Nucor Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to NICORS Corporation's second quarter of 2020 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Later we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will be given at that time. Certain statements made during this conference call will be forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. The words we expect, believe, anticipate, and variations of such words or 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 NCCOR 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 related to the forward-looking statements may be found in NCCOR's latest 10-K and subsequently file 10-Q, which are available on the SEC's NCCOR 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 of future events or otherwise. For opening remarks and introductions, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Leon Topalian, President and Chief Executive Officer of NUCOR Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter earnings call. As we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to again thank the doctors, nurses, EMTs, and other first responders for their efforts in this fight. I'd also like to thank our team who have continued to serve our customers throughout this pandemic. Joining me today on the call are the members of Nucor's executive team, including Jim Frias, our Chief Financial Officer, Al Baer, responsible for plate and structural products. Craig Feldman, responsible for raw materials. Ray Napolitan, responsible for engineered bar products, as well as Nucor's digital initiatives. Mary Emily Slate, responsible for sheet and tubular products. Dave Samosky, responsible for bar rebar fabrication and construction and engineering services. And Chad Udemark, responsible for fabricated construction products. Before going over our financial performance for the quarter, I want to congratulate our team on our safety performance. We began the year with a challenge to become the world's safest steel company, and I couldn't be prouder of our efforts on the most important value we have as a company. While the current pandemic has challenged all of us, it has also allowed our team to expand how we care for the safety, health, and well-being of one another. I want to take a moment to recognize Nucor Steel Arkansas and Nucor Castrop Arkansas for going more than one year without a recordable injury. An impressive accomplishment for one of our larger, more complex steel mills. I'd also like to congratulate Nucor Steel Connecticut for going three years without a recordable injury. Congratulations to our teammates at these divisions. We look forward to replicating these results across more of our operations so that this becomes the new normal at every location. Safety also means creating a more diverse and inclusive company. With the events gripping our nation, we are committed to taking the necessary steps to ensure that every team member in our company feels safe, not just in how we produce our steel, but safe in every sense of the word, safe in how we treat one another, regardless of the color of our skin, our religious beliefs, age, or sexual orientation or political views. Our culture is the foundation that has made Nucor the preeminent North American steel producer for over 50 years, and we are committed to ensuring that our culture remains the hallmark of our success for the next 50. Turning to second quarter financial performance, earnings were better than we anticipated due to our diversified product mix and strong position in non-res construction markets. We continue to see the benefits of our recent initiatives to improve the performance of our businesses that serve these markets, specifically in rebar fabrication and metal buildings. I want to thank those teammates for embracing the changes we have made in these business units. During the quarter, we had very strong cash flow and increased our financial flexibility with the issuance of $1 billion of new notes. Jim Frias will discuss this more in detail in a few minutes. As we discussed in our last call, All of our domestic steel and steel product operations are considered to be an essential business in estate operating since the pandemic began. Our ability to continue operating along with proactive engagement with our customers has enabled us to grow our businesses with existing customers as well as develop new customer relationships. We're also getting inquiries and conducting trials with customers who are planning to reshore their manufacturing operations. In the uncertain environment created by COVID-19 pandemic, our team's reliability and resilience is appreciated by our customers. I want to thank our teammates for their dedication and commitment to living our culture over these last few months, which is why we were able to exceed our customers' expectations. During the quarter, we were pleased to receive two awards from General Motors. For the second consecutive year, Nucor has earned GM Supplier of the Year Award We remain the only EAF-based dealmaker to receive this prestigious award. We value the partnership we have built with GM and look forward to growing that partnership in the future. Congratulations to all of our teammates who are successfully executing our strategy to grow our share in the automotive market. In addition, Nucor Steel Berkeley was recognized by GM for excellent quality and responsiveness and received the Supplier Quality Excellence Award. My congratulations and thanks to the entire Berkeley team for this outstanding achievement. We're very proud of your success. Now I'd like to provide some updates on growth projects we recently commissioned. Progress continues at our Hickman Specialty Cold Rolling Mill. The mill is already producing 980 megapascal strength steel with just five passes through the mill versus 25 or more passes required to produce comparable material at a conventional reversing cold mill. Hickman is continuing to trial advanced high strength steels with both existing and potential customers. The new galvanizing line at our Gallatin sheet mill is fully operational and the team continues to focus on optimizing yield and productivity. The mill received IATF quality certification in May and is working on qualifications relevant to other markets. including rain bins and cooling towers. Gallatin also received a new supply award from a major automotive OEM, and they continue to see strong performance in the solar market. Our new Sedalia rebar micro mill in Missouri has already achieved positive EBITDA for June. We forecast that the mill will be bottom line profitable by September and will be capable of full production capacity early in the fourth quarter. The spooler commissioning has been completed and spooled product is being well received in the market. We are growing our number of active customers each month. Our Kankakee, Illinois division has continued to commission equipment and is starting to develop a wide range of products on our new NVQ mill there. We will start to ship orders to customers this quarter. While market conditions are difficult to forecast, we are optimistic that we will achieve positive cash flow from this project by the end of the year. We also continue to make progress on several projects that are currently under construction, including Frostbrew Florida rebar micromill is on track for startup in the fourth quarter. The Hickman Generation 3 flex galvanizing line. The team progressed with building construction and installing equipment foundations during the quarter. We were targeting startup of the line there for the second half of next year. Finally, with respect to the Gallatin modernization and expansion and the Brandenburg plate mill, we are green lighting each of these projects to move ahead at full speed. Our decision is guided by the incredible market opportunities these investments afford us, our strong operating cash flow, and the adjustments we have been able to make across the company in response to the pandemic. We did receive our air permit for the Brandenburg plate mill, and we have remained on track with our timeline there by continuing to push ahead on the engineering work for the project. Despite the significant challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic, the 26,000 men and women of the Nucor team worked hard to maintain profitability during this challenging quarter. I'm especially proud of how our team has come together and continues to live our culture. With that, I'd like to now turn it over to Jim Frias.

