Good day everyone, and welcome to the Nucor Corporation first quarter of 2014 earnings 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 risks and uncertainties. The words we expect, believe, anticipate, and variations of other 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 Nucor believes that they are based on reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that future events will not affect their accuracy. More information about the risk and uncertainties relating to these forward-looking statements may be found in Nucor'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 obligations to update them, either as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. For opening remarks and introductions, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. John Ferriola, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and President of Nucor Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon. This is John Ferriola, Nucor's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President. Thank you for joining us for our conference call. As always, we appreciate your interest in Nucor. With me for today's call are the other members of Nucor's executive senior management team, Chief Financial Officer, Jim Frias, and our other Executive Vice Presidents, Jim Darsey, Keith Grass, Ladd Hall, Ray Napolitan, and Joe Stratman. First, and most importantly, we want to thank everyone on our Nucor, Harris Steel, David J. Joseph, Duferdofin, Nucor Steel Technologies, and Skyline Steel teams for your excellent work taking care of all of our customers during a challenging first quarter with harsh winter weather in most of the areas where we operate. The more than 22,000 men and women of the Nucor team got the job done, as they always do, by working safely, working smart, and working together.
Nucor's teammates, the right people, are our company's greatest asset and our greatest competitive advantage. In addition to the operational excellence they demonstrate each and every day, our teams have been working hard to grow long-term earnings power. We have invested significant capital in recent years that we expect to convert into higher highs in profits over the next upcycle. The two key drivers to the anticipated profit growth will be reducing our raw material cost and expanding our product mix to include more value-added, higher-margined offerings. I will now ask our CFO, Jim Frias, to review Nucor's first quarter performance and financial position. Following Jim's comments, I will update you on our progress implementing our strategy for profitable growth. Jim?
Thanks, John, and good afternoon. First quarter of 2014 earnings of $0.35 per diluted share included unfavorable tax adjustments totaling $0.04 per diluted share. This charge was not factored into our guidance earnings range of $0.30-$0.35 per diluted share. First quarter results also included a charge of $0.02 per diluted share related to the disposal of assets within the steel mills segment. This charge was factored into our guidance. A comment about our tax rates, it can be confusing due to the impact of profits from non-controlling interests. After adjusting out profits belonging to our business partners and the one-time tax adjustments, the effective tax rate was 34.4% for the first quarter of 2014. Over the balance of this year, we expect our effective tax rate after adjusting out profits belonging to our business partners to be in the range of 34%-35%.
As John noted, our performance was achieved despite the impact of the most severe winter weather conditions in a decade experienced in many parts of the country. The resulting challenges were numerous. Deliveries of raw materials to our facilities and our shipments to customers were hindered by rail car and truck availability. Costs were increased, especially for energy, and customer demand was disrupted, as more than half our end-use demand is directly tied to construction activity. Most importantly, our teammates in all of Nucor's businesses applied their can-do attitude and energy to taking care of our customers. We view our industry-leading operational flexibility and reliability as critical pieces of the value package we deliver to our customers every day. First quarter 2014, total energy costs at our steel mills increased by about $7 per ton from the prior quarter.
As a partial hedge to these higher costs, the profitable output of our natural gas working interest investment represented approximately 68% of the total consumption of natural gas at our steel mills and our Louisiana DRI plant in the first quarter. Total startup costs for the first quarter of 2014 were $20.9 million. This included $20.7 million in startup costs for our DRI facility in Louisiana. That number was higher than we expected. Overall, we are pleased with the progress of the Louisiana DRI plant. John will provide further comments on our progress in Louisiana. Nucor continues to benefit from its position as North America's most diversified manufacturer of steel and steel products. YoY earnings improvements were achieved by a number of our businesses. In our steel mill segment, profits increased at our sheet and plate mills.
In our steel product segment, profitability improved at our joist and deck, cold finished bars, and fastener operations. In our raw material segment, the DRI facility in Trinidad and The David J. Joseph Company's scrap processing business reported higher earnings. At the end of the first quarter, Nucor's financial position remained strong. Our total debt to capital ratio was 36%. Cash and short-term investments totaled $1.3 billion. Further to Nucor's strong liquidity, our $1.5 billion unsecured revolving credit facility is undrawn, and it does not mature until August 2018. We have no commercial paper outstanding. Our next significant debt maturity is not until 2017. Nucor is the only steel producer in North America to enjoy the extremely important competitive advantage of an investment-grade credit rating. Our financial strength is a significant competitive advantage.
It allows us to invest aggressively during downturns to grow our long-term earnings power, which is a strategic initiative of Nucor. During the steel industry's current lengthy downturn, Nucor has invested in a broad range of strategic investments. We are building upon our critically important competitive advantages that include our low cost and highly flexible production capabilities, our diversified product mix, and our market leadership positions. With these investments, we are extremely well-positioned to capitalize on the inevitable steel industry cyclical upturn.
Our focus remains on realizing attractive returns on Nucor's invested capital, which currently exceeds $9 billion. We are confident in our team's ability to continue Nucor's record of being an effective steward of our shareholders' valuable capital. As we discussed on our last conference call, we expect significantly lower capital expenditures for 2014. The majority of our growth projects will be completed in the first half of this year.
Also, the temporary suspension of drilling new wells by our natural gas working interest investment reduces Nucor's 2014 capital spending by about $400 million. We continue to estimate our 2014 capital spending will be approximately $600 million. For the second quarter of 2014, Nucor's earnings are expected to show some improvement over the first quarter, excluding the unusual charges. We expect increased profits at both our steel mills and our fabricated construction product businesses. We also remain cautiously optimistic about the outlook for non-residential construction activity in 2014. This outlook is tempered by excess global steel capacity and the ongoing threat of steel illegally dumped into the United States. Nucor will again follow our practice of providing quantitative guidance in the final month of the quarter. We do appreciate your interest in our company. John?
Thanks, Jim. I am encouraged by our performance in the first quarter of 2014. We delivered solid earnings, given the significant challenges outside of our control. The two big challenges this quarter were the weather and ongoing pressure from imports. Our team also made excellent progress during the quarter implementing our strategy of investing for long-term profitable growth. The biggest reason that I am encouraged is that I see strong evidence that Nucor is beginning to realize initial payoffs from our hard work through this protracted down cycle to grow our long-term earnings power.
We have invested our shareholders' valuable capital in numerous projects that provide us new, higher-margined product offerings, cost reductions, and quality improvements. After starting up operations just last December 24, our Nucor Steel Louisiana team produced 455,000 tons of DRI during the first quarter of 2014. During the quarter, the facility attained peak operating rates above 90%.
