Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Nucor Corporation third quarter of 2013 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will come 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 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 they are based on reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that future events will not affect their accuracy. More information about the risks and uncertainties relating to these forward-looking statements may be found in 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 obligation to update them, either as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Now for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. John Ferriola, Chief Executive Officer and President of Nucor Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Keith. Good afternoon. This is John Ferriola, Nucor's 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 other members of Nucor's senior leadership team, Dan DiMicco, Nucor's Executive Chairman; Jim Frias, our Chief Financial Officer; 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 teams at Nucor, Harris Steel, David J. Joseph, Duferdofin, Nucor Steel Technologies, and Skyline Steel, for working safely, working hard, and working together to ensure Nucor's success. The more than 22,000 men and women of the Nucor team are our company's greatest asset and our greatest competitive advantage.
You are the right people doing the right things every day to build our company's long-term earnings power. Thank you all. Economic and steel market conditions remain challenging. But Nucor is in a position of strength in our industry, and we continue to grow stronger every day. Our team is primed and ready for the inevitable steel industry cyclical upturn. I will now ask our CFO, Jim Frias, to review our third quarter results and financial position. Following Jim's remarks, I will provide an update on our many initiatives focused on profitable growth. Jim?
Thanks, John, and good afternoon. Nucor's third quarter 2013 earnings of $0.46 per diluted share increased from the second quarter of 2013 earnings of $0.27 per diluted share. Results for the just completed quarter included a one-time charge of $0.03 per share for estimated costs associated with the storage dome collapse at Nucor Steel Louisiana. Third quarter performance also exceeded our guidance range of between $0.35 to $0.40 per diluted share. Our guidance was issued on September 17th, prior to the dome collapse on September 25th. The third quarter profit improvement was largely due to stronger performance at our sheet mills, as we were able to capitalize on opportunities resulting from competitor supply disruptions. Structural steel results also benefited from Nucor Yamato's higher third quarter production rates following its planned 17-day outage in the second quarter.
It is also worth noting that our downstream steel products segment, which includes joists and decking, rebar fabrication, and pre-engineered metal buildings, has reported profits for four of the past six quarters. Nucor's fabricated products teams are delivering profitable performance in a very depressed non-residential construction market. A comment about our tax rates, since it can be confusing due to the impact of profits from non-controlling interests. After adjusting out profits belonging to our business partners in the third quarter of 2013, effective tax rate was 32.2%. During the quarter, we completed a capital raise that both lowered our cost of capital and lengthened our debt maturity profile. In late July, Nucor issued a total of $1 billion in debt, $500 million of 4% notes due in 2023, and $500 million of 5.2% notes due in 2043.
This bond offering effectively refinanced $900 million of maturing debt that we retired in the fourth quarter of 2012 and in this year's second quarter. The weighted average coupon rate of the new debt is 35 basis points lower than the retired debt. We also lengthened our debt maturity profile. The new debt has a weighted average maturity term of 20 years versus less than seven years for the retired debt. Our next significant debt maturity is not until 2017. Financial strength remains an important attribute of Nucor's business model. It is critical to our ability to invest through the cycle and grow stronger during downturns. Nucor is the only steel producer in North America to enjoy the extremely important competitive advantage of an investment-grade credit rating. At the end of the third quarter, our total debt-to-capital ratio was And restricted cash total over $1.7 billion.
Further to Nucor's strong liquidity, our $1.5 billion unsecured revolving credit facility is undrawn. This facility was amended and restated following the debt offering, with the maturity date extended almost three years to August of 2018. We have no commercial paper outstanding. In the current very difficult steel market conditions, Nucor's cash flow generation remains very healthy. Through the first nine months of 2013, cash provided by operating activities was $884 million. 2013 capital expenditures are expected to exceed $1.1 billion. By the end of the current year, Nucor will have invested approximately $8 billion of capital since the steel market's last cyclical peak. Nearly $3 billion of that total is being invested in the 2012 to 2013 period.
These more recent investments, both capital spending and acquisitions, largely consist of what we view as relatively low risk and high return projects, focused on strategic objectives to lower our raw material costs and expand our product mix to include more value-added offerings. Lowering our raw material cost improves our competitive position and profitability throughout the economic cycle. Expanding our portfolio to include more value-added, higher margin products does the same, as well as reducing the competitive pressure we face from imports. We will complete a number of these strategic projects over the balance of this year and into the first half of 2014. For that reason, we expect somewhat lower capital expenditures next year. Spending at our steel making, raw materials, and downstream products businesses should decline to closer to maintenance type levels.
