Nucor Corporation

Good morning and welcome to Nucor's first quarter 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. And today's call is being recorded. After the speaker's prepared remarks, I will provide instructions for callers wishing to ask questions. I would now like to introduce Jack Sullivan, General Manager of Nucor Investor Relations. You may begin your call.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Nucor's first quarter 2024 earnings review and business update. Leading our call today is Leon Topalian, Chair, President, and CEO, along with Steve Laxton, Executive Vice President and CFO. We also have other members of Nucor's executive team with us, including Dave Simusky, Chief Operating Officer, Al Baer, responsible for plate and structural products, Brad Ford, Over Fabricated Construction Products, Noah Hanners, Raw Materials, John Hollitz, Bar and Rebar Fabrication, Doug Jellison, Corporate Strategy, Greg Murphy, Business Services, Sustainability, and General Counsel, Dan Needham, Commercial, Rex Query, Sheet Products, and Chad Udemark, New Products and Innovation. We posted our first quarter earnings release and presentation to the Nucor Investor Relations website, and we encourage you to access these materials as we'll cover portions of them during the call. Today's discussion will include the use of non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking information within the meaning of securities laws. Actual results may be different than forward-looking statements, and involve risks outlined in our Safe Harbor Statement and disclosed in NUCOR's SEC filings. The appendix of today's presentation includes supplemental information and disclosures, along with a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures. So with that, let's turn the call over to Leon.

Thanks, Jack, and welcome, everyone. I'd like to begin by congratulating our 32,000 NUCOR teammates for a safe and profitable start to 2024. In the first quarter, we generated EBITDA of approximately $1.5 billion and net earnings of $845 million, or $3.46 per diluted share. For the quarter, we shipped a total of 6.2 million tons to outside customers, up 5% from the prior quarter and in line with our average quarterly shipments for 2023. Pricing also remained strong in the first quarter. Average steel mill pricing per ton was up nearly 10%, compared to the prior quarter, and slightly ahead of the average for all of 2023. For steel products, realized prices continue to moderate. However, prices have held consistently above pre-pandemic levels and will continue to generate robust returns. In keeping with our commitments to shareholders and our balanced approach to capital allocation, Nucor returned over $1.1 billion to shareholders through dividend payments and share repurchases in the first quarter. We made good progress on key capital investment projects during the quarter, and as we've mentioned previously, our capital spending will increase this year as we get further along in the construction phase of our West Virginia sheet mill and our Lexington, North Carolina rebar micro mill. We're also advancing work on two downstream production facilities that are part of our Nucor Towers and Structures growth platform. On the safety front, our team delivered the safest quarter in new course history with an injury and illness rate roughly 30% lower than that of Q1 last year. I'm incredibly proud of the steady progress we have been making since 2017 to drive down the number of safety incidents we experienced. Our goal to become the world's safest steel company will require the steadfast determination, innovation, and continuous improvement in how we operate. We have the most capable team assembled anywhere in the world who are all focused on delivering these results and taking great care of one another, our customers, and shareholders. Building on our leadership position in sustainability continues to be a high priority, and we kicked off 2024 with several exciting initiatives. In March, we signed an agreement with Mercedes-Benz to supply a KONIC RE for vehicles produced at its Tuscaloosa, Alabama, manufacturing plant. The KONIC-RE is made with 100% renewable energy and has a greenhouse gas intensity less than half that of extractive blast furnace-based steel production across scopes 1, 2, and 3. Our agreement with Mercedes-Benz is another example of how we're partnering with world-class customers to reduce carbon emissions within their supply chain. We also announced a new initiative with Google and Microsoft to scale the adoption of clean energy technologies Developers of such technologies often struggle to find creditworthy and large-scale energy customers to advance early-stage projects. We aim to lower these obstacles by aggregating our energy needs with others, like Google and Microsoft, that will seek affordable, reliable, and cleaner forms of energy. Going forward, we'll be working with energy providers, policymakers, and other large energy consumers to advance this work. Nucor continues to receive recognition for our sustainability efforts. Earlier this year, Barron's Magazine designated Nucor the only steel company ranked among its top 100 most sustainable companies. Congratulations to our entire Nucor team for this well-deserved recognition of your commitment to operating sustainably each and every day. Turning to our commercial strategy, we're always looking for better ways to serve our customers. which has led us to introduce weekly pricing updates for our hot-rolled coil sheet products. Nucor's Consumer Spot Price, or CSP for short, will provide customers with reliable, real-time pricing information for hot-rolled coil. The CSP will provide our customers with better information to make better decisions to meet their needs. Having real-time pricing coupled with shorter lead times will help our customers reduce the risks inherent in price speculations. While the CSP pricing framework has only been in place for a few weeks, the customer feedback thus far has been positive. On the corporate strategy front, 2024 is off to a productive start. We recently announced the acquisition of Southwest Data Products, a reputable manufacturer and installer of data center infrastructure with an impressive blue-chip customer base. With that, I'd like to welcome the 147 team members at Southwest Data Products to the Nucor family. In conjunction with this transaction, we're launching a new business unit, Nucor Data Systems, to better serve the data center market. Southwest Data Products gives Nucor expanded capabilities in airflow containment structures, which help data centers run more efficiently by separating cold air from the heat generated by racks of server equipment. The team at Southwest has a strong reputation for engineering and manufacturing high-quality products and installing them in a timely and professional way. They have also deep relationships with many of the largest data center co-developers and hyperscalers, which Nucor can leverage to cross-sell our other downstream products. The rise of artificial intelligence and the growing reliance on cloud computing are driving strong demand for the next generation data centers, and this market is expected to grow at double-digit annual rates through the end of this decade. We continue to evaluate other acquisition opportunities in high-growth sectors, and we have a robust pipeline of compelling prospects aligned with steel-adjacent growth trends. Before turning it over to Steve, I'd like to take a moment to comment on recent updates to our nation's trade enforcement policy. Earlier this month, I attended a World Steel Association meeting where I currently serve as chair, and during that meeting, we discussed the ongoing challenges posed by global production overcapacity. The U.S. Commerce Department recently published a final rule designed to strengthen its anti-dumping and countervailing duty regulations. These rule changes are a positive development for Nucor and the entire steel industry as they strengthen the enforcement of existing trade laws. We appreciate the Commerce Department for making these necessary changes, but we still believe it's crucial for Congress to pass the Level the Playing Field 2.0 legislation. to give commerce additional tools that address trade-distorting behaviors. With that, I'll turn it over to Steve who will share some more details on our Q1 financial results. Steve?