Nucor Corporation

Good day everyone and welcome to the Nucor Corporation third quarter of 2019 earnings call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Later we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will come at that time. Certain statements made during the conference call will be forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The words we expect, believe, anticipate, and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify those forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and information that is currently available. Although NUCORP believes they are based on reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that future events will not affect their accuracy. More information about the risks and uncertainties relating to these forward-looking statements may be found in NUCORP's latest 10-K and subsequently filed 10 Qs, which are available on the SEC's and NUCOR's website. The forward-looking statements made in this conference call speak only as of this date, and NUCOR does not assume any obligation to update them, either as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. John Ferraiola, Chairman and Chief Executive Author of Nucor Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter earnings call and for your interest in Nucor. Other members of Nucor's executive team are also on the call today, including Leon Tapalian, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Frias, our Chief Financial Officer, Craig Feldman, responsible for raw materials, Ladd Hall, responsible for sheet products, Ray Napolitan, responsible for engineered bar products, Mary Emily Slate, responsible for plate, structural, and tubular products, Dave Samosky, responsible for merchant bar and rebar products, and Chad Unimark, responsible for fabricated construction products. Last month, I announced my retirement from Nucor, effective at the end of this year. One of my priorities during my time as CEO has been to make certain that we had a deep bench of leadership talent and a robust management succession plan in place. I know we have succeeded on both fronts. Identifying the right leaders is a key component of our company's future success. I am delighted that the Nucor Board of Directors has selected Leon Topolian to succeed me as Nucor's next CEO. Leon has proven himself to be an exceptional leader throughout his 23-year career at Nucor. Since 2017, he has served as Executive Vice President responsible for Nucor's plate and structural steel mills. Prior to joining our corporate senior leadership, Leon was General Manager at two facilities, our Nucor Yamato Structural Steel Mill and our Kankakee, Illinois Farm Mill. With the support of our leadership team and all of our teammates, I am confident that Leon will guide Nucor towards continued success. I am also confident that we have an executive leadership team that is second to none in our industry, and I know Leon and the board feel the same way. Before I provide comments on our third quarter results, I want to say a few words about safety. One of my proudest accomplishments during my time as CEO is the way that our entire organization has improved our safety performance. I want to thank all of my teammates for your constant focus on working safely. We are having one of our best years ever for safety performance. Let's keep that focus as we move closer to our goal, which will always be zero incidents at every NUCORP facility. Any injury is one too many. Now on to our third quarter results. We saw continued strong performance from our metal buildings, piling, joists, and deck divisions, as well as improved performance in our rebar fabrication divisions. The performance reflects excellent execution by our teammates and continued stable conditions in the non-residential construction market. Overall spending in a non-residential construction market, which typically accounts for approximately one-half of our company's shipments, remains at healthy levels. After a brief summer rally, plate and sheet market conditions softened in the third quarter. Excess inventory throughout the supply chain has resulted in continued destocking by our customers. Service center industry data indicates that inventories remain low. In addition, our OEM customers have become cautious about buying as we head into the year end. However, we do believe that both our service center and OEM customers will start restocking to meet demand as 2020 gets underway. Looking out further into next year, the pending 2020 elections and current trade issues such as the unresolved status of the USMCA agreement for North America are creating some more uncertainty in the market. And while it's difficult to predict steel markets that far into the future, we continue to have great confidence in Nucor's business fundamentals and our long-term strategy. Finally, let me remind you all that we have several more of our growth projects starting up in the fourth quarter that will give us the capability to produce more of the products that our customers are asking us to make. As we have said many times, these investments position us for continued success by taking advantage of specific market opportunities. We expect they will further enhance NUQA's position as a steel market leader. I am now going to turn the call over to Leon to provide comments and an update on several of our growth initiatives.

Thanks, John. I'd like to begin by saying how honored I am to have the opportunity to lead this amazing company. I look forward to continuing the proud traditions that have made Nucor the premier steel and steel products company for the last 50 years. A hallmark of our success has and will continue to be our culture, which begins with the nearly 27,000 team members who make up the Nucor family. Our culture drew me to this company 23 years ago, and it inspires me daily. And the most important value in our culture is safety. Taking care of our team is the most important responsibility we have. I take it very personally and will work tirelessly to continue Nucor's quest of becoming the safest steel company in the world. Since the announcements, I've been visiting many of our divisions and have been humbled by the warm reception I've received. In talking with our team, it's obvious they are deeply engaged in our mission and just as excited about Nucor's future as I am. That excitement is especially evident among our team members who are bringing new growth projects online. Let me just say thank you for your hard work, dedication, commitment, and never losing sight of our most important value, safety. I'd like now to provide you with an update on some of the projects we're bringing online. At Nucor Steel Arkansas, our Hickman team continues to increase production and improve yield performance on our new specialty cold mill. The mill's flexibility is a key feature with its dual configuration, Hickman's new cold mill can change from a high reduction mill for the advanced strength steels of the future to a very efficient four high mill in just six minutes. This flexibility separates us from our competition and allows us to efficiently offer a broader range of value-added products. There is no other carbon mill like this in North America. Nucor Steel Gallatin's new galvanizing line team coated their first coils on September 27th with 500,000 tons of annual capacity Gallatin's 72-inch galvanizing line is the widest hot roll galvanizing facility in North America. Gallatin is extremely well positioned to grow Nucor's share of the underserved Midwest heavy gauge galvanizing hot band market. At our Marion, Ohio rebar mill, commissioning of the new inline rolling mill was completed in August, and the Marion team is currently ramping up production. Early next year, Marion will also install quench and temper equipment to reduce alloy costs. These investments, combined with a more energy-efficient reheat furnace installed last year, will position Marion as a low-cost producer in the region. Other projects on track for startup by the end of the year include New Core Steel Kankakee's MBQ Rolling Mill, our new Rebar Micro Mill in Sedalia, Missouri, and the galvanizing line we're building in Mexico with JFE Steel. As we have said before, we are not adding capacity simply to get bigger. These projects target defined market opportunities where we are confident that we will compete and win highly profitable market share. We are also responding to feedback from our customers regarding their product needs, particularly for value-added products. Nucor is doing more than adding capacity. Nucor is increasing our capabilities to provide our customers with superior value. We achieve that with unique product properties, unmatched product breadth, industry-leading on-time delivery in unrivaled quality. Every growth project we are implementing builds on our competitive strengths to serve new product and geographic markets. With these investments, we are increasing Nucor's long-term earnings power. This is the same strategy Nucor has successfully executed through numerous market cycles over the past five decades. At this time, I will turn the call over to Jim Frias, for a review of our financial results. Jim?