Since US mills began announcing a series of price hikes beginning in late June, early indications show that US sheet prices have hit bottom following months of decline, Nucor CEO John Ferriola said Thursday.
"It's still early in the game so I don't want to be overconfident, be we do feel cautiously optimistic that we've hit the bottom on pricing and on volumes," Ferriola said in a conference call with industry analysts. "We see our lead times are beginning to stretch out a little bit and whenever that starts to happens it encourages service centers to come back into the market."
The average mill lead time for hot-rolled was unchanged on week at 5.1 weeks Wednesday, according to S&P Global Platts data, however the stability week-to-week was a positive for mills after lead times rebounded from a low of under three weeks at the end of June. US mill lead times for HRC averaged under five weeks from the week of April 8 through the week of July 1.
Nucor announced its first $40/st price increase on sheet products June 25 when US HRC prices were $520.50/st, according to S&P Global Platts pricing data. A second $40/st increase on sheet products was announced by the mill July 9.
To date, it's too early to tell if the full $40/st from the second announced increase will stick, however, buying activity in the past week has picked up, Ferriola said. The daily Platts TSI US HRC assessment closed at $555.50/st Thursday.
"It's really too early to tell how much we will get of that $40, but the initial week looks encouraging. We're also encouraged by the fact that as a result of these increases, we've seen an increase in the volume of orders coming in for all three of our [sheet] products," he said.
Ferriola noted Nucor was seeing a pick up in sheet orders both from OEM and service centers customers.
Source: Platts |
