Based on reported import licenses, US flat products imports increased 6% from 432,000 short tons in January to 456,000 tons in February. This can be compared to 548,000 tons of flat products imports in February 2009.
Hot rolled imports showed the highest import volume gain by rising 20,000 tons in February while cut plate had the highest percentage gain by rising 49% to reach imports of 17,000 tons. Cold rolled imports dropped by 18% to 62,000 tons and hot dip galvanized imports showed a marginal decline.
It’s too early in the month to accurately forecast full-month March imports, but I will update the spreadsheet below with the newest March 16th data next week.
Tagged as:
cold roll,
Flat Products,
forecast,
hot dip galvanized,
hot roll,
imports,
plate,
USA
This morning Ternium released financial results for 2009. The press release can be found here. As has been the case for several years, Ternium continued to be among the top performers tracked on the Nerds of Steel earnings spreadsheet. For the full year of 2009, the company achieved average EBITDA per ton of $100. This is quite an accomplishment given the difficult environment the industry faced last year. Perhaps most important for the company’s cash flow generation, full year shipments fell only 15% from 2008. This compares to declines of 25-40% for companies with their primary production facilities located in the US.
Tagged as:
EBITDA,
financial results,
operating income
At least that’s the headline from worldsteel which published world crude steel production data for January today. Of course that’s a rise of 25% comparing January 2010 to January 2009. The press release is here and you can mess about with all the data in the Nerds spreadsheet below.
The more interesting analysis is likely more deeply buried in it. Such as, world crude steel output grew 1.8% December 2009 to January 2010; the developed economies actually grew faster (5.4%) than developing economies (0.5%) month to month. But then they have to. World steel capacity utilization was reported to be 72.9% in January, just a shade above the 68.6% reported by the AISI for the US in the week ending February 20th.
Tagged as:
capacity utilization,
steel production,
World,
worldsteel
Based on reported import licenses, US long products imports declined 5.1% from 166,000 short tons in December to 158,000 tons in January. This can be compared to long products imports of 264,000 tons in January 2009 and 385,000 tons in January 2008.
Imports dropped significantly for wire rod in particular from 96,000 tons in December to 75,000 tons in January, a big factor being Turkey’s exit from the market in January. Merchant bar and light shapes imports also dropped while imports for all other long product categories increased.
It’s too early to predict full-month February results, but I will update the spreadsheet below to show February-to-date licenses shortly after the February 17th numbers come in.
Tagged as:
imports,
light shapes,
Long Products,
merchant bar,
Turkey,
USA,
wire rod
The IMF recently released an updated forecast of global GDP growth for 2010. As many of you know, I’m fond of using the historical relationship between GDP and steel demand to forecast steel demand growth. In fact, last year about this time I provided a forecast of 2009 global steel demand using the latest available GDP forecast from the IMF.
For those of you wondering how well my simple model worked, I’m happy to report that it was close enough for consulting work. The analysis suggested that steel demand would fall by around 8% in 2009. While we don’t have a final demand number yet, we do have a preliminary number for 2009 world steel production from the World Steel Association. Their data suggests production fell 8% last year. Since global production and global demand should be pretty close, excepting inventory changes and interplanetary trade, my forecast of an 8% demand drop was not too bad, all things considered.
So what does 2010 hold in store? The IMF expects global GDP to grow by 3.9% this year, after falling 0.8% in 2009. This updated forecast is more optimistic than the 3.1% global growth the IMF expected when it released its World Economic Outlook in October 2009. Apparently, the IMF is increasingly convinced that the world economy has emerged from the recent crisis. If this forecast ends up being reasonably accurate, global steel demand should grow by 4% this year based on the historical relationship between the two variables. See the graph below.
Of course, this methodology is not perfect. The global GDP forecast provided by the IMF could be wrong. And since our simple model explains only 6o% of the annual variation in steel demand growth, there’s additional room for error around the base line forecast. At the risk of tempting fate, I’ll deviate from the model and project that 2010 demand will grow by significantly more than 5% from the extremely depressed level of 2009. If I’m wrong, you know where to find me.
Tagged as:
forecast,
gdp
Based on reported import licenses, US flat products imports increased 2% from 405,000 short tons in December to 412,000 tons in January. This can be compared to 532,000 tons of flat products imports in January 2009.
Hot dip galvanized imports showed the largest gains rising by 16% followed by hot rolled imports which increased by 4%. However, cut plate and cold rolled imports both declined, by 5% and 13% respectively.
It’s too early in the month to accurately forecast full-month February licenses, but I will update the spreadsheet below with the newest February 17th license data next week.
Tagged as:
Flat Products,
forecast,
imports,
USA
