Global manufacturing continues to expand at a slow and steady pace. The JP Morgan Global Manufacturing PMI registered 51.8 from 51.9 in February. Manufacturing growth has been sustained for twenty-eight consecutive months. “The March PMI surveys suggest that the global manufacturing sector continued to make steady progress, with rates of expansion in output and new […]
An explanation of the Key Indicators concept is given at the end of this piece for those readers who are unfamiliar with it. The total number of indicators considered in this analysis is currently 36. Please refer to Table 1 for the view of the present situation and the quantitative measure of trends. Readers should […]
Last week a number of steel mill CEO’s testified before the U.S. Congress about the flood of steel imports and the need to protect the domestic steel industry. Separate from the CEO’s testimony, former Nucur CEO called for quotas to be implemented against foreign steel which he considered to be unfairly traded. Steel Market Update […]
NLMK USA shipped 489,000 tonnes of flat rolled steel products in Q4 2014 compared to 534,000 tonnes in the previous quarter, a drop of 9 percent q/q. Revenue for fourth quarter was $405 million, down from $445 million in Q3. EBITDA for the quarter was $19 million compared to $36 million in Q3 and $30 […]
The American Institute for International Steel issued the following report on February 2015 steel imports into the United States. Imports, which declined in February compared to January, are 23 percent higher than at this time last year and one of the major reasons why service center inventories are taking so long to adjust. The higher […]
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the third estimate of Q4 2014 Annual Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts on Friday. The annualized growth rate in the third estimate of 4th quarter GDP was unchanged from the second estimate which was 2.2 percent but down from the first estimate which was 2.64 […]
ArcelorMittal may temporarily idle some of its operations at Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico’s largest steel producer and slab exporter, according to reports by El Diario and BN Americas. “ArcelorMittal Lázaro Cárdenas is considering a temporary idling of certain steel producing operations,” a company spokesman told BN Americas in an emailed statement. “However, we are still in […]
This will be an interesting week as we watch to see how the negotiations between the domestic steel mills and their suppliers end. Expectations are mixed. Late last week we received a note from one of the larger scrap companies in the U.S. They told us, “Generally speaking, obsolete scrap flows have remained tepid in […]
With the steel executives testifying before the U.S. Congress today about foreign steel imports we thought it might be interesting to ask Dan DiMicco former CEO of Nucor Steel about the subject. Mr. DiMicco responded to our request with the following: Where do I start???? First let me say this is Dan DiMicco responding not […]
Earlier today, Steel Market Update adjusted our SMU Price Momentum Indicator from “Lower” to “Neutral.” Since November 16, 2014 the SMU Price Momentum Indicator has been pointing toward “Lower” steel prices. Prior to November 16th we had a period of time where our Momentum Indicator vacillated between Neutral and Lower going back to May 2014. […]
US Steel announced Wednesday it would consolidate its North American Flat-Rolled operations and temporarily idle operations at Granite City, Ill. Layoffs at Granite City will be effective on or after May 28, 2015. Granite City is the primary supplier for US Steel Lone Star Tubular which was issued layoff notices in January due to the […]
First, before everyone goes completely crazy regarding the US Steel announcement to “idle” the Granite City Works steel plant, SMU has been told by Courtney Boone, US Steel media spokesperson, that the plant would not go down prior to May 28, 2015. A lot can happen (and will happen) in the industry prior to that […]
There is no joy in Mudville in the middle of March, the scrap market is dead and no mills are looking to add to their inventories. For that matter the dealers have very little to offer as the weather has yet to clear up north and the big move lower in scrap prices in February […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC), busheling scrap (BUS), iron ore and financial futures markets was written by Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunch Risk LLC and our Managing Price Risk I & II instructor. Here is how Andre saw trading over the past week: Financial Markets The S&P is in an interesting […]
The spread between world hot rolled export pricing and that of the domestic average here in the United States continues to be reduced from what we were measuring a couple of months ago. This analysis is based on our review of world export prices and the hot rolled index produced by SMU earlier this week. […]