Thanks, Leon. Our second quarter results demonstrate once again the strength and resilience of Nucor's business model, with the Nucor team delivering better than expected earnings and robust cash from operations in a very challenging and uncertain environment. Second quarter earnings of $0.36 per diluted share exceeded our guidance range of $0.10 to $0.15 per diluted share. Results for the month of June exceeded our forecast at several businesses, including our rebar and merchant bar mills, rebar fabrication, joist and deck, tubular products, and at our sheet mills. Cash provided by operating activities exceeded $1.1 billion for the quarter, with working capital contraction on the inventory receivables and payables line items totaling $650 million. Working capital reductions generally provide a counter-cyclical benefit to Nucor in downturns like the current one, enhancing our cash flow and liquidity. Scrap inventory has been an area of particular focus as the pandemic has unfolded. Today, we are much leaner in this area than we were at the pandemic's outset. And I think we will be able to use this experience to stay lean when growth resumes and prices rebound, reducing the asset base that we require to generate strong profitability. Our cash provided by operating activities for the first half was $1.35 billion, our second best first half performance in terms of operating cash flow. It exceeded our year-to-date capital expenditures and cash dividends to shareholders by more than $300 million. During the second quarter, we took advantage of attractive market conditions and, of course, strong credit profile to issue low coupon debt. $500 million of five-year senior notes with a coupon rate of 2% and $500 million of 10-year senior notes with a coupon rate of 2.7%. Concurrent with our capital raise, Standard & Poor's, and Moody's both reaffirmed their new core credit ratings of A- and BAA1, respectively, while also maintaining their stable outlooks. We continue to hold the highest credit ratings of any steel producer headquartered in North America. At the close of the second quarter, our cash and short-term investments totaled more than $3 billion, more than double our cash and short-term investment position of about $1.4 billion at the end of the first quarter. Nucor's liquidity also includes our undrawn $1.5 billion unsecured revolving credit facility, which does not mature until April of 2023. Our next significant debt maturity is not until September of 2022, $600 million of unsecured notes with a coupon rate of 4.125%. The flexibility provided by Nucor's low-cost operating model and financial strength has been and will continue to be a critical underpinning to our company's ability to grow long-term earnings power and reward our shareholders with attractive returns on capital. On our April call, we reported that we had revised our full-year 2020 capital expenditures budget down to less than $1.5 billion. While that measure was taken to maximize our flexibility in light of a dramatically different economic outlook than we anticipated at the beginning of the year, We have not slowed any capital spending related to safety, operational reliability, or environmental compliance. With respect to our most significant organic growth projects, the Brandenburg Plate Mill, and the expansion and modernization of our Gallatin Sheet Mill, as Leon has already indicated, we have decided to reaccelerate investment in each of them. We are taking this step after a thorough review of these projects and their compelling economic returns, as well as our cash flow performance. This will mean that CapEx in the second half will be approximately $250 million higher than it would have been otherwise. We now project their total capital spending for 2020 will be in the area of $1.7 billion. Before I turn the call back over to Leon, let me provide a few comments about the outlook. While the current environment is highly uncertain, with sheet, plate, and raw material markets remaining challenging, At this point, we expect new course third quarter earnings to be similar to our second quarter results. Our long products and downstream businesses continue to benefit from solid non-residential construction market conditions. And our teammates continue to capitalize on new course advantage cost position, flexible production capability, and financial strength. Thank you for your interest in our company. Leon?