At the same time, our natural gas drilling expenditures will be at contractual levels, which we have previously disclosed totaling over $700 million for the two-year period of 2014 and 2015. Nucor's natural gas investments are securing a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas sufficient to cover our expected future steel making and DRI production needs for more than 20 years. The performance of wells drilled over the past two years has exceeded the projections we used to justify this capital allocation. That, of course, translates into lower than expected gas costs. We also expect our natural gas investments to be cash flow positive by late in 2016. For the fourth quarter, Nucor's earnings are expected to be moderately lower than the third quarter, as we typically experience lower shipments in this period due to seasonal factors.
Additionally, we are planning extended production outages in this year's fourth quarter at several mills in preparation for previously announced capital expansion projects. These include our Berkeley County, South Carolina sheet mill's wide-light product expansion, our Nucor Yamato structural mill's sheet piling product expansion, and our Norfolk, Nebraska bar mill's SBQ product expansion. Going forward, we see some encouraging signs in the marketplace. The Metals Service Center Institute September 2013 data, released earlier this week, reported both very lean inventories and improvement shipments at service centers. The Architecture Billings Index has been positive, indicating an expansion in billings in 12 of the past 13 months. In its most recent update, the American Institute of Architects stated that the trend points to an impending healthy upturn in non-residential construction activity. We will again follow our practice of providing quantitative guidance in the final month of the quarter. John?
Thanks, Jim. 2013 represents the fifth consecutive year of a stagnant global economy, and in turn, extremely difficult steel market conditions. Two facts tell the story. First, the U.S. steel industry's capacity utilization rate remains mired well below 80%. Second, imports of steel into the United States are on pace to again exceed 30 million tons this year, or approximately double their 2009 level. These conditions make no economic sense at all, given the fact that American producers are among the lowest cost producers of steel in the world. You have heard us say numerous times that the very serious problems depressing our economy and steel markets do have solutions. The American economy can be reinvigorated if our leaders simply allow us to seize the very significant opportunities open to our country today.
These opportunities include an abundant and low-cost supply of energy, infrastructure rebuilding, and a resurgent U.S. manufacturing sector. Importantly, they all offer the vital ingredient required for sustainable economic growth: jobs. More specific to the steel industry, policy makers must address the huge issue of global steel overcapacity. In China and other countries, there are large amounts of steel making capacity that is not globally cost efficient but continues to dump steel into the global marketplace as a result of government subsidies. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development this year estimated Chinese excess steel capacity alone is at least 300 million tons. As a result of the overcapacity, the current structure of the global steel industry is not sustainable. The discipline of the marketplace must be allowed to exert itself through free and rules-based trade. Why?
That discipline rewards efficient producers with returns adequate to sustain their investments, providing value to the market in the form of product improvements and cost efficiencies. Equally important, the discipline of the marketplace punishes inefficient producers who destroy scarce capital and other resources. Until the issue of excess capacity is effectively addressed, Nucor will continue to apply our team's can-do attitude and high-energy level to the fight for effective and timely enforcement of our nation's trade laws.
If not for illegally dumped and subsidized steel imports, we would have more production and jobs throughout both the steel industry and the overall American economy today. Evidenced by our participation in last month's trade case filed against rebar imports from Turkey and Mexico, Nucor stands ready to pursue appropriate legal action when our industry is harmed by violations of U.S. and international trade laws.
Managing our business with a long-term perspective has been absolutely critical to the success of our company over the past four-plus decades. Our long-term strategic focus has allowed us to adapt and expand our business model in response to market challenges and opportunities, both operationally and commercially. With that longer-term view, we are bullish on the profitable growth opportunities for both the American economy and Nucor. As Jim mentioned, we will have invested approximately $8 billion of our shareholders' valuable capital from the last cyclical peak in the economy in 2008 through the end of 2013.
These investments have dramatically expanded Nucor's long-term earnings power. Our more recent investments during this downturn are low-risk and high-return. Rather than just adding capacity to an oversupplied market, Nucor is reducing its raw material cost and expanding our product mix to include more value-added, higher-margin offerings.
Today, our unrelenting focus remains on executing our strategic plan and converting our $8 billion of investments into higher highs in profitability once the next cyclical upturn inevitably arrives. I will now update you on the progress achieved by our team this quarter in executing our growth strategy. Construction is nearing completion on our 2.5 million metric ton annual capacity direct reduced iron, or DRI facility, in Louisiana.
However, startup of the plant has been delayed by about three months until the end of the year. As we reported in late September, a storage dome collapsed at the site. Most importantly, there were no injuries and no environmental impact. The storage dome was one of three domes built to store iron ore. We are certainly disappointed by this event. However, I emphasize two very important points.
First, this is not an issue whatsoever with the process technology we are using to produce DRI. Our team in Louisiana is continuing with hot commissioning of the plant. Second, we are addressing the problem and expect to start production by the end of the current quarter. Startup of our Louisiana DRI plant will be a huge step forward in the implementation of our raw material strategy.