Three steel industry executives met in Washington D.C. on Thursday at the Congressional Steel Caucus to discuss state of the US steel industry and the impact unfairly traded imports have had on jobs and manufacturing. Revisions to the “material injury” standards were proposed to add language that clearly defines indicators of injury and allows relief […]
The current downward cycle is getting a little “long in the tooth” (old) and there are signs that even with the short lead times and excessive inventories at the service centers the domestic steel mills are not chasing business but rather negotiating for specific pieces of business with known tonnages and want dates. The mills […]
This morning Steel Market Update (SMU) participated in the monthly galvanized steel conference call hosted by HARDI. The conference call is for those HARDI wholesalers who sell galvanized sheet and coil to the HVAC mechanical contractors around the United States and Canada. Since the last conference call held during the later days in February, galvanized […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released Preliminary Census data for February 2015 foreign steel imports into the United States. Based on the latest release imports for the month of February, 3,583,566 net tons were imported (note: the US DOC releases the data in metric tons and SMU converts to net tons for our readers). Foreign […]
March imports are trending toward another very large month. We expect that when the final numbers are released, the month will come in about 3.6 to 3.8 million net tons which would be in line with our 12 month moving average of 3.7 million net tons. Last March imports were 3.2 million net tons. Note […]
This month we will start with words from Armada Executive intelligence which sum up the present situation nicely: “Last week it was made abundantly clear just how sensitive the markets are to the discussions at the Fed. There was a perception that Janet Yelled was pushing an interest rate increase off to at least September. […]
Both these data points are reported in the Federal Reserve G17 data base. The IP index was reported as 105.8 for February a slight increase of 0.08 from January. The three month moving average (3MMA) was 105.87, down by 0.17 from January which was the highest value ever and the ninth straight month where the […]
The following is the Chicago Federal Reserve statement followed by our own graphical analysis. The CFNAI is an excellent reality check for much of the economic analysis that we routinely provide at Steel Market Update. An explanation of the index is provided at the end of this piece. This is normally an article reserved for […]
Unfairly traded imports are negatively impacting AK Steel earnings in the first quarter of 2015. AK Steel expects a net loss of $0.23 to $0.28 per diluted share in the first quarter due to low carbon steel shipment and spot prices as a result of “unexpectedly” high levels of imports. Shipments are expected to decrease […]
As we ended the last article about the possibility of Anti-Dumping (AD) or Countervailing Duty (CVD) trade cases against flat rolled steel (cold rolled, galvanized and possibly Galvalume) in Tuesday evening’s issue we presented a number of questions posed by one of our readers. He wanted to know: I have a timeline question for you […]
Nucor Corporation expects first quarter results to “decrease significantly” compared to fourth quarter and exceed first quarter 2014 levels only slightly. High levels of imports have lowered selling prices and squeezed margins. Nucor notes that total steel imports rose 38 percent in 2014 and account for 34 percent of the total domestic shipments last year. […]
Nucor Corporation expects first quarter results to “decrease significantly” compared to fourth quarter and exceed first quarter 2014 levels only slightly. High levels of imports have lowered selling prices and squeezed margins. Nucor notes that total steel imports rose 38 percent in 2014 and account for 34 percent of the total domestic shipments last year. […]
Not to toot our own horn too loudly, we came within a whisker of nailing both shipments and inventories in our last Service Center Inventory Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast. In our last forecast we indicated flat rolled shipments would be 2,253,000 tons and based on the MSCI data released earlier this week the actual number was […]
Steel Dynamics expects that a decline in steel shipments caused by inventory overhang, hesitant demand and margin compression will lower first quarter profitability. In the company’s first quarter guidance, SDI noted: “During the first quarter of 2015, two important industry developments occurred: – “Domestic steel product pricing declined to levels that are now globally competitive, […]
Any of you out there feeling like the beat of the anti-import drums are once again beating harder and harder. So, what happens if the Chinese steel mills decide to “voluntarily” reduce or allocate their export tonnage to the United States? First, would they try to allocate at existing tonnage levels (which are quite high) […]