Final Thoughts

U.S. Steel announced a major $1.2 billion investment in new thin-slab casting technology, a new rolling mill and a co-gen power plant at its Mon Valley Works complex. This investment is not adding new steelmaking capacity to USS Mon Valley, which is rated at 2.9 million net tons. In a note to her clients, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Timna Tanners referenced her SteelMageddon ™ view, which calls for a wholesale destruction in steel prices about the time this USS investment is scheduled to come online. USS has their earnings conference call on Friday and SMU will be interested to hear what the company has to say and how they respond to analysts’ questions. We will have an article about what we learned on the conference call in Sunday evening’s issue of SMU. Note: Timna Tanners will be a speaker at the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference as we tackle the subject of new mill capacities and what the future will look like.

Speaking of our conference, the numbers have surged over the past 24 hours and we are well over 400 registrations for the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference. There are 115 days to go before the start of the conference. It is time to get the troops rounded up and register them for the Aug. 26-28, 2019, conference at the Georgia International Convention Center. Come join us!