Combining Louisiana's 2.5 million tons capacity with the 2 million tons annual capacity of our existing Trinidad DRI plant will bring us to two-thirds of our long-term goal of controlling 6 million-7 million tons of annual capacity in high-quality scrap substitutes. We expect our expanded DRI capacity, paired with our long-term and low-cost natural gas supply, to be a game-changer for Nucor's cost structure for the high-quality iron units we need to compete in higher value-added sheet, SBQ, and plate product markets.
In September, our South Carolina bar mill successfully started production on its new rod block. The rod block, along with earlier 2013 investments in a coil line and roughing mill stands, will allow Nucor Steel South Carolina to produce approximately 450,000 tons per year of rod and bar-in-coil products. Our team is very excited to have the opportunity to grow our participation in the attractive and underserved wire rod market in the southeastern U.S. region.
We have already received excellent customer feedback regarding the surface quality, dimensional tolerances, and physical properties of our initial output. I discussed on our July conference call the successful June startup of production on our Hertford County, North Carolina plate mill's new normalizing line. Today, I am very pleased to report that the normalizing line is already running at full capacity.
Our 120,000 ton per year capacity normalizing line serves attractive end-use markets such as energy, transportation, shipbuilding, and armor plate. Complementing our recent investments in a heat treat facility and a vacuum tank degasser, Hertford County's value-added plate products annual capacity has now doubled to 240,000 tons. Steel Technologies' new facility in Monterrey is now fully operational.
The new flat-rolled steel processing and pickling operation has an annual processing capacity in excess of 800,000 tons and offers light-gauge slitting, heavy-gauge slitting, blanking, cut to length, and eco pickled surface, EPS pickling. Our team in Monterrey is very pleased to be running the North American market's largest capacity EPS pickling line, an effective and environmentally friendly technology which offers significant advantages over traditional acid pickling. Customer reaction to the quality of the product they have received has been extremely positive.
This premier processing operation represents a $67 million strategic investment for Steel Technologies in the growing Mexican market. Our next major project to start up will be the Berkeley County, South Carolina sheet mill's wide light project, which is scheduled for the first quarter of 2014. This investment involves an upgrade and modernization of equipment from the top of the caster through the reversing mills. It will provide Berkeley the capability to produce wider and lighter gauge sheet steel.
Berkeley's new product offerings will include 72-inch wide hot-rolled, 72-inch wide hot-rolled pickled and oiled, 72-inch wide cold-rolled, and gauges as thin as 0.042 inch. These expanded capabilities will provide profitable opportunities to move up the value chain in agricultural, pipe and tube, industrial equipment, heavy truck, and automotive high-strength and ultra-high-strength applications. Customers are already inquiring about placing orders for these new products soon to enter production.
There is no question that steel market conditions remain frustratingly challenging. Nevertheless, these are exciting times for Nucor as our company grows stronger and stronger. A stronger Nucor is one that is continually improving its capability to take care of all of our customers, the people who buy and use our products, our teammates, and our shareholders. In closing, I want to again thank everyone on the Nucor team for working safely, working hard, and working together to build a stronger Nucor. Thank you, and please keep it going. We would now be happy to take your questions.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your touchtone telephone. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your touchtone phone. We'll pause a few moments to allow the questions to queue. We'll take our first question from the line of Michelle Applebaum. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi.
Hello, Michelle.
Hey. Nice quarter. Nice commentary. I have three, but I only get two, right? Okay.
We'll start with two, and maybe you can come back later in the call.
Yeah. So right now, I think something people are talking about, a macro question, the sheet industry appears to be changing the approach on how you quote contracts, and there's been a lot of controversy over the CRU minus kinds of discounts, with CRU sort of being the standard, I guess, index. Can you talk about, one, what impact it's going to have on the sheet business next year? Two, how are the contracts coming for next year? And three, what percentage you would like to have under contract for the coming year? That's still kind of one question. It is.
It is. Okay. We'll handle it as one question.
Thank you.
Nucor. I will not speak for the rest of the industry in terms of contract pricing. As we talk about the CRU and the CRU minus, we at Nucor have recognized that the returns that have been generated by that pricing mechanism were not compensating us for the quality, the service, the on-time delivery that we provided to our customers every day. We felt that it was necessary to change that, and we are in the process of changing it as we speak to our customers today.
As far as how is it being received, well, certainly it is a little challenging, but our customers overall understand the need to have a pricing mechanism in place that allows for a sustainable long-term company. It has been a little bit challenging, but it is being received as we move along.
Today, our contracts are going a little slower than normal, but we are making progress, and our customers seem to be accepting the concept of needing a change. In terms of what percent that we would be shooting for in 2014, as always, it kind of depends on where we end up with the pricing and what the contracts look like. Typically, we like a mix that is somewhere between 40%-60% contract and with the rest remaining in spot.
There are times when spot can really serve us well. For example, in the last quarter, our ability to take advantage of some of the supply disruptions that occurred in the sheet market resulted in a very good quarter for us. I want to thank our commercial team for being on top of that and taking advantage of that opportunity and doing very well in capitalizing upon it.
