This article was written just prior to the AK Steel announcement of a $20 per ton price increase which we received after 5 PM this afternoon. Steel Market Update reported in a recent issue (SMU Oct. 23rd) recently that this is the time of the year that the domestic steel mills traditionally move to stem […]
As expected, the Russian hot rolled tonnage won’t be missed for very long as Brazil, Turkey and other countries look to fill the void. The upside for buyers is the replacement mills produce a superior product to what was coming in from Russia. At the moment we are being advised by current Russian buyers that […]
The American Institute for International Steel (AISI) says the increase in imports this year is a sign of a healthy economy. Increased imports indicate increased demand and thriving businesses. The press release from AIIS follows: Falls Church, Va., October 27, 2014 – Steel imports continued their upward trend in September, increasing 5.2 percent over their […]
This is good. There is a debate going on within the industry regarding the need for a price increase and whether the customers (tail) are wagging the dog (mill). One buyers ask SMU, “Knowing their history of lacking price discipline…taking advantage of their fear and uncertainty of not filling mill and talking the market down […]
Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co reported record sales for third quarter of $2.71 billion on shipments of 1.5 million tons. Not only did the company have good results to report, the Reliance executives had good commentary to offer in their third quarter conference call. Reliance noted that their purchase of imported steel has increased from […]
On Thursday of this past week Nucor announced their earnings and conducted their quarterly earnings conference call with analysts. SMU has highlighted a number of subjects touched on during the conference call. The following information (minus the headers) was taken directly from The Street transcript of the call: Potential for Light Flat Rolled Trade Cases […]
Total September steel imports were just shy 3.9 million net tons according to the Preliminary Census numbers just released by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Total steel imports were up 5.2 percent over August data, and up 38.0 percent year over year. Semi-finished imports (mostly slabs) were up 6.3 percent month over month and 47.3 […]
MID-SHIP Group reports that the two biggest factors impacting the dry cargo freight market right now are U.S. and South American agricultural products and Chinese imports and exports. Expectations for strong exports of agricultural products are high but not much has hit the export market yet. Iron ore imports into China have slowly started to […]
Steel buyers and sellers continue to be optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful in the current market conditions. However, there are some signs of strain growing, either due to seasonal pressures or margin squeezes, that may be giving pause to some within the industry. Even so, the results from the mid-October flat rolled […]
The following article comes from one of our contributing writers, Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk, LLC. Andre is a well known trader/broker in the hot rolled coil (HRC) and other commodities futures markets. He is also our instructor for the SMU Managing Price Risk I and II workshop series. Tonight Andre speaks to the financial […]
Nucor beat guidance forecasts with earnings of $245 million for the third quarter of 2014, up from $147 million in both Q2 2013 and Q3 2013. Consolidated net sales increased 8 percent to $5.70 billion. Strong third quarter earnings were attributed to improved performance in sheet steel, structural, bar, and plate steel that was partially […]
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 […]
Steel Dynamics admitted in their conference call with analysts earlier today, that the timing is not right for a trade case against cold rolled and coated steels (the question asked was about Chinese the answer did not reference any specific country). We thought our readers would be interested in the complete dialogue between two of […]
Everyone is aware of the high level of flat rolled imports in 2014 – especially cold rolled and coated products. So, where does 2014 rank on a historical basis? It is on pace to be the third highest year on record. We have 8 months of actual import data on the books. August year-to-date flat […]
The following is our October analysis of the flat rolled and OCTG imports based on license data through October 21, 2014. As we have mentioned many times, license data is not exact and many times can lead one to over or under project final steel import numbers. We have seen license data for the first […]
On Friday, October 16, 2014, the U.S. Department of Commerce terminated the Russian Hot Rolled Suspension Agreement. The agreement, which goes back to 1990 with numerous revisions over the years, covers all carbon flat rolled shipments out of Russia on the following ASTM numbers: A36 (plate), A568, A569, A572, A607 and A715. A few of […]
Figure 1 shows historical gas and oil prices since January 2000. The daily spot price of West Texas Intermediate fell below $100 in August and by October 14th was down to $81.72, the latest daily figure available from the Energy Information Administration, (EIA.) Brent closed at $86.36 on the same day. The EIA has calculated […]
US pipe producers filed dumping and countervailing duty petitions on Line Pipe against producers in Korea and Turkey, alleging dumping margins of 16 percent against Turkey and from 58 percent to 221 percent against Korea (the alleged CVD margins are not known or not published at this time). This comes relatively shortly after the trade case […]
Light vehicle sales in the US declined in September to 16.4 million units from the blistering 17.5 million rate in August, both on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis. The spread between light trucks and autos increased to one million units in favor of light trucks. The third quarter pace was Ta very strong 16.8 million […]
Besides working on flat rolled steel pricing for most of the week, I have also been interviewing companies by email and over the phone to learn more about demand and how demand is holding up as we get deeper into 4th Quarter 2014. This becomes an even more important topic when considering rising inventories at […]
SMU was reading a blog post put up by Metal Miner this morning regarding the consolidation of the steel industry. The main premise of the guest article from James May of Steel-Insight out of Canada, was 81 percent of the hot rolled production in the United States and Canada is controlled by four companies: ArcelorMittal, […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is changing the way we look at the import license data. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the steel import license data can only provide an idea as to how imports are shaping up for the current month. The licenses received have been tending to surge at the beginning of […]
It was nice to see that US Steel was able to get a contract with their USW Local 1005 at Hamilton Works in Canada. Their contract was set to expire tomorrow (October 15th). For our Premium level members, we should have the Imports by Product, Port and Country for August on our website by sometime […]
Steel Market Update recently published an article about the beginning of the 2015 non-automotive flat rolled steel price negotiations between end users, service centers and the domestic steel mills. We continue to gather information regarding the status and tone of the negotiations and we are learning that 2015 will be much different than what transpired […]
The following article was produced by SMU contributing writer Peter Wright for our Premium level members. However, we felt that the current strengthening trend of the U.S. dollar is important for all of our readers to understand as it is impacting both commodity and steel prices and will continue to do so in the future. […]
A new steel mill for Ohio, that has been in planning since 2005, is getting closer to reality but in a revised version. New Steel International hoped to build a mini mill at Franklin Furnace in Scioto Country but it has agreed to downsize to a pig iron plant and a 300 megawatt cogeneration facility. […]
We are in a very interesting market as many factors are influencing domestic scrap and steel prices. We discuss currency issues in tonight’s issue as the appreciating dollar means less competitive exports out of the United States but it also makes foreign steel imports more attractive to buyers. We have falling iron ore (which is […]
Following the post-recession recovery, shipments of hot rolled steel from US mills to domestic locations have been trending in a range for three years. Shipments of hot dipped galvanized sheet and strip declined strongly in Q2 through Q4 2012 and have climbed slightly in 2014. Cold rolled shipments have shown little direction for almost two […]
Licensed data for September was updated on October 3rd through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department. The SMU publishes several import reports ranging from this very early look using licensed data to the very detailed analysis of final volumes by district of entry and source nation which is published in our […]
Apparent steel supply for August was 10,252,449 net tons, down slightly from July which was the largest tonnage month since the beginning of the Great Recession. Apparent steel supply is calcualted by adding domestic shipments and finished US imports and subtracting total US exports. Note that our Premium member analysis breaks down apparent steel supply […]