Service Centers Apparent Flat Rolled Inventory Deficit at 632,000 Tons

Last week, while we were in New York City for various steel conferences, the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) published steel inventory and steel shipment data for the month of May. Based on this information and a special analysis of the data by Steel Market Update we produce our SMU Apparent Excess or Deficit of the U.S. steel service center flat rolled steel inventories. This is normally a product we reserve for our Premium Level members but we thought our Executive Level members would also find this analysis of interest.

We have seen service center shipments exceeding expectations for the months of March, April and May. Shipments were up 8.1 percent in March, 11.2 percent in April and 7.6 percent during the month of May. At the conclusion of the month of May our Apparent Deficit (service center inventory deficit) had grown from -251,000 tons at the end of April to -632,000 tons. Our original forecast was -482,000 tons but we added an inventory adjustment of 200,000 tons to the final inventories which accounts for the difference in our forecast and where our proprietary calculation concluded inventories to be at the end of May.