We would be looking for somewhere maybe around 50%, Michelle, but we will go kind of 15% either side of 50%, depending upon what the contracts look like.
You didn't say what you were replacing the CRU with. Are you just doing it on a price basis entirely?
Well, you're absolutely correct. We did not say it, okay? That is something that we discuss with our customers, and I'm not going to get into it here other than to say that we are moving away from a CRU-minus pricing mechanism or, for that matter, any index-based minus pricing mechanism.
Okay. Well, I wasn't a fan of that, so I'd say hear. It's a good choice, and I hope the market supports it. My second question is, so recently we saw the closure of the, I think it's half a million ton a year, Evraz Claymont Delaware plate mill. Is that a facility that overlaps with your product mix? What kind of impact do you think it'll have on you? Do you think it could potentially be a consolidation target for you? Again, one question.
You're getting better and better at this, Michelle.
Well trained.
Let me make a couple of comments about the closing at Evraz Claymont in terms of how it will impact our business. Clearly, they tend to provide a thicker product to the market. We go from 1 to 2 inches. 2 inches our maximum thickness that we can offer the market. That being said, excuse me, 3 inches is what we can offer the market. That being said, there are some overlaps on the grades that we produce, and we have seen an incremental pickup in inquiries and order entry as a result of them closing. Obviously, we serve a similar geographical territory. I would also take the opportunity to give a plug to our plate mills. Hertford County, which serves a similar area, has the additional benefit of offering normalized and heat-treated product, as we mentioned.
I think you've mentioned that.
Yes. I'm probably going to mention it a few more times before the call is over because we're really proud of that fact, and it has been very instrumental in supporting our other plate business. It gives us the ability to compete in markets with those other competitors who can offer similar products. So it's really expanded the grades that we can offer to the marketplace.
Okay, that is great. John, you are a great commercial guy, and you are a great CEO, and it is going to be a very exciting decade watching what happens next. Thanks.
Yeah.
I am going to go back in queue.
We will go next to the line of Luke Folta. Go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, everybody.
Hey, Luke. How are you?
Good.
Good.
My question. Just looking at this whole Gulf Coast chemicals expansion that we're seeing, we're starting to see some pretty major stuff move forward. If you look, it's estimated over the next few years that we could see something like $50 billion plus of spending on ethylene plants and other chemical-type jobs, and you've got LNG export terminal layered in on top of that.
I guess when I look at those numbers, those seem like pretty massive numbers to me, and all that stuff is very steel-intensive. I guess my question is there any way you can help us connect the dots in terms of that level of spending? What could that mean for Nucor in terms of your addressable market? Are you selling the right products that would go into this stuff? Anything that could help connect those dots would be very helpful.
Well, you've heard us mention several times over the last several years of our participation in the energy-based markets. That was a target we had several years ago. We recognized that there was going to be an improvement in the energy market, and we decided, probably about five or seven years ago, to be a very active participant in that market. Towards that end, we've worked hard to develop new grades that serve the energy market well, and we've grown tremendously in that market. Today, along with automotive, energy, as you know, energy and automotive are two of the strong markets out there today, and we have a very strong participation in both.
As far as energy goes, I would say that in addition to having gone over the last five and seven years to improve our participation, we continue to develop new grades on our plate business to better serve that market and get a larger participation in that market. Joe, anything in particular you would like to add in terms of grades that we're working on?
We have the degassing project as well as the heat normalizing and the Q&T heat treat line have been focused on high-strength steels for construction industry and very heavily focused on the energy sector, where our steels now can go into the offshore oil platforms as well as the heavy tank industry for tank farms for holding oils and gases, as well as the construction of those plants. That has been a targeted focus of some of the upgrades that we have made at the Hertford plant, and it's showing very good progress and good orders already. We're looking forward to those days, Luke, when all that comes online.
You know, Joe, I would just add to that we, Nucor, are the supplier of choice for tubulars because of our outstanding gauge control. Our gauge control is second to none, and that's important to the tubers. We have a very strong participation in that market also. When you think about the location of our facilities, we're able to serve them well with barge delivery and with rail delivery.
Okay, I guess sales into those kind of mega type projects, do they tend to happen more through direct big, direct contracts in that sense, or is that something that you just kind of, it flows down through distribution and some of the component manufacturers and things like that? How should we expect that to flow through?
Well, actually both. It flows both ways. Obviously, a lot goes through our service centers, but we also have a team that focuses specifically on the energy market in terms of large projects, in terms of construction of the projects, in terms of construction of the pipelines carrying the energy products. It's really both ways, Luke. We have a team focused on direct sales, and we obviously sell a lot into that through our service centers.