Thanks, Jim. Before we take your questions, I just want to comment on a phrase I hear regularly, getting back to normal. I've overheard this phrase over the last few months, and I recognize that our team and folks in our communities are saying it to simply indicate they wish the pandemic was behind us. I wish that too, for sure. But in a sense, I also reject this as an aspiration. You see, at Nucor, our goal, our aim, and our focus isn't simply to return to pre-COVID operating levels. When I think about getting back to normal in terms of safety, I don't ever want to go back to normal. I want to replicate the performance that I've shared earlier on Nucor Connecticut and Nucor Castrip and Nucor Hickman Arkansas. I want every operating division, the entire team to go without a single injury for an entire year, because then from there, we can replicate that over and over. Our focus to become the world's safest steel company is uncompromising. And also from a financial standpoint, I don't want to return to pre-COVID operating or performance levels. I want us to continue to focus on the things that we've been able to do over the last five months that will be a part of our business as we move forward. We appreciate the valuable shareholder capital that you entrust us with every day, and our goals and our aim and focus is to return in maximizing the profitability back to each of our shareholders and our team. And finally, we want to continue to strengthen the relationships that we've built with our customers over a long period of time. However, during this pandemic, it has created unique ways for us to connect and develop those further and fuller so that we continue to be the supplier of choice in meeting your needs. We appreciate the trust you put in our company and place with every order that you entrust us with. While it has been a challenging first half of the year, I truly believe Nucor will come out of this crisis a stronger, more profitable, and more inclusive company. With that, we'd now be happy to take your questions.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please think about pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure that your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star 1 if you'd like to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal. We'll take our first question today from Chris Terry with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, Leon and Jim. Thanks for taking my questions. I had a couple. I just wondered if you could comment firstly on your expectation for the utilization rate for your mills in 3Q.

Yeah, Chris, I appreciate that. And, you know, as we forecast each of the groups, but I would tell you in general we would anticipate utilization rates to be improving as we go into Q3 and beyond.

Okay. And then for CapExplains, you've gone to 1.7 for 2020. Can you talk through the speed cadence into 21 and maybe just the titles for the 21? I think originally it was two bill and two bill for 2020 and 2021. Just wondered if you could comment on the 21 picture. Thanks.

Yeah, it's too soon for us to predict our 2021 capital spending. But we're going to use the same discipline in making capital investments next year because we don't expect the pandemic, and pardon me for saying this, Leon, from being completely behind us. Back to your comments. But, you know, we're always going to invest in safety and facility reliability no matter what the economic environment. You know, we will move forward with our significant strategic investments, which include Brandenburg or Claytonville and the Gallup and Sheffield modernization and expansion. but we will selectively invest in projects with returns where the returns are so compelling that they shouldn't be deferred. But I would expect it to not reach $2 billion, but we'll update on that probably in January because in February we'll go to the board of directors for approval for that 2021 budget, and then we'll share that when we get to that earnings call in January of 2021.

Okay. And the last one for me, just if you could give an update on the ROI facilities.

Certainly. Maybe I'll kick it off and then ask Craig Feldman over on materials to provide some more detail. But, you know, as we look, certainly there's been an awful lot of pressure based on where iron ore pricing are. At the same time, I want to congratulate our who has worked incredibly hard through this pandemic, as well as the New Iron team in Trinidad, who are now operating. They had a period of time where they were taken down by the Trinidadian government, and now we're back up and running. But in particular, with NSLA, as you know, the reliability has not been what we have come to expect. And in the third quarter of last year, we took a 60-day downturn to improve the reliability. that started back up in November of last year. And over the last nine months, I would tell you NSLA, our DRI plan in Louisiana has run at the best reliability levels we've ever seen. And so we're very proud of those accomplishments. There's still more work to do. And again, the pressure on our results and our performance there because of iron ore pricing will probably be with us for some period of time. But Craig, do you want to provide some detail?