Most importantly, the quality of the initial output has been outstanding. Louisiana has already attained world-class quality, with metallization rates of 96% and carbon content exceeding 4%. I would like to thank everyone on our team in Louisiana for their excellent progress in the first quarter and their unrelenting commitment to continuing the hard work required for completing the job. As Jim mentioned, Louisiana's costs were higher than expected during the first quarter. That is not unusual for the early production at a new facility. We are pleased to report that the performance of the equipment has actually exceeded our expectations. As was the case in starting up our DRI facility in Trinidad seven years earlier, our work is now focused on process adjustments to improve the initially high product yield loss that is inevitably part of startups.
Our Louisiana team has identified a number of such modifications to reduce yield loss that will be made during a three-week shutdown planned for June. Startup of the Louisiana DRI plant is a major step forward in the implementation of our raw material strategy. We view our expanded DRI capability to be a game changer for Nucor's long-term cost structure for the high-quality iron units we need to expand our share of the higher value-added sheet, SBQ bar, and plate markets. It also improves our operating flexibility with a significantly shorter and more secure supply chain for high-quality iron units. In the first quarter, Nucor Steel Berkeley successfully started up its wide/light capital project, providing Berkeley with the capability to produce wider and lighter gauge sheet steel. In fact, the Berkeley team has already exceeded the equipment's gauge reduction performance guarantees on every grade of steel produced so far.
I congratulate and thank the Berkeley team for their hard work delivering on budget and on schedule, an exciting new growth project for Nucor in the flat rolled steel market. The wider and lighter product portfolio will allow Nucor to move up the value chain in agricultural, automotive, heavy equipment, and pipe and tube applications. This successful startup is also timely in supporting the Nucor Sheet Mill group's work to gain profitable market share by developing new advanced high-strength steels. Our team is aggressively going after the opportunity to develop advanced high-strength steels that provide customers with weight reductions comparable to alternative materials, but at significantly lower cost. In the first quarter, our Nucor Steel Hertford County plate mill shipped a record 56,000 tons of value-added plate products. During the downturn, Hertford County invested in a heat treat facility, a vacuum tank degasser, and a normalizing line.
These investments continue to pay off for us with the higher and more stable margins offered by heat-treated products. Our expanded plate portfolio also has allowed us to increase capacity utilization at our Tuscaloosa, Alabama mill by more efficiently distributing work between our two plate mills. Not coincidentally, Tuscaloosa set a new quarterly shipment record in the first quarter of 2014. Our Nucor-Yamato structural mill is on schedule for a summer of 2014 start-up of an approximately $115 million project to expand its sheet piling production capabilities. As part of the project's work, one of Nucor-Yamato's rolling mills will have a three-week outage during the second quarter. The new wider and lighter products will move Nucor-Yamato up the value-added chain in the piling business. They will also allow us to realize more synergies from our highly successful 2012 acquisition of piling distributor Skyline Steel.
Congratulations to the team at Duferdofin Nucor, our joint venture long products business in Italy, on the successful start-up of a revamped ladle metallurgical furnace, a vacuum tank degasser, and a revamped four-strand caster. These investments will allow Duferdofin Nucor to diversify its markets, so it is less dependent on construction by increasing its product offering to the energy, transportation, and yellow goods markets, thereby improving their results throughout the business cycle. The Nucor team's work to build sustainable long-term profitability requires that we take a proactive role in our nation's trade policy debates. Global steel production overcapacity is the greatest threat to Nucor and to our industry. Illegal government subsidies from China and other countries have allowed large amounts of cost-inefficient capacity to stay in production and dump steel into the global marketplace. Imports have significantly increased their share of the U.S. market during the current downturn.
Imported steel share of U.S. market increased from 25% in 2009 to 30% in 2013. Over the first two months of 2014, that share has increased to an alarming 36%. Given the indisputable fact that mills in the United States are among the lowest cost producers of steel in the world, this makes no sound economic sense. They come here not because of demand, but in many cases because of foreign producers' excess capacity, unfairly traded pricing, and illegal subsidies they enjoy from their governments. We should also understand that the damage done by dump steel impacts the entire U.S. economy. Illegally traded steel and steel products destroy jobs, the type of middle-class jobs that our economy desperately needs to get back to healthy and sustainable long-term growth. Nucor is working hard to bring attention to the need for our government to enforce rules-based trade.
Several current trade case filings underway are of critical importance to Nucor, our customers, and other U.S. steel producers. They include rebar, pipe and tube products, and wire rod. The 22,000+ members of the Nucor team urge both the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission to closely examine the evidence as they prepare their final determinations on potential duties for these cases. Whether it's structural long-term threats such as illegally traded imports or other more short-term challenges such as severe weather in a particular quarter, the Nucor team always runs toward the challenge, not away from it. We run towards the problem and get to work solving it. Not just solving it, but creating from it opportunities for our customers, shareholders, and teammates.
I can tell you that that attribute of our culture and our DNA is why I'm more confident than ever that Nucor's best years are still ahead of us. We would now be happy to entertain your questions.
If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute button is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is star one to ask a question, and we'll pause for just a moment to assemble the queue. We'll take our first question from Michelle Applebaum with Michelle Applebaum Research.
Hi.
Hello, Michelle. How are you?
I'm terrific. How are you?
I'm doing well, thank you.
I think the snow has melted in the Midwest. Not entirely sure.
Well, we are hoping the ice remains.
Yeah. There is still ice north of here. Yes, don't worry about that. I see some of your friends are lobbying now for more ice breaking on the lakes. My first question for you is, you are throwing out some numbers that sound terrific about what is going on at DRI in Louisiana, but I would like to ask you, then I have another question. I would like to ask you to put into perspective for us what some of these numbers mean. Probably one great perspective would be, how does this start up compare to the start up of, or I should say the restart of Trinidad when you did that?
Well, as I mentioned in the script, our Louisiana plant start up, we believe went very well, particularly when we compare it to our Trinidad start up seven years ago. To begin with, the Louisiana quality targets at start up were higher than those in Trinidad. At the beginning when we started our Louisiana plant, our quality targets for metallization were 95.5%, and our carbon percentage we were looking for was 4% or better. That compares to the quality targets at Trinidad at start up of about 93.5%, excuse me, 93.5%, and about 2.5% carbon. We started out with higher quality targets. It is important to note that Louisiana achieved their quality targets in a single week. In one week, they reached the quality targets that we had set.
Wow.
It took Trinidad about, just to put it in perspective, it took Trinidad about five weeks to achieve its quality targets. In terms of achieving the nameplate daily production, Louisiana reached its daily production nameplate target in 11 weeks versus about 26 weeks for Trinidad to reach its nameplate daily production. Bear in mind that Louisiana's facility is a 2.5 million ton furnace, the largest operating in the world. This was a first-time event in the production of DRI. Trinidad certainly was a good start up, and we had some challenges there, but it was the restart of an existing facility that had been operating, so it faced a few less challenges.