Okay. I'll get back with you. Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll go next to the line of Sohail Tharani. Go ahead, your line is open.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
John, I think you mentioned that natural gas investment, $700 million. Is it 2014 and 2015 combined, or is it each year $700 million?
That was a combined number.
Okay. I just want to understand, this will be enough gas for running two DRI plus all the gas you use. How are you thinking in terms of the second DRI plant, and if it gets delayed, will you be able to reduce the investment or the amount of gas you extract, or you will be able to sell it into the open market?
Well, let me start by making a couple of comments. First of all, at the peak of our gas drilling operations, we would be able to deliver enough gas for two of our DRI facilities, all of our steel mills, and we would still have surplus gas. Secondly, you mentioned about the start of construction on the second DRI facility. I mentioned during the last call that we will be addressing that. We want to get the first one up and running, and then we will take a look at what we want to do with the second facility. I can tell you there has been an awful lot of interest in the marketplace on purchasing DRI from us and then having a facility that would run on a merchant basis.
But one thing I do want to stress right away, the way that you asked the question kind of implied that we might delay the decision of a second DRI plant based upon events that were taking place today in Louisiana with the dome, and that is absolutely, categorically not the case. It has nothing to do with it. This is a short-term issue with the dome.
We are already well into a workaround to get around the issue. This has nothing to do with the technology. It is simply an issue with the raw material transportation. I think I mentioned on the last conference call that this is an extremely complex, because of the size of it, the material handling is an extremely complex system, and we actually expected a few hiccups.
Now, this is a bigger road bump than we were hoping for, but in typical Nucor way, we are facing it head-on and we are resolving it. So there is no impact on long-term strategy relative to DRI as a result of the dome.
Thanks, John. I certainly did not imply regarding the dome. I understand the dome is just a storage facility that has nothing to do with your process and project. The second question is that if I look at your joist and deck volume versus the fabricated product volume for fabricated concrete reinforced steel volume, they are sort of diverging from each other. Joist and deck is up 10%-14%, and the rebar fabricated products is down 11%. I just want to understand, are these catering to different markets, or there is something else going on over here?
Ray, why don't you field that one?
Yep. Sure, John. Well, the rebar fabrication market and the joist and deck market do cater to somewhat different markets, and I would say that there are just some different market dynamics involved. As we mentioned the last quarter, the weather still continues to impact rebar fabrication shipments just a little bit, as they did the first two quarters of the year.
Does it have anything to do with the private construction and public construction, or that's not the case?
He asked a question about is it tied to private versus public construction?
Well, the answer is yes. There's more tied to public construction on the rebar fabrication side, and joist and deck tends to be more towards private construction. Yes, sir.
Great. Thank you very much. I'll get back in the queue.
One more comment that I'd like to make, since you were asking about rebars, I kind of alluded to it in the prepared comments. But the imports of rebar over the last quarter have been a major issue for our company and for our country, and that has impacted our business on the rebar side also. I would point out is, and maybe just reinforce what Jim said during his comments, kudos to the entire product team. Despite the challenging non-residential construction market that we've lived through, they have been profitable five out of the last six quarters.
When I talk about being excited about Nucor's future, and I think about the fact that non-residential construction is at its lowest point in 30 to 40 years, and despite that, our teams have found a way to remain profitable five out of the last six quarters, I get very excited about what we will be doing when the non-residential construction market inevitably returns.
And we'll take our next question from Kim McInerney. Go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon.
Hi, Kim. How are you?
Good, thanks. I was happy to hear some more detail on the different projects. Some of the other steel mills have been giving a lot of detail, I guess, on their cost savings or their initiatives or benefits or payback time. This is a step in that direction, but I guess, can you talk a little bit more about how we might think about the contribution of some of these into next year? How do we quantify the incremental benefit, whether it be cost or prices or volume? Thanks.
Kim, typically, when we announce projects, we give a capital budget, and I think you have a feel for what type of hurdle rates we think about. We typically don't break out details of the returns of each project, but I think you can make a rational estimation based on the cost of the projects themselves.
Tim, I would ask you to think about the fact that, in addition, as you mentioned, our projects involve both cost mitigation and the offering of new products to the marketplace. So in many cases, we have projects going on that will give us a double benefit. As Jim said, we do have a certain hurdle rate, and some of our projects that we're working on today and that we mentioned earlier today, we will see the benefit from both sides of that equation.
Into 2014, it sounds like then we'll start to see some of that.
Yes, as we said, Berkeley wide light project will start in first quarter. The NYS project will start sometime around mid of next year, offering the three new piling sections to the market. That's a really exciting project. So we see a lot of them coming to fruition in the early part of 2014.
Okay, cool. My question, I guess the next one or the second one is really to delve a little bit further into this idea of value add and the investments you've made, whether it be vacuum tank degassers or the wide light project, and it's a question on the auto industry. We've written something about maybe the tables turning even a little bit toward the steel makers this next year. I know Nucor's been moving toward supplying more auto, and I just wondered if you can give us an update to the extent possible on your progress there.