Sure, you hit a lot of the high points. So just a couple of things. I'd echo your appreciation and gratitude for the teams in both Louisiana and Trinidad. They've done a remarkable job. And you're right, after the second half shutdown of last year, the Louisiana plan has run incredibly well. In fact, this week, continuing today, they continue to set continuous operational records, 57 days today. So they've run incredibly reliable since the improvements were made last fall. We feel really good about that, proud of that team, very appreciative. The other point, and I guess the point of that 57 days is it may not be completely intuitive to everybody, but this is a 24-7 continuous operation. So that 57 days of uninterrupted production is quite a milestone. Another thing I point out is relative to the DRI, just how it fits in the overall raw materials sourcing strategy. It really gives us unique flexibility in the industry to really flex and shift between various metallics. You know, obviously pig iron as well as DRI as well as scrap. So really well positioned, and I would say that unique flexibility is really unparalleled in the industry.

Thank you, Craig. Thanks, everyone. That's it from me. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Thank you.

We'll now hear now from Seth Rosensfield with Exane BNP. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions today. If I may have one follow-up with regards to some of the growth projects and want to move over to that look for the plate market. With regards to Gallatin and Brandenburg, can you just confirm the effective timeline for development and ramp up these projects, recognizing the recent delay? Obviously, only one quarter in nature, but should we expect these to be going roughly in line with prior targets or something that's slower? And then secondly, with regard to the US plate market outlook, obviously, this has been one of the areas that's weighed on performance of late. One thing you can comment on whether or not there's any conditions emerging for some potential improvement into the second half of the year. Just looking at second quarter performance as well, it looks like your volume fell much more sharply than your peer SSAB performance. offering that your ASPs are much more stable than SFADs. Can you just comment on the competitive dynamic between yourself and your largest competitor there? Thank you.

Okay, Seth, I'll try to make sure we answer all of them. If I don't, please remind me, because there's a few questions in there. But let me begin with your first question, which is the expected anticipated timeframe for startups at both Gallatin as well as the Brandenburg Clayton Mills. I would tell you at Brandenburg, despite slowing down the CapEx spend, the team has done a great job. And what we didn't slow down, Seth, at this point was the engineering design work that was being done over the last few months. Our anticipation is that we would have no delay in the startup of Brandenburg and expect that would be late fourth quarter of 2022 is still on track. With respect to Gallatin, you know, while it may be a couple-month delay, the team's going to work very hard to bring that again in sometime in mid next year, I think is the target. And so, it may be a couple months delay on that, but we're still trying to work through that and figure out if we can make up that time still. But again, worst case scenario, it's a couple of months. I'll probably turn it over to Al here to add some more, provide some more information regarding the overall plate market. And while I'm not going to speak very directly to our competitors, you know, as we think about these investments and think about the plate market in general, we share about a third of the market. What we've recognized and realized over time in about nine of the 13 markets that we serve, Nucor is the market leader. We understand what that means and the opportunities that affords us. And so, with Brandenburg coming online, it also provides the widest, most diverse product mix offering of any plate mill in North America. So, That, on top of being located in the largest plate-consuming region in the Midwest, is going to afford us a freight advantage from our current mills that are supplying that market. So we're very excited about it. And as Jim mentioned, we're going to be very deliberate in how we spend our capital, maintaining our financial flexibility moving forward. But the normal cyclicality of the plate market or, in general, the steel markets is something we've grown accustomed to and have lived in for 50 years. However, this black swan event of this pandemic has certainly given us some pause, but we believe we're at the trough of the market and things will begin to continue to improve as we enter Q3 and Q4. Val, anything you'd like to add on the plate market in general?

Yeah, and I'd echo Leon. Just your excitement, our excitement about that project in Brandenburg and during our period, of capital preservation, we remain very busy. We've got a small team on the ground in Kentucky that's navigating that project and doing an outstanding job focusing on the less capital-intensive parts of the project so that when we move back to full throttle as we are today, we can take advantage and maintain our end of 2022 start-up. So we're on track, we're excited, and we're headed towards that. In terms of the plate market in general, our utilization was down in Q2, as you would expect. It was down largely with the market. The market data for June is not yet published, so we don't know industry statistics just yet, but our indicators say that we probably gave up a couple points of share in Q2. We had gained share in Q1, a little weaker in Q2, largely due to a strategy to resist some of the price erosion we saw as the pandemic unfolded. So, year-to-date, we're confident we've picked up some share in place. When we talk about the outlook for second half, it is very cloudy as it is in a lot of our segments, but we see some recovery coming back in parts of energy, not overall, but power transmission shows some bright spots. Parts of heavy equipment show perhaps some uptick. We do expect some restocking and some regular buying from service centers to occur over the second half. So we do expect some modest recovery in those utilization rates and some upward movement. But the farther out we go, the harder it is to really predict what it looks like. Thanks, man. Thanks.

