Written by: Bradley Clark, Director of Steel Trading, Kataman Metals The HRC futures market has been exceptionally quiet over the past few weeks with almost no volume trading as the recent price hikes, uncertainty of pricing going forward and middling futures pricing has led most traders to sit on the sidelines awaiting the next price […]
SMU doesn’t normally publish obituaries. I found the one about Berthod Beitz former Chairman of Krupp Steel especially touching and important to acknowledge. For the younger generation the idea of death camps and the world at war must be quite foreign. Even those of us born after World War II have only faded memories of […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Participants in the July ISM Steel Buyers Survey reported lean inventories and lower than desired orders for July. Buyers reported tons on hand covered shipping levels for 2 months or less. Inventory levels were considered Right by 77.8 percent of those surveyed and Too High by 37.2 percent with plans to […]
Written by Sandy Williams The Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) has asked U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to protect domestic steel plate from an onslaught of imports from Europe. “We urge USTR to undertake a diplomatic initiative targeted at the European countries that are rapidly increasing their shipments of CTL plate and other products to the […]
Letter to the Editor: I would like to add to Peter Brebach’s comments regarding the recently filed dumping suits against nine countries and up front can agree that the majority of the nine countries will be found guilty of dumping [oil country tubular goods]. Since 1969 the domestic steel industry has filed more dumping complaints with […]
According to Preliminary Census Data, June imports into the United States were approximately 14 percent lower than what was reported for May 2013. The preliminary data has total imports at 2,442,082 net tons down from 2,838,293 tons in May. The June tonnage is below both the 3-month and 12-month moving averages. Compared to June 2012 […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Nucor is expecting shares to drop by half in the first quarter of 2013, falling to $0.20 to $0.25 per diluted share from $0.43 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012 and $0.45 per diluted share in first quarter 2012. Weak performance in sheet steel offset by improved profitability […]
The chart below is for prepainted flat rolled steel imports. What we like to do is to show the base bare substrate and then the prepainted item as separate line items. As with many of our reports, to take the “noise” out we show the 3-month and 12-month moving averages, the change compared to the […]
Written by: Peter Wright Rolled steel imports through February 2013. The Steel Import Licensing system is so predictive of the final numbers that it’s quite valid to incorporate licensed tonnage into a current report. This means that by mid month a detailed import report can run for the previous month. License data does not include […]
Written by: Sandy Williams This year Nucor plans to spend $280 million on its Louisiana DRI facility and approximately $260 million towards its natural gas related investments. Essar Steel Minnesota is in talks to build a joint venture DRI plant. Voestalpine and Northstar Bluescope Steel are both considering DRI facilities. Severstal just postponed a DRI […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Start up of the Esmark Yorkville cold-rolling plant is on hold waiting for “a less volatile steelmarket” according to Esmark. Esmark acquired the renamed Ohio Cold Rolling Company from defunct RG Steel along with a 50 percent interest in the nearby tin plate production plant Ohio Coatings Co. in October 2012. […]
Domestic mill shipments declined in January 2013 compared to the same month one year earlier. Shipments fell by 3.38 percent. Imports also declined in January 2013 versus January 2012 by 7 percent, led by a 22 percent drop in semi-finished (slabs, billets). Exports during the month of January were 14.64 percent lower than last year. […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce has released final January import data (Census Data) and Preliminary License data for the month of February 2013. January imports grew by 6 percent over the previous month. When looking at the data closer SMU notes – only two products (of those we follow closely) were significantly higher than the […]
SMU asked those taking this week’s steel survey if the latest price announcement stood a better chance of having at least some of the increase being collected than the one announced six weeks prior. We presented the percentages in our last issue of Steel Market Update (SMU 3/6) and now we would like to provide […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Iron ore had its biggest slide in seven weeks dropping 2.4 percent on Tuesday to $145.20 per dry metric ton (Fe 62) at the Chinese port of Tianjin (source: The Steel Index). Ore shipments out of Australia have been slowed by a series of seasonal hurricanes forcing sporadic port closures. Although […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Activity in the manufacturing sector continued to improve in February according the latest Institute for Supply Management Manufacturing Report on Business. The February PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) registered at 54.2, indicating growth in the manufacturing sector for the third consecutive month since its drop below the neutral point to 49.9 in […]