Well, we continue to make progress there in offering the next generation of advanced high-strength steels. We're committed to working with our automotive customers, to provide a great product. We recognize the challenge they're facing as a result of the CAFE requirements that'll be coming into effect partly in 2018 and fully in 2025. So we've been working, and I've mentioned a few times, the high strength and ultra high-strength product that we've been developing. They are in the marketplace today, and they're doing very well. I would also say that, without giving any specifics as to the customers or the contracts that we're working under, we have ongoing automotive exposed steel trials as we speak, and we are quite optimistic about the outcome of those trials.
Okay, thanks.
We'll take our next question from Tony Rizzuto. Go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, thanks very much. Hi, everyone. With all of the exciting investments you've got on the come, can you guys quantify the start-up costs that we're likely going to see in the fourth quarter and into 2014? Can you talk about that a little bit? I've got one more question, too.
Yeah, I'll take that. In the second quarter, our pre-operating start-up costs were around $6 million. In the third quarter, they were in the neighborhood of $11 million, and we're forecasting the fourth quarter to be just over $13 million. We would expect that they would probably level off in the first quarter and maybe even fall off a bit with the DRI plant coming fully on stream, and then decline from there.
Okay. First quarter-
There's probably going to be some incremental pre-operating start-up costs with the wide light project and the beam project as well. They'll be short-term, they won't be long-term periods. They'll last for maybe a quarter each as they go through their startups.
All right, great. Also, your performance turned out to be much better than you guys guided in the middle of September, and I was wondering, was there a major area of variance, or was there an acceleration demand? I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate on that a little bit.
Well, we did see some incremental demand improvement in the sheet market, but it was incremental. Really what we saw was more of an issue of disruption in the supply. As I mentioned earlier, our commercial team just did an outstanding job of capitalizing on that opportunity. Most of the improvement that you see is a result of our improvement on the sheet side of the business during the quarter.
Tony, I would just say that our divisions help us come up with our forecast. Our sheet mills were probably a little conservative in their forecasts for September, and they came in a little better than they thought they would, and that was the biggest driver.
When you guys look at. You mentioned about the investment with the wider width at Berkeley. Is that going to be going towards the automotive industry in terms of the ultralight gauges? I heard other markets being mentioned. I do not know if I heard automotive there.
No. It will be going into several markets. We kind of ran through them. It will be certainly automotive, agricultural, heavy truck, industrial applications, white goods, would be just some other ones that I would mention.
All right. I kind of slipped that third question there. I appreciate it.
Yeah, that is okay. The key thing to note on that is that the items that we kind of ran off there all involve high strength or ultra high strength applications, which is critical, and that is one of the key things we are focusing on out of Berkeley and all other sheet mills.
May I add just a couple more? Certainly, two allows us to get more mold out of a coil, which will save a lot of our customers. Secondly, we are able to go to a lot lighter hot band. We have never been able to go to before. So there is a lot of applications in that lighter hot band that we will be able to facilitate more so than we ever have.
Thanks.
We will take our next question from Evan Kurtz. Go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone.
Hello, Evan. How are you?
Doing well, thanks. Just a question on the potential for SBQ consolidation. I know you guys have been kind of pushing over the past few years here to move into higher and more premium applications for SBQ. I know there's a bunch of assets that are kind of being stripped out of the competitive years over the next year here that are already towards the very high end. There's six kind of major producers out there. Do you see any sort of potential? Is that something you're interested in?
Well, as always, we're not going to make any direct comments other than to say that we are always opportunistic. If we see the right opportunity at the right price, we'll move on it. You're right, we have been focusing in our SBQ business on higher and higher valued applications. In Nebraska, we've been focusing on automotive with primary axle, camshafts, gearing, suspension, and steering components. In Memphis, crankshafts, hubs, several other products. Bottom line is, when you look at our SBQ products, we recognize that there is some consolidation occurring, but there's also some new SBQ competition coming online, and that's why our team are focused on moving up and up on the value chain. Jim, is there anything that you'd want to add to that?
I'd just add that the investments that we've been making have geared primarily toward improving our quality. The project that we're doing in Nebraska as we speak is installing a new hot shear, a cold shear, packaging material, and quality instrumentation that allows us to move up the value chain and produce higher quality products. While we're doing these projects, we are also doing a number of trials with a number of tier one and tier two automotive suppliers to get qualified to produce automotive-grade material. As we go through these qualifications, we're setting ourselves up to participate more in the automotive industry going forward.
Gotcha, thanks. Maybe just one on rebar. Trade case has kind of been out there for a month or so now. I know there was a tiny price increase that was announced, mostly just to keep up with scrap, it seems like. Are you noticing any sort of change in behavior from buyers on the rebar side, or do you feel like we're getting close to some sort of an inflection here?