Seth, did we cover your question there?

Yeah. Yes, that's great. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll hear next from Timna Tayters with Bank of America.

Hey, good afternoon, guys.

Good afternoon, Timna.

I wanted to start out and just ask a little bit more about what you're seeing in the construction arena, knowing that you mentioned that it's been pretty steady. So I just wanted to square that with some of your other comments. So on the volume declines, would that be fully a function of inventory restocking? And if that's the case, then I would expect maybe a restocking, in which case I would expect more volumes into Q3, and you're expecting kind of steady results. So I just trying to square those things and was hoping you could provide a little more color.

Yeah, look, you know, Tina, I think the first part of your question was around on construction. And so, look, as we look at our numbers today, that end market for us and then the construction market has shown incredible resiliency. You know, I really want to call out our partnership and the jobs our teams have done in Volcraft, Verco, and our decking group, our skyline business and piling, and really the relationships built with our fabricators over a long period of time, that end market has held up incredibly well. And it's not just a guttural, and we hope things go well in Q3 and Q4. You know, our backlogs, for example, are almost 10% higher year-to-date than they were a year ago. I mean, last year for our construction businesses and the decking, and Volcraft side was a record year. So our backlogs, our order rates, our shipment rates continue to be very encouraging. At the same time, look, we are watching all the metrics in terms of entry rates, all the billing indexes, and looking out to, okay, does that mean a slowdown at the end of the year, Q1? But again, as several have mentioned, it's a little too early to begin to predict what the uncertainty may look like. I would just tell you in the next two quarters we – we anticipate that they'll remain pretty strong. So I don't think it's a destocking issue. I think inventory levels are relatively low, and quite frankly, our distributors are very cautious about adding inventory right now, which is understandable. So I don't think that's the case. And then what was the second half of your question, Tim?

She was asking about were volumes going down as a bit. And it may be accurate here, Leona. I would just say that, first of all, we've had some reduction in volumes in all of our steel mills, but the biggest reductions were in our engineered bar mills and our sheet mills. And, you know, the long-term story is excellent. We are gaining share in those places. Our share in 19 for sheet was greater than it was in 18, and it's greater in 20 in the first half than it was in 19. But at the same time, we are – heavily weighted in both engineered bar and in sheet, in both auto and in energy, oil, and gas. And those markets took the biggest hit of all the markets we served in the second quarter. I think for sheet, very recently, like 10% energy, 10% automotive. So 20% of our sheet market went away, and similar probably level, maybe even greater in higher percentage of our market for engineered bar went away. But the good news is Relative to that is, auto's coming back. So, to the extent we're expecting things to be similar next quarter, part of it is that we think that the volumes are going to pick up. But margins are compressed right now. So, you know, we're starting to close at lower margins than we started last quarter. So, net-net, we think those things result in close to same performance. It's really a bit of a guessing game right now. Does that answer your question, though, about why we're saying flat performance when we see upside? And then it's energy. Some of our bigger customers in the tooth space that make products out of our sheet mills serve the energy markets. They think by the end of the year, they're going to see some pickups as well. So we're hoping that's going to happen, but we're seeing it more clearly today in Ottawa, a pickup of demand, both in engineered bar and in sheet. If I can make one comment, year over year, we're up 8% in rebar and then 3% in MP2, so on the construction, on our construction product side, that we're actually up and shipping this year. Yeah. I was just talking about the sequential quarters, that we were down in all products, I think, in Q2 versus Q1.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm looking at structural down pretty big and bars even year over year and quarter over quarter, and I think of those as construction. That's why I was asking, but I don't want to belabor it. Go ahead.

Most of the bottom is down in the engineered bar. That's where the production happens.

Gotcha. Okay, thanks. My other follow-up was just to ask a little bit more about how we see the market shaping up in the second half, because clearly automotive is recovering, but at the same time, several blast furnaces are restarting, and the steel price has been slipping, and so it's a strange combination of more supply but more demand, and you say you're taking market share, and Steel Dynamics says they're taking market share, and just wondering how we see this playing out in the balance of the rest of the year with the growth in supply and demand and how that how that plays out, and if you could also comment on the lag effects on some of your sheet pricing for CRU contracts, if that's still a factor.

