service center results any differently than smaller service centers. We defer to the MSCI data as being more complete. […]
Based on the results of our latest SMU steel market survey, service center flat rolled inventories (as of this week) dropped from 2.37/2.33 in January and early February to 2.19 months. We did hear from service centers during the survey process of their continued focus on lowering inventories from these levels. SMU considers large, medium […]
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 […]
Based on our survey results from this past week, SMU found service center inventories have declined slightly from where they were at the beginning of January. Each service center is treated equally in our survey – we do not weigh the survey due to size. As of last week our average was 2.29 months worth […]