I don't think we've noticed a major change in the buying habits of the customers. Obviously, whenever we begin trade action, the countries that are importing the product get nervous, and we see a slight reduction in the amount of imports coming in. But other than that, there's been no major change in the buying habits.
Got you. Thanks for the call, guys.
We'll take our next question from Andrew Lane. Go ahead, your line is open.
Hi there. Good afternoon.
Hi, Andrew. How are you?
Great. I have two DRI-related questions. First, it seems as though your increased DRI production will allow you greater flexibility with regard to the basket of feedstocks you can apply to your furnaces, and will also allow you to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities associated with feedstock costs when DRI pig iron and high-grade scrap prices change relative to each other. Once your first Louisiana DRI facility is online, how different will your average feedstock basket look relative to its current composition?
Well, it certainly will include more DRI. You answered the question very well yourself in asking the question. What it really does is give us a tremendous amount of flexibility. So every month, we'll go out and we'll take a look at the various commodities. We'll look at where we are with DRI. We'll look at the HBI pricing. We'll look at pig iron pricing. We'll look at prime scrap, obsolete scrap. Based upon that, we will adjust the basket, as you call it, the basket, the recipe we would refer to it as, on almost a monthly basis, and do what gives us the best cost advantage each month.
Okay, great. Secondly, given DRI's high iron content, it can be used as a supplement to lower grade scrap or a replacement for higher grade scrap in the melt. How will your increased DRI production impact the quantity of scrap and the quality of scrap you purchase? Will it allow you to generate cost savings by making purchases further down the quality spectrum with regard to scrap as you apply more DRI?
Obviously, as we use more DRI, we can reduce the amount of prime scrap that we use in the mix. But again, we'll take a look at that on a basket-by-basket case and make the right decisions predicated upon the pricing of the various commodities. As a general statement, yes, we've invested a lot in our DRI facility, and we've invested in our steel mills and our ability to better feed DRI into the furnaces, do it more effectively, do it quicker. So we will be using a lot of DRI as we move forward.
That's great. Appreciate it.
We'll take our next question from Aldo Mazzaferro. Go ahead, your line is open.
Hi. Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Hello, Aldo. How are you?
I'm fine. How are you?
I'm good, thank you.
Good. I had a question on the capital spending budget, maybe for Jim here. Over the last calls, one or two calls, you've sometimes said that you might push your CapEx down closer to the sustaining and maintenance level, and I think you said the same today. Once on a call, you estimated that out of your $1.1 billion, only about 20% was actually sustaining capital. So I guess my question is, where does that sustaining capital number lie? Is it somewhere between the depreciation and maybe the $200 million, or would it be likely to be under depreciation?
This question is on the amount that we would view as sustainable is probably as well addressed to John as I, but I would say it's in the $300 million - $400 million per year range. John, would you agree?
Yeah, I would agree with that. We don't use a hard and fast formula compared to depreciation. We take a look at where we are in the cycle of maintenance and make a decision.
Great
That's best to keep our facilities in perfect operating condition and be able to provide a great quality product to our customers.
Aldo, if we think about 2014, it's early to say a final number, but we'll have that base load number of $300 million - $400 million. We'll have some carryover on the finishing of wide light and some of the other big projects that are underway. Then we'll have the gas investment, a significant portion of that $700 million over two years that we'll be spending. So it'll probably approach a billion dollars, but be below a billion dollars would be my thinking right now. But again, we'll go to our board of directors in December with a final budget, and then we'll come back in January for that conference call, and we'll give you our budget target for 2014 at that time.
Great. So that gas spending is kind of front-end loaded a little bit then, too?
Yeah. In a sense, that's how we almost think about it, is we're prepaying for gas by paying the drilling costs and getting access to it in the ground. We had an earlier question about all the evolution of the chemical industry that's coming in the Gulf Coast area. That's another factor that we think about, and we also think there's a big trend of power plants using gas. It's hard to predict what future gas prices are going to be, but they do have the potential to go back up into a $6 or $7 range, and we'll have a very nice competitive advantage with our locked-in cost of gas for a number of decades.
Just a very quick second question. Can you say how long and what the capital cost might be for the DRI second investment? How long the construction phase would be and what you might spend on that?
Well, as we've mentioned several times, we've invested the infrastructure that we have as part of the project for the first DRI. We'll also cover a second DRI facility. The investment would be somewhat less. We would probably put it in the neighborhood of about $550 million - $600 million, just as an estimate. We haven't really begun the work on that at this time. The construction time would be a little bit less, not significantly less. Obviously, the furnace is the big item being installed, and that would, of course, be about the same length of time. So it might be a little bit shorter, and it will be a little bit less expensive.
Okay. Thanks very much.
We'll take our next question from Mark Parr. Go ahead, your line is open.
Hey, thanks very much. Good afternoon.