Thanks. Sure. I'll start us off, and then I'm going to ask Mary Emily Slate to jump in, in particular on the sheet side. And, look, Kim, the question you asked on the front end of that is something we're looking at every day. The supply-demand ultimately is the ultimate economic driver of our business. And so as we think about third quarter moving into the end of the year, how are things going to shape out? Well, what we think is by August, we're going to see 13 or 14 blast furnaces come online. But we also saw something through this pandemic that maybe I've not seen in my 25 years in this business, and that was a shedding of about 20 million tons of supply come out of the market very, very quickly. So where we sit today, we're forecasting somewhere around 10 million tons of restarts. So With 10 million tons still offline, most of that in the sheet arena, flash arena, or all of that in flash, most of it in sheet, we anticipate that the projects that Nucor has, as well as some of the other market expansions, are going to be still well under the 10 million tons that I'm not sure ever restarts. And, again, I don't want to predict that. What I would tell you, the ultimate driver is the low-cost projects, producer wins. And so Nucor's focus in taking care of our team from a safety perspective is also matched by ensuring that we remain in low-cost positions so that we can continue to be the supplier of choice and grow our market share. With regard to automotive, though, you know, while we're not GM or Ford or BMW or Mercedes, tier one, biggest supplier, we're working hard every day to be their best supplier. And so the things that that team has done has really resulted in why we've been selected to have or been named the GM Supplier of the Year Award back-to-back years. So even though autos will be down this year and really probably for the next year in terms of pre-COVID levels, our share of that opportunity is going to grow, and we think by the end of the year we will surpass shipment levels of what we did in 2019. Mary Emily, would you like to make a few comments on the street market and in particular the pricing?

Thank you, Leon, and thank you for the question, Tim. About 70% of what we sell in the cheap market is contract time, so we still have about 30% of our books that's associated with stock pricing, and that 70% is divided between a lot of different metrics. So there will be some lag effect in pricing, but we also feel that with oil and gas as low as it has been, which drives a lot of the hot roll price, we feel like we're at a bottom and there's an inflection point coming. So we will see some correction in this market. Okay.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Taylor. Thank you. We'll hear next from David Tagliano with PMO Capital Markets. Thanks for taking my questions. First one, I just want to ask a question about the second quarter results, actually. The 13 days before the end of the quarter, the guidance was, I don't even remember, it was 5 to 10 cents or 10 to 15 cents or something like that. It came in way better. I'm curious, you know, what changed in the last 13 days? It looks like, you know, our numbers, the EBITDA came in, you know, over $100 million higher based on the, you know, the guide that was 13 days before the end of the quarter. I'm just trying to figure out what changed. You know, we're not proud of the fact that we're not the greatest forecasters in the world. We really aren't. And our business units more than doubled their forecast for June in terms of division contribution, which is an even-like number. So most of that beat happened on the steel side. And so I would just say that our divisions were probably a bit concerned in their expectations for June. And that's why we ended up missing high by such a large margin. Okay. Understood. Just such a wide gap this quarter.

Yeah.

Keep in mind, we're a company with 27 million cents a year capacity. And we're making low numbers. You know, 15 cents a share, 30 cents a share. Those are low numbers relative to our capacity. And so it's a big miss in terms of if you just look at the number, when you think about it on a part-time basis or when you think about it in terms of our capacity to generate earnings, it's a small miss. So I agree with you, but just that little caveat. All right. Fair point there. Just on the follow-up a bit, you know, in terms of the prior questions and on the comments around supply and demand, three months ago there was a pause, obviously, in Gallatin and, you know, market prices of the week and obviously don't make decisions. I know that's the answer. We don't make decisions on 20-year investments and three-month moves in pricing. I totally get that. But, you know, is there anything else that changed in the last few months that gave you so much confidence to bring Galaxy back on and still shoot for mid-2021 startup when you do have all this capacity coming on, you know, restarting all the blast furnaces you mentioned 10 million times plus, you know, other projects coming online? What changed in the last three months specifically that prompted the, you know, the quick turnaround.

Yeah, David, I'll start and maybe Jim can jump in because I want to make sure I articulate this point well. I would tell you it was less of a change in terms of, you know, there's no change in strategy. What I would tell you was when we went into, you know, early March and shared on the call in April, our view of what the COVID pandemic was going to mean, how deep it was going to hit, how long it might be with us, We certainly recognized it as a black swan event, gave us pause, and what we wanted to do at that time was ensure we maintain the financial flexibility to do the things that we were committed to doing, like providing our dividend, making sure that we could fund our capital needs in terms of maintenance capex. And so, really, it was a pause to recognize this effect. But make no mistake, it never changed our focus and our thought process around, Those two projects being strategic long-term decisions that were the right for our team and for our shareholders moving forward. Jim, anything you want to add?

