Final Thoughts
Final thoughts
Written by Michael Cowden
June 18, 2024
Nearly 800 people have registered to attend Steel Summit on Aug. 26-28 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta.
You can find more information about the event and the agenda here. Below are a few highlights.
Get ready for Steel Summit!
We’ll have Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of the Sage Policy Group, back to talk about the economy in his always entertaining style. I liked the Tom Cruise theme last year. What will the theme be this time?
Dr. Alan Beaulieu, president and principal of ITR economics, will talk about longer-term trends. I’m curious to learn whether the slowdown we’re seeing now is seasonal, perhaps amplified by election-year uncertainty – and whether the Roaring ’20s will resume in 2025.
Speaking of the election, CNN’s Michael Smerconish will be returning as a keynote speaker to address news and politics from as non-partisan perspective as is possible in our partisan times.
Finally, I’m really looking forward to the first fireside chat of the event with Barry Schneider, president and COO of Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI).
Schneider was generous to stop by to give a talk to SMU’s Steel 101 class last week before our tour of SDI Butler. He walked through everything the class would see – from hot rolling through to the paint line. And he provided a good overview of SDI’s operations in general.
Fun fact: SDI makes 1/4-mile-long rail sections out of its mill in nearby Columbia City, Ind. (Why that long? Because fewer welds improve safety.) And it uses purpose-built rail cars (and carefully selected routes) to move steel that behaves almost like spaghetti at that length.
We also got a sneak peak at samples of SDI’s new digital printing capabilities. It turns out that you can do a lot more than galvanizing and painting a coil.
Take a look at this cabin. It’s made from wood, right? Think again – that’s steel, with a very convincing finish. (Score a ‘W’ for steel in the battle vs. wood.)
Schneider also talked to the group about decarbonization. Not from a high-level, net-zero 2099 kind of way. But in terms of what mills are doing now to decarbonize. Because there’s a lot more to it than converting BFs to EAFs. EAFs are doing a lot to reduce their already low carbon footprint too.
I’m looking forward to picking up that discussion at Steel Summit.
Hotel options
Speaking of Summit, I’ve heard from some of you that hotels are expensive and hard to come by. There might not be many rooms left in our blocks at the GICC campus.
That said, the GICC is connected to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport. It’s the busiest airport in the world. And there is no shortage of hotels within five minutes of the venue.
Here are a few of them:
- Tru by Hilton Atlanta Airport College Park – Walking distance
- Home2 Suites by Hilton Atlanta Airport College Park – Walking distance
- Atlanta Airport Marriott – 6 minutes by car
- The Westin Atlanta Airport – 4 minutes by car
- Radisson Hotel Atlanta Airport – 4 minutes by car
Community Chat
The next SMU Community Chat will be Wednesday, June 26, at 11 am ET (10 am CT) with Gary Stein, CEO of Triple-S Steel.
We’ll talk about the market for structurals and trends in construction. We’ll in addition touch on trade policy, government regulation – and maybe even a lesson or two from steel history.
The webinar is free to attend. You can register here.
In the meantime, thanks to all of you for your continued support of SMU!
Michael Cowden
Read more from Michael CowdenLatest in Final Thoughts
Final thoughts
It’s been a slow start to the week as far as news goes, something you’d expect ahead of a shortened Independence Day week. That said, it’s not as if transactions have completely ground to a halt. (Prices continue to drift lower.) And while news might be slow, rumors of low-priced deals, price hikes, and trade cases seem to have filled that void.
Final thoughts
Domestic plate prices have been on a historic run since they began surging in January 2021. Tags reached an all-time high of $1,940 per short ton (st) in May 2022, though they have mostly trended lower over the past two years.
Final thoughts
It was great to have Gary Stein, CEO of Triple-S Steel, join SMU for a Community Chat earlier this week. (Btw, you can find a record of the webinar here.) We covered a lot of ground. From Andrew Carnegie and the Johnstown Flood to the current steel market and the state of domestic manufacturing broadly speaking. One thing that stuck with me was how unevenly construction spending appears to be on “green” initiatives and other key items funded by infrastructure spending, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act.
Final thoughts
US sheet prices continue to fall, with SMU’s average hot-rolled (HR) coil price now at $670 per short ton (st). Prices for cold-rolled and coated products are now in the mid/high $900s/st. As I noted in my last Final thoughts, the consensus among our readers is that prices will bottom out in July. And that makes intuitive sense. Lead times in mid/late July should be stretching into the typically busier fall months. The question then is where prices bottom.
Final thoughts
Many of our contacts remain bearish about the very short-term direction of steel prices. But a consensus seems to be forming, according to our latest survey results, that a bottom will occur in July. Consensus is also that hot-rolled (HR) coil prices won't fall below $600 per short ton (st).