Overall, I would say that I would also point out that being the largest furnace in the world, during the start up process, we set daily production records for DRI production out of a single furnace virtually every day during the course of the quarter. Overall, when I look at the start up of the Louisiana facility, particularly as I compare it to the start up of the Trinidad facility, our team in Louisiana did a great job, and we are very pleased, very, very pleased with the start up. Now, the team still has more work to do.
Okay, great. My second-
We need to focus on the process in Louisiana, not unlike what we had to do seven years ago in Trinidad, and we have to focus on improving the yield loss that is associated with the start up in the process.
Okay. My second question is on trade. We just had the preliminary decision in rebar, and some people are saying that it is partial good news because Mexico had tariffs that were meaningful, not great, but Turkey didn't get much of anything. I am just wondering here, and I have been observing trade for over 30 years now, and it is something that when you do steel, you spend a lot of time talking to lawyers. I just cannot help but wonder if a failed trade case, a zero tariff, is not so much a non-tariff as much as an endorsement of what the other guy is doing, A.K.A. sort of a license to steal. If that is the case, do we have a bigger problem coming between Korea and Turkey now, both in situations where they are essentially being given a kind of a free pass?
Well, let me start out by saying, Michelle, that these are preliminary findings, and that Commerce is not scheduled to give its final determination on these cases until September. I believe it's September of this year. So between now and then, believe me, we will be working hard to convince them to reevaluate their position on Turkey. It's also important to note, though, that Commerce did find that the producers in Turkey and Mexico were, in fact, dumping into the U.S. market. In addition, Commerce found critical circumstances for some, although not all of the foreign producers. Given the surge of imports that we've seen this year, we believe that Commerce should have found critical circumstances for all of the foreign producers dumping into our market.
Agreed.
We're disappointed. We're pleased with some parts of the ruling. We're disappointed with others. We're going to continue to work with Commerce and the ITC to get a better ruling when they have the final determination in September. I got to tell you, and I'll go on the record as saying it, we believe the department should have made decisions based on the evidence given in the record that would have produced higher margins for Turkey. And we will continue to work in Washington to express that opinion, utilizing all the strength of all 22,000 of our teammates.
Well, good luck with that. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Michelle.
And we'll take our next question from David Gagliano from Barclays.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. My questions are actually aimed at trying to drill down a bit more into the economics on the DRI side from Louisiana. If I look at the average scrap and scrap substitute cost per ton figure of $398 for Q1, what was the cost of the DRI per ton that's embedded in that $398 number?
Well, we're not going to go into those specifics. Clearly, I can tell you our competitors would love to hear those numbers. I will tell you, I'll make just a couple of general comments as I made during my comments in the script, that we will continue to focus on the process. We will continue to improve our reduce our yield loss as part of the process. As we continue to do that, we'll reduce our costs associated with the production of DRI.
Okay. Understood. Try this. How much of the 455,000 tons that was produced during the quarter, how much of that was actually consumed at the steel mills during the first quarter?
David, just as a side note, the costs at Louisiana really weren't a factor in the number you quoted because we sell DRI from the DRI facility to the steel mills at a market price. Trinidad operates and generates a profit based on selling price and costs. In fact, low competing raw material prices caused Louisiana to sell the materials at a low competing price with pig iron and busheling. So that was a factor in the performance in the quarter. But that number you're quoting reflects a market number.
Okay. Understood.
To address your second question, I don't have a specific number of how much was shipped out. But what I can tell you is that our mills are receiving it. They're consuming it at a rate of about 30%-40% of the total charge, and they are extremely pleased with the performance of the DRI in our furnace. In fact, it's performing slightly better than what we expected in some areas. We've seen significant energy savings as a result of the DRI. Furnace lining life has improved as a result of the coating that the DRI is providing in the process. And the electrode consumption has gone down with the use of DRI. So we're very, very pleased. Our teams are very, very pleased with the way that the DRI is performing in our furnaces today.
Okay. And I apologize for asking the same question a different way here, but I'm just trying to get to the economics, a little bit more color on the economics around how DRI is impacting the profitability. So I guess given that it's sold at a market price, is there a way to give us a sense as to whether after the cost and the sales transfer price, overall, was that a positive or a negative contributor to the results? And if so, is there a way to frame how much?
Well, in my script, I talked about what we've identified as pre-operating and startup costs for Trinidad, and it was just under $21 million.
For Louisiana.
For Louisiana, excuse me. For Louisiana in the first quarter. Again, there's two factors. One is the startup costs, or excuse me, optimizing the conversion cost, especially relating to yield as the mills ramped up to its full capacity, and now we fine-tune the actual process controls. The second factor is the commercial market it's operating in. When we started Trinidad back in 2007, it was competing with materials that had a much higher selling value. The fact that it had not yet optimized its costs wasn't as obvious, and it made money right away because it could ship the materials over at a much higher price.
Now, as we continue to go through the year, we will focus on the process, as I've mentioned.
We will improve the yield loss that's associated with the process, and we expect the financial performance to be much stronger towards the second half of this year. As I mentioned in the script, we're going to be shutting down for three weeks in June to make some modifications, which is not unexpected, again, in the startup of a new facility, particularly one that's the largest in the world. First time that we're operating one that large. So we're going to be shutting down for about three weeks to make some improvements that we believe will have a significant impact upon the yield loss associated with the process. Reducing the yield loss obviously is going to have a major impact on the cost profile of the facility.
As Jim mentioned, even given the current low market price for competing raw materials, we believe in the second half of the year, we will perform much better financially.
Okay. Do you believe it will be profitable in the second half of the year?
We do, yes.
Okay. All right. Thanks.
Again, given the current competitive raw material picture, we believe that raw materials are pretty much at a low point. We don't think they would get much lower, but again, if that happens, then you've set a new benchmark. Given the current raw materials remain constant going into the rest of the year, we believe that it will be financially positive, profitable in the second half of this year.
Okay, perfect. Thanks.
We'll take our next question from Curt Woodworth with Nomura.
Hey, good morning, John, everyone.
Hello, Curt. How are you?
I'm good. On the long product side, John, it seems like we've seen kind of mixed trends with respect to bar and beam pricing. It seems like the beam pricing has started to decouple a little bit from the scrap price, but rebar remains relatively depressed. I'm just wondering, do you think that's a function of relative demand strength and non-res more benefiting beam or more the import side hampering the rebar pricing?
