Steel Mills

SDI Posts Record Quarter

October 21, 2014

Steel Dynamics third quarter net sales rose to $2.3 billion from $72 million in Q2 and $57 million in third quarter 2013. SDI shipped a record volume of steel in third quarter—1.9 million tons up from 1.58 million tons in Q3 2013 and 1.67 million tons in second quarter 2014. Production increased to 1.88 million tons compared to 1.7 million tons in Q2 and 1.6 million tons in Q3 2013.

“We are very pleased with our operational and financial performance,” said Chief Executive Officer, Mark Millett. “Our consolidated operating income increased 43 percent to $189 million for the third quarter 2014, as compared to the second quarter. During the third quarter, we achieved record volumes in fabrication and steel, even before including the results from our recent acquisition. Despite the continued elevated levels of steel imports into the U.S., the strength of underlying demand, coupled with our market diversification and customer focus supported our record shipments, and we remain optimistic heading toward the end of the year.”

SDI reported 175,000 tons of shipments came from the Columbus mill in the final weeks of the third quarter, 30,000 tons of which Severstal had already sold.

The Butler Indiana mill had third quarter shipments of 738,460 tons–299,000 tons of hot-rolled, 92,000 tons of HRPO, and 60,000 tons of cold-rolled. Hot-rolled galvanize totaled 120,000 tons, cold-rolled galvanize was 43,000 tons, painted products were 114,000 tons and Galvalume was 10,000 tons, for a total of 738,000. The Techs shipped 205,517 tons in the third quarter.

In the company conference call Millet highlighted the company’s success as a supplier to the rail industry. In a recent SMU article, it was noted that the rail industry plans to increase capital expenditures to expand the rail network.

“We believe domestic Rail consumption will continue to increase during the next three years to five years as both replacement and new rail are required. As suggested by Railroad Investment forecasts driven in large part by the U.S Energy Sector,” said Millet. “We plan to increase our Rail shipments in parallel with this growth and our total Rail customers that we’re committed to this market and we’ll supply up to 350,000 tons annually to meet their needs.”

When asked to comment on trade cases and the potential for a cold rolled case against China, Richard Teets, President and COO of Steel Operations, responded, “A number of our competitors, along with ourselves, have worked together through our attorneys to do the investigations both domestically and in the foreign countries to determine what the domestic pricings are of those countries that we believe are guilty of dumping and flooding our shores. But we don’t believe, along with our legal counsel, that the timing is correct at this moment for a successful case, but that may change as the markets change.”