Jan 25th - U.S. Raw Steel Production: The utilization rate for U.S. raw steel production rose for the fourth consecutive week to 65.6% and production increased to 1.587 mm net tons in the week ending Jan 23rd, according to the AISI. Both of these figures are up from the previous week, when they reported a 64.7% capability utilization rate and production of 1.564 mm net tons. This current rate of 65.6% is the highest rate we’ve seen since November 1, 2008, which makes sense considering that was around the time when everything started heading south.

Jan 22nd - Global Steel Production: December was down slightly (down 0.6% seq), which is worse than we had expected. We figured Dec would pick up given that November is usually slow due to maintenance shutdowns, plus the one additional production day. In Dec 2009, ‘Rest of World’ steel production was 58.75 mm MT (down 1.8% seq but up 33.4% yoy) while China produced 47.66 mm MT (up 0.9% seq and up 26.6% yoy) in Dec 2009. The EU had an especially poor seq showing in Dec, negatively impacting total global production.

Jan 21st - Exports of Publicly Traded Companies: We received December export data for the Eastern terminals for publicly traded companies, which can be a useful tool heading into earnings season. As we analyzed back on Jan 7th, CNX exported in excess of 700K tons in Dec (743K tons to be exact!). This was the highest monthly export total that DTC has on record (since Jan 2005). Shipments improved seq in nearly all cases (MEE was the exception) while YOY comparisons were also strong, with the exception of BTU and MEE.