Well, probably a little bit of both, okay? In terms of the rebar, demand was hurt in the first quarter, obviously, because of the weather conditions. We do see, as we go into the second quarter, a small improvement in demand that's tied to residential construction improving, again, modestly and from an extremely low level, but improving. That's offset by this issue of imports that we talked about in the script. So without a doubt, although we see a small improvement in demand, the pricing is being adversely impacted by the imports. On the structural steel side, on the wide-flange beam side, we see demand also improving marginally, but we don't have that same import pressure, and therefore, pricing has been a little bit more stable.
Okay. Last question on the M&A strategy. I saw that Steel Technologies acquired a small processor, I think a couple of days ago. Is that kind of the beginning of a broader trend for you guys looking at more downstream or processing capability?
Well, it's a case of us finding an opportunity that fit well with our strategy of going downstream. It fit very well with our Steel Technologies operation. It was a great bolt-on type operation, did not require a major change in management and a lot of additional cost to it. And it's one of our more profitable downstream products. Strip has been very strong throughout the downturn, frankly, and it's a result of the automotive strength and some other markets that are pretty strong. So we saw an opportunity to get a great company at a good price. It was a good bolt-on operation, and we took the opportunity.
Okay. Thank you.
And we'll take our next question from Sal Tharani with Goldman Sachs.
Good afternoon.
Wanted to ask you on this downtime you are going to take in the third week in June for three weeks. Do you have any idea what kind of cost should we associate with that in our model?
You are talking about the three-week outage that I mentioned for the DRI facility-
Yeah
-in Louisiana.
Yeah.
The cost will not be significant. There are some changes we will be making into the furnace, but we will not be incurring major costs associated with that. There will be some costs primarily associated with the conveyor systems. You might recall from an earlier call that in Louisiana, we have 4.5 mi of conveyor systems. Just as a point of reference to Michelle's earlier question, comparing it to Trinidad has about 1.5 mi of conveyors. When you have that much material handling, we are seeing some yield loss as a result of the impact of dropping the material from one belt or transfer house to another. We are going to be going in and doing some work softening the transferring of the material. It is not expensive work, it is just a bit time-consuming.
We'll also be making some adjustments to the internal structure of the furnace, which again, minor cost, but time-consuming. We're estimating a three-week outage, minimal cost, but we will be down for three weeks. I'll mention before the question is asked that we fully anticipated this, and we've been building our raw material stockpile to take it into account. So we will have sufficient high-quality iron units on hand to weather through this three-week downturn.
Hey, Sal, as a side point, pre-operating and startup costs were mainly related to Trinidad. The balance we expect-
Louisiana
Oh, for Louisiana. Keep saying Trinidad. For Louisiana. The amount we expect in the second quarter is going to be more in the $10 million-$15 million range.
Depending on how quickly Louisiana is able to get the yield improvements that they're working on right now.
$10 million-$15 million in 2Q?
Yes.
Okay. Great. Helpful. Jim, did you mention in your prepared remarks in very early sentences that half of your volume is tied to non-res? Is that correct what I heard?
Generally, that's true, yes.
Okay. I want to ask you-
I think I said more than half.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I think I said more than half, but go ahead.
More than half, okay. I want to ask you about the gas project. Gas prices have been steadily going up, and I think people are of the view that it may last for a while. I'm wondering, are you properly hedged or does it make sense to rethink about starting drilling? Or you think that you are already committed not to drill this year and you can't change that decision?
Well, we're comfortable with the level that we're hedged certainly through this year, and we'll evaluate what we're going to do as we enter into next year. To give you some perspective on that, what we're getting out of our wells relative to what we're consuming at our furnaces in Louisiana. On average, we were receiving about 100,000 MMBtus per day during Q1. Right now, our usage at the Louisiana facility running pretty much full out. We're consuming 75,000-80,000 MMBtus per day . That just gives you some sense of where we stand today in terms of our coverage of gas needs in Louisiana. Now, obviously, as we go through the year and we start some of the depletion on the existing wells, that will change, but we're comfortable with the level that we're hedged through this year.
We'll reevaluate what we're going to do in the way of drilling next year based upon how we see pricing going forward and other factors.
Okay. When you talked about the yield loss at the Louisiana plant, if you benchmark it against the Trinidad plant, how far are you off? Are you 10%, 15% below, or you think more than that?
We think it's about 3%.
Okay.
But again, I want to point out that when we started the Trinidad plant, the yield loss was more in line of what we're seeing today at Louisiana. Now, having gone through the process improvements in Trinidad, we've been able to reduce it. And frankly, we plan to reduce the yield loss in Trinidad even further by the startup of a briquetter that's currently being installed.
What is a typical yield loss, by the way? Ideal yield loss you would like to see in a DRI plant.
I'd like to see zero.
What is achievable, let's put it this way.
I would say that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2%-3% is probably a good goal. Now, of course, when I talk to our team in Trinidad and Louisiana, I will be saying I made a mistake on the call, and what I am really looking to achieve is 1.5%- 1%.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
We will take our next question from Nathan Littlewood with Crédit Suisse.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Just had a few questions. Couple have already been addressed, but could you talk a little bit about some of the market share opportunities you might be seeing at the moment, in relation to the blast furnace outages, or not outages, but sort of ramp backs.
If I'm understanding the question correctly, you're asking me about, are we seeing a demand pickup based on some of the struggles that our competitors are seeing in the marketplace?
Correct. If you could just talk about what sort of products they might be in, what sort of end markets, that sort of stuff.
It's primarily in sheets, okay, that most of the difficulty has been occurring. And we're seeing it across all of the sheet markets. It's been a little bit of a challenge for them. We've seen incremental pickup in our orders. We've had customers coming to us looking for additional tons, and we've had new customers coming to us looking for tons. Clearly, as they do, we have been servicing them as we can, as we have the ability to do. But of course, we're not looking for a short-term commitment from them. We are looking to build upon this short-term need, frankly, by requesting and frankly insisting that we get a longer-term commitment from them on the supply of steel.
Do you think that that will be successful in terms of retaining-
We've already seen success-
-the long-term basis.
-frankly, on it. Over the last several weeks, we've picked up some incremental business and, of course, with that, some additional market share. Again, in areas of automotive, and others, type two, for example, excuse me, OCTG and others. Now, the situation is still playing out. So we don't know exactly what's going to happen, but we suspect that we'll see a challenged supply-side market on sheet at least through the second quarter.
Got it. Okay. Second one was, again, just about DRI, and look, congratulations on the great start up there. It sounds like it's going incredibly well. I recall you talking in the past about pig iron being the natural substitute for this DRI material. I was just wondering, based on what you can see at the moment in terms of raw materials pricing, is pig iron still the right material to be substituting at the moment. The second question was just thinking more broadly about the operation of this facility. I'm keen to understand how quickly you guys can move your raw material procurement strategy to take advantage of different price spreads between all these raw materials.
