Steel Products Prices North America

SMU Price Ranges & Indices: Some Slippage

September 17, 2013

We noticed a little slippage in flat rolled steel prices over the past week. As one steel executive put it to SMU this afternoon, “Prices are in retreat – only at a snail’s pace.” One of our manufacturing sources told us that they had seen prices slip over the past two weeks, “We have seen quoted prices down about $10/ton over the last two weeks…There is also an increased willingness to discount freight and extras. Some mills are holding the price better than others. Outages at Severstal next month and some other supply constraints (SDI) will probably support prices in the short term.” Even with seeing slightly lower steel prices over the past two weeks our large manufacturing company told us their spot prices for hot rolled coil were in line with what we have been gathering elsewhere.

Here is how we see prices this week:

Hot Rolled Coil: SMU Range is $620-$650 per ton ($31.00/cwt- $32.50/cwt) with an average of $635 per ton ($31.75/cwt) fob mill, east of the Rockies. The lower end of our range decreased by $10 per ton compared to last week and the upper end decreased by $10 per ton as well. Our average is now $10 per ton lower compared to last week. As we reviewed our partially complete steel survey which began on Monday of this week, we found the majority of respondents in the $620-$640 range with $640 seemingly being the magic numbers. SMU has the trend for hot rolled is for prices to remain relatively stable over the next 30 days.

Hot Rolled Lead Times: 3-5 weeks.

Cold Rolled Coil: SMU Range is $720-$750 per ton ($36.00/cwt- $37.50/cwt) with an average of $735 per ton ($36.75/cwt) fob mill, east of the Rockies. The lower end of our range remained the same compared to last week while the upper end decreased by $10 per ton. Our average is now $5 lower compared to last week. The trend for cold rolled is for prices to remain relatively stable over the next 30 days.

Cold Rolled Lead Times: 5-8 weeks.

Galvanized Coil: SMU Base Price Range is $730-$750 per ton ($36.50/cwt- $37.50/cwt) with an average of $740 per ton ($37.00/cwt) fob mill, east of the Rockies. The lower end of our range increased by $10 per ton compared to last week while the upper end decreased by $20 per ton. Our average is now $5 lower compared to last week. Galvanized was mentioned by a number of buyers as being the weakest of the flat rolled products. Even so, we actually saw the lower end of our range improve to $36.50/cwt from $36.00/cwt. The trend for galvanized is for prices to remain relatively stable over the next 30 days.

Galvanized .060” G90 Benchmark: SMU Range is $790-$810 per ton with an average of $800 per ton.

Galvanized Lead Times: 3-8 weeks.

Galvalume Coil: SMU Base Price Range is $740-$780 per ton ($37.00/cwt- $39.00/cwt) with an average of $760 per ton ($38.00/cwt) fob mill, east of the Rockies. Both the lower and upper end of our range remained the same compared to last week. Our average is unchanged compared to last week. The trend for Galvalume is for prices to remain relatively stable over the next 30 days.

Galvalume .0142” AZ50, Grade 80 Benchmark: SMU Range is $1031-$1071 per ton with an average of $1051 per ton.

Galvalume Lead Times: 5-8 weeks.