Afternoon, Mark.
Hey, congratulations on the quarter. Nice work. I was just curious if you could give a little more color on the natural gas drilling activity. How many wells do you expect to complete this year? Also, you talked about costs coming, being a positive surprise. Any color around that would be helpful. Lastly, if you could just give us an update on the plan to monetize some of the midstream assets, and would be curious in terms of timing on that.
Well, let's start with the number of wells that we are currently drilling. Keith, you want to take that, please?
Yeah. We're in the range of 200 wells right now, and we will probably finish up the year somewhere in the range of 240, 250, somewhere in that range in terms of the actual number of wells.
On the midstream, that we've mentioned in the past that it's possible that we would end up flipping the midstream assets, and I think that timeframe was-
Yeah. We've still set time, but it's probably in the 2016, 2017 time period.
I would answer this. We're on track with the original plan and the layout for that midstream, those assets to build out, and that was the general timeframe I think we indicated early on, and we're really no significant variance from that right now.
Okay. I guess just the other thought was just to try to get some more color around the cost of completion or the underlying cost of the actual operating wells, in terms of MCF or however you'd like to give additional color on that.
Yeah, we still view that as confidential, and as I've mentioned a number of times in some of the venues I've been in, there will be a point in time where we have enough volume that we have to make full SEC disclosures like an E&P company, and then you'll see all that detail. But until that time, we'd like to keep that to ourselves. We think it's valuable information.
What we mentioned during the script was that the gas that we are getting out of the wells, the rate that we're being able to drill and get gas out of the wells is greater than what we put into the initial performance.
I'd say that it's worth noting that year-to-date, it's having a small positive impact on our income statement. Our costs have been below the market price on average so far this year.
Okay. Appreciate that, and good luck on the fourth quarter, guys. Thanks.
Thanks, Mark.
We'll go next to the line of Matthew Murphy. Go ahead, your line is open.
Afternoon. Just a question on the DRI. Does the delay with the storage dome, you talked about you're still hot commissioning the process. Does that add some confidence in how quick you can ramp it up since you've got a bit more time with the process side?
You know, it does. We will have more time to do a more thorough process hot commissioning. Yes, I would say that it will reduce the overall startup time. The DRI process, as a general statement, however, is kind of an on-off thing. It starts up and it runs, or it doesn't start up. We're highly confident that when we're ready to start at the end of the year, we overcome this issue with the material handling, we will have a relatively quick startup.
I guess just on the purchasing for inputs next year, do you have to commit to any pig supply to make sure you've got it if there are any hiccups? Or how short order can you get material if you need it?
We have everything laid out. We have four good suppliers, all of which are proven suppliers. We see no problems at all with the supply of raw materials.
We do not feel like we are going to have to take material to store it someplace because of this issue. We think we are fine in that regard.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
We will take a quick follow-up from Michelle Applebaum. Go ahead, your line is open.
Hey. Can you remind me, what live permits do you have going at your Nucor Steel Louisiana site? What kind of facilities are you currently permitted to build, and when do these permits run out?
Let's see. Do you want to take that, Rod?
Yeah. Right now we're permitted to build two DRI plants. We're not worried. If we start on the second DRI plant, I can't remember the exact, but it's a matter of many months from now. So in the case that say we were going to start, that permit will still be valid.
So you're not permitted to build a steel mill anymore, or are you?
Yeah. We have a permit that is still in place for a blast furnace operation with the coke ovens at that facility. We never had a permit for a steel mill.
Sorry, I misspoke.
Okay.
Okay, and how long does it-
I think she dropped accidentally, but I am guessing she was going to ask how long does the blast furnace permit stay live?
Yeah. We are not going to get into specifics, Michelle Applebaum, if that is what you were asking. I am not sure if you are still on the line, but we will not get into specifics of the length of time of the blast furnace permit.
Ms. Applebaum, your line is open.
Jim, good mind reading.
Thanks, Michelle Applebaum.
Awesome.
Thanks, Michelle. Next question?
We'll take our last question from Sohail Tharani. Go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks. Hey, Jim, this time you are reporting an earning in the equity in consolidate affiliates. Is that from the Italian operation?
It's a net of a couple of operations that are in there, but a big part of it is NuMit. The performance in our joint venture with Mitsui, the Steel Technologies business, has shown continual improvement, and it's gotten to be big enough that it's offset the losses we were experiencing in our Italian operations.
Great. Thank you very much.
It appears we have no further questions in queue at this time. I will now turn the program back over to our presenters for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Keith. Let me close by again saying thank you. Thank you all on the call for your interest in Nucor. Thank you for our shareholders for your continued support. Thank you to our customers for your business. Most importantly, thank you to our teammates for what you do every day, and thank you for doing it safely. Have a great day. Thanks for your interest in Nucor.
This concludes today's program. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect at any time.