If, for example, one week we saw ferrous scrap prices drop by $20 or $30 relative to pig iron at DRI, HBI, whatever, how quickly could you change your raw material blend to take advantage of that?
Frankly, at a moment's notice. Our furnaces are extremely flexible, and I've mentioned several times that one of the key benefits we see of our DRI strategy is it gives our team the ability to do substitutions as the raw material costs change. Given the flexibility of our furnaces, we basically charge our furnace from heat to heat, from batch to batch. We can make those changes very quickly. We have a great team at our David J. Joseph Company that's continuously out there getting a great sense of what's happening in the market. They look at what's happening with pig iron pricing. They look at what's happening with prime scrap markets. We know what's going on with DRI. We look at HBI. Frankly, we even look at obsolete scrap.
Because at the end of the day, if obsolete scrap drops to a very low level, we can put more obsolete scrap into our furnace and achieve the same iron unit quality by putting more DRI into the furnace. To answer your basic question, we can change mixes into our furnace on a heat-by-heat basis. Almost instantaneously we can change them. We keep enough inventory at our plants to be able to change that mix on a regular basis. In terms of looking out into the future to build the inventories, our teams are always out. Our team at DJ Joseph, through their trading arm, have a great feel on what's coming down the pike in terms of pricing, and we can adjust for our future demands also.
Got it. Understood. Thank you. Just to round out David's questions a little bit further, I know you were talking about a year or so ago about potential savings on this DRI plant of about $100 per ton in terms of the DRI-to-pig iron substitution. We've obviously seen coking coal come off a lot, pig iron prices come down. If you were to reforecast that $100 today, what do you think the number would be?
Well, one of the things that we have on our website that's available is this calculator for just that purpose. It gives you the ability to plug in different iron ore pricing and coking coal pricing and the price of gas per MMBtu. When you do that, you can get a good comparison between the final cost of the liquid iron coming out using DRI and ore out of a blast furnace. I would suggest, I do not have the math in front of me right now, but I would suggest that you use that tool to take a look at it. Certainly, coking coal is at an unusually low number. I do not know the current number today. The last time I looked was last week. I think it was about $115 a ton, somewhere in that ballpark. Keith, is that about-
$115, $120.
$115 or $120. And iron ore is also at a very low level, about $125, $126.
Lower.
A little bit lower, somewhere in that range. These are unusually low numbers. Frankly, it is a result of demand for steel worldwide slowing down, the slowdown in China. That is going to change. When we talked about the advantages that we saw in the DRI project a year ago or a year and a half ago, we were looking at it relative to the competitive raw material cost at the time. We were looking at it in relation to the other products that you mentioned, coking coal and so forth. Things change. We have always said consistently that whether the DRI facility in Louisiana is a single or a grand slam is going to be a result of factors that strongly include the price of competitive raw materials and the pricing of the commodities that go into blast furnaces to produce competitively priced iron units.
Sure. Thank you. Is there any updates that you would be able to offer in terms of commitment to the phase II plant?
We get asked that question every time. Let me make sure I understood the question you are asking. Were we willing to make a commitment at this time to when we would proceed with a second DRI facility?
Correct. Yep.
Well, as I said in the past, no, not at this time. We are continuing to look at it. We want to get the first one up and running and stabilized. Then we are going to take a look at the environment with all the factors that I mentioned earlier and make the decision on when it is appropriate to move forward. I will say, as I always add as a caveat, we have the land, we have the infrastructure, we are gaining the knowledge, and we will be ready at the right time.
Understood. Thank you. Just a final one, circling back on the trade case stuff that Michelle was asking about earlier. I guess we were pretty surprised at how big the Mexico tariff was, or duty was, and also surprised at how low the Turkish number was. When you think about your sort of involvement in the case over the next few months, and I guess the data and analysis that you will be sort of contributing to that, is there any sort of data points or analysis that you could kind of refer to or talk about that might give us confidence that maybe those Turkish duties are going to be increased relative to the preliminary decision?
Well, all I can tell you is that, again, the final determination will come in September. Between now and then, the appropriate agencies will be taking a hard look at what we call the in-country verifications, to make sure that what was testified to in the hearings is, in fact, the accurate information. Now, we believe that as we look at the data that was put into the record, that they should have had higher duties applied, and we will be pushing that issue. Of course, the ultimate call is Commerce and the ITC.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you very much, and appreciate your time.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Timna Tanners with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch.
Hey, good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Timna.
I'm going to be bold here and not ask about DRI or trade cases, but it seems to me
Oh, you're radical.
I know, brace yourself. There's two things that I thought you kind of glossed over, if you don't mind my saying so, on the script. One is that you said you're aggressively going after the opportunity to pursue high-strength, lightweight steels. I'm sure you've heard that the aluminum folks are talking aggressively as well about their opportunities. What does it mean for Nucor to be going after this aggressively? What does that mean? Are you qualified? Are you sending volumes to the auto industry? Can you help us understand how to think about that or model that opportunity going forward?
Certainly. I'll make some comments. As I mentioned, we're continuing to develop and to seek qualification of advanced high-strength steels. We continue to make significant strides in the exposed automotive applications. We're in various stages of qualifications for both cold-rolled and galvanized exposed parts with imminent supply agreements at hand. As I mentioned on the last call, Timna, some Nucor sheet is already in use for exposed applications. We tend to focus on sheet, but there's other areas of automotive that we're going after, too, and that's in the SBQ. We've developed products that are currently in use in crankshaft steels. We're producing axle steels for the automotive industry in our facility in Norfolk, Nebraska. We're developing gear steels for drivetrain applications in our Memphis facility.
I guess maybe to help you understand a little bit about what we're doing, you need to take a look back at some of the CapEx that we've spent in the last couple of years that are specifically focused on attracting more automotive business. The number of degassers that we've installed throughout the company. The wide/light project that I mentioned again today in the script, which includes a seventh stand at Berkeley. That's going to give us an opportunity with the 72-in-wide product to get into some products for the automotive that we can't currently produce without it. The Decatur automotive quality galvanizing line that we started up a few years ago. The quality assurance line that we started up last year in Memphis.
So when you look at the focus that we put in terms of our CapEx investments, you should have some level of confidence of how successful we can be moving into the automotive arena. What also might help you, Timna, just to give you some idea of where we stand today. In 2013, in sheet SBQ and cold finish, the products that go into automotive, about 11% of those products that we produce went into automotive today or in 2013. One more point that I would tell you, and that is this. The automotive companies like the reliability that Nucor offers them. We're extremely reliable with our four sheet mills. As a result, the auto companies themselves have been actively working with our auto team to help us develop, qualify, and get our steel into their cars.