Yeah, Dave. You know, when we made the decision to slow spending down, it wasn't in isolation. We wanted to maximize equity in the second quarter because of this unknown of what COVID was going to do to us. And so our strategy was to cancel non-essential projects, slow the big projects down, not stop them, slow them down temporarily. but continue forward with a number of projects, including the Frost Group micro milk, which is so far down the path, and do those things to maximize liquidity in Q2. And we accomplished that. Separate of the debt issuance, we increased our cash by $600 million in the second quarter. And so our free cash flow is extremely strong, and we wanted to demonstrate that we could have strong free cash flow for the year. And so now that we have that confidence, and we also have a better understanding of how we're being impacted, in the economy by COVID, those things together are the underpinnings for saying let's go forward on those projects. So it was a combination of our results in terms of liquidity as well as our understanding, our better understanding of how much we're being impacted by COVID. Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. And then, but, you know, specifically from a supply-demand perspective, is your view that the Gallatin, specifically the Gallatin mill, will be, you know, almost entirely going after market share? Of course it will. You know, long-term, sorry, Leonid.

Go ahead, finish up.

So long-term, our strategy is to grow our share and sheet. It's one of the places where we're a little underweighted relative to the market. We're market leader in most of the places we compete. And GALPIN, you know, is 1.5 million times, 1.4 million times the incremental capacity. that moves us up that needle a little bit. So, certainly, our goal is to gain share and keep. Right. Okay. And the last question. Sorry, I'll turn it over. I just wanted to confirm the cap-ex for the two projects. Is it still expected, total cap-ex at Gallatin, $659 million, and then also at Kentucky Clay Mill, I think $1.4 billion of those numbers unchanged in total?

Yeah. Both the numbers at Gallatin, The Gallatin number is not unchanged, and I think we reported in our last call that what Jim did was $1.7 billion at Brandenburg Clayton.

Yeah, we noted that increase in our call last quarter. All right. All right, thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you, David. Thank you. We'll hear next from Phil Gibbs with QB Capital Markets. Hey, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Phil.

Just to piggyback off of what Dave just asked, it doesn't sound like there's been much spent to date on Brandenburg and then on Gallatin, maybe a little bit relative to that $700 million. Is that right? You want the breakdown of what we spent on those projects so far this year? Is that what you're asking for? Just to date. I mean, not necessarily this year, but just how much have you spent in terms of where we are right now? Yeah. I have the outlook, but I don't have the history. I'm sorry. I don't have it on my fingertips. I'm sorry. Do you have an idea? Dave, give us what the information is. Yeah, Brandenburg, we spent $150 million before the pause. We'll spend about $245 million throughout the rest of the year now that we picked it back up. At Gallatin, we had spent 220 million for the falls, and we're going to spend another 160 million. Did you get that? Could you hear those numbers? I did. I did. Thank you. Okay. And then I know from last call, your target inventory for the year, I think you said you wanted to take out a billion of inventory. Is that still something that you think is achievable? We said we wanted to reduce inventory significantly, and we thought it could be up to a billion. We knocked scrap inventory down by about 850,000 tons. And so I don't know if that itself is a billion dollars. I don't think it is. But we made a significant progress in scrap. In fact, scrap went from, I think, 3 million tons-ish at the end of Q1 to somewhere around 1.3 million tons at the end of Q2. Maybe a little lower than that. Or 2.3 million tons at 2.2 million. Okay. The DNA numbers look like they're coming in a bit higher than what we had forecasted. I mean, this includes amortization, but I have almost 200 million a quarter for Q1 and Q2. Is that something that should be repeated for the rest of the year? Yes, I think that's going to be about right for the year. Our total year forecast is 720 for depreciation and just over 80 for amortization. Okay, got it. And then on the side of the tax, the deferred tax benefits with these project timelines essentially intact, and I know that there were some benefits this year, next year, and then in 2022, maybe just remind us what those are and how much maybe you received thus far. Yeah, we'll get it in terms of... We get it in two forms. First of all, to the extent we're making money, we could offset those profits and not pay taxes. So how much we get this year partly depends on how much we make. We think the benefit this year is going to be in the neighborhood of $200 million, and some of that will be NOLs that will have to go through a process to get what's in the government. But this year's benefit we think of as being $200 million, and the cumulative benefit over three years is expected to be in the neighborhood of $700 million. Jim, how much of that $200 million have you got so far this year? Well, look at the income statement. Everything that we've got is tax expense we haven't had to pay. Got it. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Andres Bokenhauser with UBS.