Falls Church, VA, March 1, 2013 – Steel imports increased 4.6 percent in January 2013 compared to December 2012 according to preliminary government data. “Import levels improved in January in a normal seasonal rebound from end of the year declines as many consumers and distributors delay purchases to January due to inventory tax costs at […]
Split on Increase, Lead Times, Sentiment for Sideways Pricing – Market has Little Direction Steel Market Update (SMU) continues to set a new record each week we hold our Price Momentum Indicator at Neutral. The longest previous record for a Neutral indication for market price direction was five weeks (back in late May/June 2011) for […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Reliance Steel reported an 18 percent drop in net income of $80.4 million in fourth quarter 2012. Net income for the year rose 17.4 percent year over year to 403.5 million. Sales of $1.89 billion for the fourth quarter were 7.1 percent lower than a year ago and down 8.1 percent […]
The following table shows bare and prepainted cold rolled, galvanized, electro-galvanized, Galvalume, bare aluminized and bare Terneplate imports for the month of December 2012. We show the comparison to November 2012 and the three-month moving average (3MMA) and twelve-month moving average (12MMA) with the change year-over-year (YOY).
Apparent steel supply for the month of December 2012 came in at 8,317,920 net tons. This represents a decrease of almost 2 percent compared to the previous December. We found imports rose by 19 percent (semi-finished – which are brought in by the domestic mills – rose by 39 percent) while exports dropped by 19 […]
“’Europe’s steel mills face obsolescence and steelmakers may quit the region if politicians continue to prevent restructuring and capacity cuts in the sector’ said Wolfgang Eder, the chief executive of Austrian specialty steelmaker Voestalpine and president of the European Steel Association, or Eurofer.” (Wall Street Journal) Eder’s comment comes on the heels of the announcement […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released final census data for the month of December and found that total steel imports were down 9 percent when compared to the previous month. Major drops were reported in hot dipped galvanized (HDG) which fell by 30 percent compared to November, cold rolled which dropped by 17 percent and […]
Written by: John Packard Steel Market Update did not move our Price Momentum Indicator out of Neutral where we have been “stuck” for the past 10 – now going on 11 weeks. The market lacks clear direction – or maybe a better way to view it is the market lacks personality. This is perhaps best […]
Even as prices “firm” a bit from where they were one week ago, our SMU Price Momentum Indicator remains stuck in Neutral for the 10th consecutive week due to the following factors. We always prefer to give the domestic mills an opportunity to sell their price increases into the marketplace, so we automatically move to […]
Dear Editor, Once again, both Nucor and US Steel in their quarterly earnings calls partially blamed imports for their less than stellar results, and frankly, this is getting old. For the record, it is NOT illegal to import steel into the United States. It might be illegal if those imports were dumped (meaning sold below […]
Written by: Sandy Williams The New Year began with promise for U.S. manufacturers. The ISM Manufacturing PMI registered 53.1 percent in January signaling expansion in the manufacturing sector for the second consecutive month and increasing 2.9 percent from December’s seasonally adjusted rate of 50.2. The overall economy rose for the 44th consecutive month according to […]
Steel Market Update likes to review the transcripts of the earnings conference calls between analysts and the steel mills to see what we can glean from the comments being made by the top executives at the mills. We found a number of items of interest in the U.S. Steel conference call. USS Running at 90% […]
Written by Sandy Williams United States Steel Corporation reported a net loss of $50 million for the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to net income of $44 million in the third quarter and a net loss of $211 million in fourth quarter 2011. Total earnings for the year 2012 showed a net loss of […]
On Thursday I attended the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS) West Coast Dinner in Long Beach, California. Many thanks to David Phelps, president of the AIIS and his West Coast team who did a great job with the dinner and the program. A couple of quick notes to share with our readers, Marcel Van […]