Okay, I thought 10% or so was your historical percent exposure to auto, so maybe it'd be helpful to think about how that compares with where you've been historically or the incremental amount. Obviously, I'm asking for a lot here, but margin per ton or volumes. If at some point you're able to provide that, I know that would be something that could be really interesting.
Well, we'll take that under advisement. I'm not sure where the 10% number came from in the past. I can tell you that we've grown that significantly over the last two years. It is about 11% today. We expect it to grow another 4%-5% next year above that level. Our long-term goal, again, focusing just on the sheet SBQ and cold finish, our long-term goal would be somewhere around 15% of those products. I'm just getting some information from my teammates here about where the 10% number came from, and it was 10% of the total steel-
Yeah
-that we supplied at that time went into automotive. The 15% is for sheet cold finish and SBQ shipments.
Gotcha. Okay. The other question I had was if you could give us some color on the comments about your second quarter. Obviously, some improvement could mean a lot of things. Could you tell us what your customers are saying, particularly with regard to any pent-up demand after the particularly tough first quarter? Thanks.
Well, I can tell you that our key service center customers are reporting stronger shipments, and our shipments to the end markets that we serve are also improving. Inventories at the service centers, as you know, are at historically low levels. The entire supply chain is extremely lean. There does seem to be some catch-up going on. I noted in the earnings release this morning, the Reliance Steel release this morning, David Hannah, their Chairman and CEO, stated that both demand and pricing increased sequentially for three months in a row during the first quarter, a trend that we have not experienced since 2012. We see that as a very good sign. So yeah, we see some pickup. We think the second quarter will be somewhat better than the first. We tend to be a little conservative, okay?
Because we don't know how things are going to play out. Right now, our backlogs are good across all of our product lines, our steel lines, and our downstream businesses. We've seen, particularly of note in the downstream businesses, the order entry rate and backlogs during the first quarter improve significantly. Our structural business, as I mentioned earlier, is doing well. Certainly, our plate business is doing very well. As we come out of the winter and go into the spring, the construction sites are going to ease up, open up. You'll see construction that has been challenged in the first quarter because of weather conditions will start to move again. So, we feel pretty good about the second quarter.
Okay, cool. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Phil Gibbs with KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Hey, good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Phil. How are you?
Doing well. John, I just had a question on the iron ore supply chain into the DRI project. Are you, from a lead time perspective, able to get that in a month or two, or in the first quarter, were you costing some maybe some iron ore that would've been priced at, call it mid-2013 or call it 3Q13 levels? Just trying to understand the supply chain there.
Phil, we have a very regular supply chain. It comes in basically on a monthly basis. So it's very short. Our costing tends to be very current with current market pricing. It's a regular supply. We get from a couple of sources in Brazil, from a source in Canada, and we get it even from one source in Sweden. As you know, that iron ore pricing is based upon a three-month contract. That's the way it's done now. So our consumption is current with the current three-month contract. We don't have a long lead time. Because of the various locations we bring the product in from, we're not subjected to any weather issues. We don't need to buy an icebreaker.
Okay. I appreciate that. Then for Jim, any sort of way you could characterize the first quarter? I think you said $20 million of startup losses in DRI, and I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but how much of that was related to things that were purely maybe more mechanical, versus the cost of the actual unit coming out, if there's any way to separate those two things? Or maybe you don't even look at it that way. I'm just trying to understand that.
It wasn't really mechanical cost. Maybe there was probably some overhead cost of having some contractors and support people there that helped them during the startup. But I would say the majority was truly related to conversion costs.
Let me build on that for a minute, Jim, and say that in the last call, I used the term hiccups, and I guess I used it too much. But I was very pleased to find out I'm a terrible predictor of what's to come, because I got to tell you what, from an equipment perspective, from an operating perspective, the startup in Louisiana was absolutely stellar. You think about the fact that there's 4.5 mi of conveyor systems supported by, if I have the number right, I believe it's something like 12,000 supporting rollers. You think about those numbers, and we had very few shutdowns due to equipment in the first quarter. The team did a great job, and the equipment performed extremely well. I just can't say how pleased we are with the equipment and the operating side.
Now, as Jim mentioned again, listen, we've got to focus on the process. It's a new process, and when I say it's a new process, it's a new process for us. It's a larger furnace. The HYL process itself is a proven technology. It is not a new technology. But whenever you go through any startup, I've started up several melt shops in my career, and whenever you go through the startup, there's inevitably a more significant yield loss during the startup that occurs than when you become more familiar with the process and you get all of the variables under control. For example, here in Louisiana, we have several different sources of iron ore that go in. The amount of gas that's used for different types of iron ore is a factor that will affect the yield. So it's not an issue of the process or the equipment.
It's an issue of becoming familiar with the different mixes and the products that are being produced and optimizing that process.
Okay. Can you just remind us, and I think you mentioned it already, about how much you're physically hedged on natural gas, and if there's any more wells that you have that are, call it in development or where you expect to be at the end of this year? Thanks.
Yeah. At the end of Q1, we're currently at 277 operating wells, and we expect to be at about 316 when we wrap up the drilling program in June. So that gives you some idea of where we are. Again, in terms of production, we averaged just under 100,000 MMBtus per day in Q1. Currently at our DRI facility in Louisiana, we're consuming somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 MMBtus per day. So that gives you some idea of the relative hedge that's in place. As I mentioned earlier, that will change with time as we move forward, both with increasing production at Louisiana and as the wells deplete. But we're very comfortable with where we are in our hedge position, certainly for this year.
As we get closer to the end of the year and look at what happens with the future curve for gas pricing going forward, we'll examine that again at the end of the year and make a decision on whether to resume drilling in 2015. Again, as I mentioned on our last call, the gas is not going anywhere, so it's going to stay there in the ground. If we can drill it when it's $4.25, that's good. If we can drill it when it's $7.75, that's a whole lot better. So it's not going anywhere. It's there available to us. We don't lose anything by waiting. We have the opportunity to take it out of the ground at a higher price, as we believe gas pricing will, over time, ultimately increase.
Thanks, John.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Brian Yu with Citi.
Thanks, and good afternoon, John, team. My first question is just on exports. Could you speak to how much volume you did? Along those lines, we do have stronger pricing in the domestic market. Is there an opportunity to try to divert some of those tons back to the domestics, given the better margins here?
Currently, we're exporting about 8% of our total production, to answer your first question. Can you repeat the second question? I wasn't quite sure what you meant by diverting it back.
Yeah. Just that it seems like for many products, we have better pricing here. I want to see if there's an opportunity to try to sell those domestically, given the price improvements we've seen in the last quarter.
Okay. Actually, good question, and it points out a clarification I should make. When we talk about exporting 8% of our product for total production, we target on exports very high-valued steel for special applications. The pricing for it, even on an international basis, is very good. The differential that you're talking about is more on the commodity grades. We don't export a lot of the commodity grades. We tend to focus on the higher quality products, going for higher quality, higher valued applications overseas. So there really is not that much of a difference in pricing internationally and domestically on those products.