Thank you very much. I think you kind of answered the question already, but there's been obviously a lot of talk about taking market share and you guys have been doing that and you continue to do so and we've seen you do so as well before in the past in these kind of price drop markets. We're obviously seeing some of your competitors raising sheet prices now, which of course you could do, but in doing so, of course, some of the integrators could restart capacity. I guess the question is, is the focus on your second half strategy or maybe your 12-month strategy more on continuously taking market share, coming in time with what you've done in the past in these kind of trough markets?

Look, at the end of the day, Andreas, our focus is to serve our customers well and make sure we're providing a differentiated value proposition. And so as we think about moving forward, again, you know, our pricing decisions are going to remain independent of what our competitors are doing. We will evaluate for ourselves where we believe the market's at and if it would be time to raise pricing. So as we move forward, we absolutely want to grow in market share. As I mentioned, nine of the 13 markets we serve, we are market leaders. We are not market leaders today in plate. Brandenburg will help provide that differentiated value proposition where we would be. And also in cheap, today we're somewhere in the 16, 17% of the overall market range. We have an awful lot of opportunity to grow in that, as Jim commented to earlier. So, again, as we move forward, like we do in every product group and have made pricing decisions, we will evaluate that independent of what our competitors are doing.

That's very clear. And maybe as a follow-up for that, when we kind of look at Q3, and there's been some talk about expectations of scrap prices and raw material prices kind of pulling back in August. So, would you say that from a raw materials price environment point of view that the environment is supportive of, you know, margin expansion into the third quarter, all other things equal, I mean, keeping the prices high, but from raw material price point of view, that there should be some margin support there? Is that fair to say?

Yeah. Yeah, look, very fair question, and obviously, we track and follow that in the scrap. market volatility over the last several months is certainly something we watched Craig Feldman over our raw materials. Craig, why don't you comment to what you're seeing and how you look at the market over the next few months?

Sure. Yes, sure, man. relatively stable, I guess, is our overall outlook. You know, there's been some recent activity, particularly export activity in China and Turkey, really driving things a little more active. But, you know, it's a fairly well-balanced market from a supply-demand standpoint, and I certainly wouldn't see any major moves in the near term. I would hate to venture against much down the next 60 days or so, but I think our outlook is relatively stable. There could be some modest moves in the short term, a little bit of dislocation in certain regions, but some of the coastal or export activity could see some prices push a little bit, but for the most part, we see the outlook stable.

All right. Excellent. Thank you very much for taking my question. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thanks, Andres.

Thank you. We'll take our last follow-up question from Phil Gibbs with QBank Capital Markets. Thank you very much. The raw material side, I think there were a couple of pretty big outages in Q2, one at Louisiana because of COVID and the one in Trinidad because of COVID, but the results in the raw material segment were a lot better than I would have thought. you now have those operations back online. So I would have thought you would have gotten some better momentum in the third quarter relative to the second. So just curious in terms of how, you know, how we see that interplay, why it's down, why the second quarter was, I guess, so good. I mean, I think it was even probably better than the expectation that you had for yourselves. Yeah. Yeah. definitely was better than we had expected to the question earlier about the forecast. The real headwind has been and continues to be, as you well know, DRI is a, I would say, stubbornly high iron ore crisis, so that was a bit of a headwind. What really picked up from the team at David Joseph's recycling operation really did a nice job. It really outperformed in the corn, so that was a big pickup driving those results. You know, we don't release the the biggest upside that we have is from the DJJ recycling operations in Q2. And certainly going forward, I don't know that, you know, we're going to see much change in that iron ore pressure. We've talked about it a number of times on these calls about the margin pressure. I think that we continue to see, and depending on where iron ore prices go, you know, we expect to get some relief at the DRI operations. But your guess is a good sign as far as where iron ore prices go down the road.

Thank you. Thank you, Phil.

Okay, that does conclude our question and answer session for today. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Palian for any additional closing remarks.

Before concluding our call today, I want to express our appreciation to our shareholders. We value your investment in our company, and we take the obligation seriously that comes with it, and we'll treat your investment with great care. I also want to thank our customers. We're excited about the capabilities we're building to better serve you today, and most importantly, for tomorrow. Thank you for the trust and confidence you place in the Nucor team each and every day to supply your needs. We look forward to building powerful partnerships to generate powerful results. And to our Nucor team, thank you for what you're doing every day and taking care of our customers. And most importantly, thank you for doing it safely. We are committed to strengthening this core value, and by doing so, help to improve the safety of our Nucor family and our industry. I'm excited for Nucor's future and for all of us working together to expand beyond and take Nucor to new heights. Thank you to everyone on the call for your interest in Nucor, and have a great day.

Thank you. And that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.