Okay. That's helpful. I want to make sure that I've got all the moving pieces squared away on DRI, because there's been a lot asked about it. Just first off, on the startup cost, it's $20 million in first quarter, and you're expecting $10 million-$15 million in the second quarter. So some improvement there.
That's correct.
And then volumes, just from my back of the envelope calculations, with a three-week shutdown, you might be looking at about 470 some odd thousand tons versus 455 in the first quarter. So maybe slightly better volumes in 2Q. Then just on the yield loss, since you're taking those downtime towards the tail end of the second quarter, any improvements on yield we're unlikely to see until 3Q?
Well, first of all, just what we're projecting in terms of production out of the DRI facility in the second quarter is probably around 500,000 tons. Okay?
Okay.
So even though with the three-week outage, because of the improvements that were made in production, we will still produce about 500,000 tons. Secondly, to your question of whether we'll see the yield loss improvements or the yield improvements only after we make the changes at the end of the quarter. That's partially true. But there's also another factor that comes into yield loss, and that's with the briquetter. And we're installing a briquetter, which will be up and running very, very shortly. Okay. The briquetter will be up and running in the next two to three weeks. We expect to see a significant yield loss improvement or a significant yield improvement with the startup and running of the briquetter. Now, we're also installing a briquetter in Trinidad, but that's not going to be ready probably towards the end of the year.
Okay.
Okay?
Yep. Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Martin Englert with Jefferies.
Hi, good afternoon.
Well, Martin, how are you?
Okay, and yourself?
I'm doing well, thank you.
I had a quick question on the plate improvement and the volumes there. They're up pretty substantially year-on-year. Just wanted to get an idea if this was mainly market share gains or improving end user demand there?
Well, it's a little bit of both. Okay, certainly demand is up. I have to tell you that our ability to piggyback business, given the heat treat and normalized product that we offer to the market now, we've increased significantly the breadth of product that we offer to the market. With that, we've increased our market share. The plate market has been strong. It's been going well. Pricing has been good, and demand has been good.
What's been the primary driver within the demand on the consumption on there, improvement?
Well, there's a lot of things that are doing well. Shipbuilding, barge building, rail cars, bridge projects, wind towers are still strong. I mentioned rail cars, but specifically tank cars. With all of the movement of natural gas, there's a big demand for that. All of those markets are strong. We're kind of hitting on all cylinders right now.
Yep. Martin, this is Joe Stratman. I'd like to add one thing. You recall a couple of years ago, we set out to improve the mix we have in the plate business, expand products. We're more able now to go after a broader range of plate products, and those plate products that are in higher demand and offer higher margins at any given point in the cycle, we have a better ability to participate in those markets than we did two or three years ago.
I want to make a correction here. I mentioned when I was talking about the tank cars, I mentioned natural gas, I meant to say oil. There's been so much discussion about DRI and natural gas that I made a Freudian slip.
Thank you. That's helpful. One other one within the rebar fabrication business, I wanted to get an idea of the opportunity there. If you have a ballpark estimate on what kind of utilization or what type of annual capability you have within downstream rebar fab?
You want to take a shot at that, Ray?
Well, as far as rebar, this is Ray Napolitan. As far as rebar fabrication goes, we certainly have additional utilization capabilities in combination with our bar mill group partners. Let's suffice to say we're not stretched at this point in time.
One thing I would add, though, Ray, is given the placement business that we've just acquired a short time ago, and the fact that we can offer a complete solution to the customer, the rebar fabrication and placement has helped us improve our market share and our volumes.
Yes, absolutely, John, is moving up the value chain with fabrication and placing. A single-stop shop for our customers. Yes.
How are the backlogs looking within rebar fab year-on-year?
Backlogs in rebar fab are up year-on-year, and so are order entry levels.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Next question.
We'll take our next question from Aldo Mazzaferro with Macquarie.
Hi. Good afternoon, John. How are you?
I'm well, thank you. How are you?
Good. I have two questions. First one, kind of a simple one. In terms of your comment about the energy costs having risen about $7 a ton, which quite a significant number, can you say how many quarters you might think it would take to revert to normal, or is it there already?
You talking about energy costs?
Yeah.
The energy costs are a market. How quickly they revert to normal will depend, I think, on weather, frankly, and how quickly natural gas supplies and storage levels get to the point where those prices get pushed back down. But we saw increases in both natural gas costs and electricity costs at our steel mills. That $7 number does not include the benefit of our natural gas produced in our working interest agreement relationship. That shows up separately in our raw material segment with the DRI business.
Right. Did you say you think it's mostly reverting now or not yet?
It has started getting better, but I don't think it's gone back to levels we saw in the fourth quarter yet.
Right. Okay. On a separate topic, you've got extremely strong liquidity on your balance sheet right now, including the credit line, and I see your CapEx is closer, maybe a little below depreciation levels. I'm wondering, can you talk a little bit about your three to five-year view? Is that what Nucor wants to be three to five years out in terms of size or products, or especially what are you planning for that money?
What Nucor wants to be in three to five years is the most profitable steel and steel products company in the world. That's always been our goal, and our intention is to achieve it. In terms of what direction we're going to go in terms of investments, it's really impossible to say. We have such a breadth of products across our company that we have the potential to look at many opportunities. It's really a question of what opportunities become available, how they're priced, how they fit in with the long-term strategy of the company, and whether it's the right move to make at the time. So we like to say we keep our powder dry, we keep a strong balance sheet so that we're ready when the right opportunity comes, and we'll take advantage of it at the right time.
Great. Thank you very much.
And we'll take our next question from Matt Murphy with UBS.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Matt.
How are you?
Good.
Good. If I look across your product lines, most product lines seem to be pushing to post-recession highs. Maybe sheet stands out as a little bit of a laggard. Does that basically come down to price discipline. You talked a little bit going forward about trying to get some business back as customers are finding themselves short. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit more?
Well, the sheet market has been more challenged than other markets. Rebar has also been extremely challenged. The drivers in both of those cases, frankly, is imports. Imports have had a devastating effect on rebar pricing. It has had a devastating effect on sheet pricing. In both cases, we see demand picking up a little bit, but not significantly. Then touching upon your other question, or going back to the challenges in the sheet market that some of our customers are experiencing and what it's done for us, as I mentioned earlier, we've picked up incremental business during these supply disruptions. Conditional to the pushed-in business, we make sure that we will take the business conditioned upon the fact that it stays on our books and award it to Nucor throughout the rest of the calendar year.
We're taking advantage of the opportunities as they come up. But certainly, sheet has been a challenged market along with rebar.
What mix of clients that you're talking to would've been former clients versus new clients on the sheet?
Well, I do not know that I have that number. Frankly, we take care of our long-term customers. Our long-term customers who have had issues with other suppliers who are coming to us, we are certainly taking care of them first. We do not have a lot of interest in customers who come to us only in times of need, when their regular supplier has let them down because they are not as reliable as Nucor is as a supplier. I do not have a specific number, but I would tell you that I think the additional tons that we are able to supply to people in need, most of them are going to our longer-term customers who have been loyal to us, and we are taking care of them now.
Got it. Then on your automotive business, I do not need to know margin comparisons between your SBQ or your initiatives in advanced high-strength steels, but could you put in order for me kind of your rank of where you would produce material if you had the choice in terms of high-strength sheet SBQ or just cold finish?
I do not know that I would differentiate them and put them in any order of priority. They are all good businesses. We are focused on all three, and we are working hard to develop new products in all three of those areas. We do not put one above the other. We are focused on all three areas.
Okay, in the SBQ market, are you seeing any impact from new domestic competition?
Yes. Jim?
Yeah. Jim Darsey. Several years ago, additional SBQ capacity was announced. Nucor and other companies announced additional SBQ capacity in anticipation of the market for SBQ growing in this country. The market continues to grow, and from our perspective, the SBQ producers have added capacity that has absorbed the growth in the market. It's been pretty well-balanced.
Okay, thanks a lot.
We'll take our next question from Evan Kurtz with Morgan Stanley.
Hey, good afternoon, guys.
Good afternoon, Evan. How are you?
I am doing pretty well. I will try to keep it brief. I know it is almost 3:20. Just one quick one on DRI. I know every question is possibly being asked, but I have one more. It is carbon levels. Where are you today? Where do you hope to be? Are you having to charge carbon at your EAF at the current levels, if you are replacing pig iron?
Currently, we are at about 4% carbon level. That is really a good level of carbon. We might be able to push it up another quarter percent, but I do not see us going much more above that. But 4% carbon on DRI is a really good quality product.
To your other question of are we still injecting, what was it?
Just a minute.
Oh.
Yeah, this is Ladd Hall. The more carbon you put in with a DRI, the less carbon you inject. We're still injecting some of them.
I do want to make one thing clear. There's a certain point where you don't want a certain amount of carbon in that DRI. When you put carbon in, you take metallics out. So there is a magic number in there, and we're probably around 4%+ of that magic number. That's where we're going to be at. We're not really striving to get a higher carbon number than that.
Okay. Thanks, Ladd.
Gotcha. Just one last one. On the auto sheet front, do you have any plans to build a continuous annealing line and get into Gen 3 products?
Well, we're always taking a look at new opportunities, so I'm not going to say no. At this point, it's not high on our list of things to do. We are studying it. We're taking a look at the market, and we're going to see whether or not that's something we need to move forward.
Okay. Thanks so much, guys.
And we'll take our next question from Michael Gambardella with JP Morgan.
Yes. Good afternoon, John.
I have a question on the sheet market. How much capacity do you have freed up that you can take share from some of your competitors right now?
Well, let's see. Probably, we're operating somewhere in the neighborhood of 80%-85% capacity utilization. So we would have a small amount that we could continue to take. And of course, that's where we are today. While we did have quite an influx of orders over the last couple of weeks, so we're in the process of processing those orders. So I would say that we're getting close to the point where we would not be able to take any more business. But at the right price, we can always work in a few tons. So if there's a customer listening to the call that needs some steel in a hurry, give us a call.
How far out are you booked right now on sheet?
We're out to the end of June.
What's the pricing for at the end of June right now on hot roll?
I'm not going to give any specific price, but we're in the neighborhood of about $680- $700.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
We'll take our next question from Andrew Lane with Morningstar.
Good afternoon. Really just one question from me. Now that your mills are using increasing volumes of DRI produced in-house, have your scrap purchasing practices changed, if at all? You discussed the batch-to-batch flexibility that DRI application allows for when selecting quantities of various feedstocks, but have you already begun to change your actual usage mix of obsolete scrap relative to higher quality scrap as you apply incremental DRI to your melts?
Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, we've been able to achieve mixes of up to 30%-40% of DRI, and when you get to that level, it allows you to put much more obsolete scrap into the furnace. So we are adjusting our mixes on a regular basis. We're taking a look, as I mentioned earlier, on pricing of all of the various commodities, and we're making adjustments to optimize the mix cost.
Okay. And was that-
Every day right now.
Yeah. And was that 30%-40% kind of a target level that you've achieved and you're happy with, or is that going to be pushed higher in the coming quarters?
Well, we'll work to move it a little bit higher, but I have to tell you, we're pretty happy with that percentage. If you go back just a couple of years when we had the quality of the DRI nowhere close to where it is today at our facility in Trinidad as well as the one in Louisiana, we were in the neighborhood of only being able to achieve 8%-10% of the total raw material input. Today, we're at 30%-40%. We've pushed it on an experimental basis. At one of our facilities, we were over 50%. I'll leave it at that.
Okay, great. Thanks for the color.
We will take our next question from Sal Tharani.
Thank you. You mentioned a spreadsheet you have on your website, which is very helpful in terms of calculating the cost of DRI. I was wondering how should we think about the iron ore cost? Do you have a lag? Do you buy a three-month lag or four-month lag? Some companies in the U.S. have that kind of formula. I just was wondering when we use the iron ore price, what should we use in the calculation? Because the iron ore price changes almost every day.
Well, mostly iron ore is sold on a quarterly contract price basis, okay? So when you want to look at what you would put into the formula, you would look at the last quarter's contract price, okay? So it is really a three-month lagging number. If you want to look at it currently, it would be in the December, January, February, March levels.
Okay, great. That is helpful. One more thing. You are one of the companies who had walked away from the CRU-minus contracts, which I think is a very good strategy. I was just wondering if anything you can share in terms of what you learned, any regrets, anything you missed out, or you think that it worked out very well as you had expected?
Well, it has proven to be a good decision, without a doubt, particularly with our ability to take advantage of the spot market improvement over the last couple of weeks. We have been able to manage our sheet order book to a more effective balance between contracts and real spot market pricing. So overall, we believe it was a good decision. We are pleased with the outcome.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
It appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Ferriola, I would like to turn the conference back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you. Let me conclude by saying thank you to our shareholders. We certainly appreciate your confidence and your support. Thank you to our customers. We appreciate your business. I want to say thank you to my Nucor teammates for creating value for our customers, generating attractive returns for our shareholders, and building a sustainable future for all of us. Most importantly, like always, thank you for doing it safely. Thanks to you all for your interest in Nucor. Have a great day.