Nucor's Healthy Spreads Aren't Enough As The Cycle Moves Past The Peak

It’s often difficult to make money in commodity sectors when the cycle has reached and passed its peak, and that seems to be holding true for steel. Although spreads continue to improve and earnings expectations for Nucor (NUE) have continued to rise for both 2018 and 2019, the shares really haven’t gone anywhere this year as investors expect meaningful earnings erosion from here and move onto to greener pastures.

I believe it’s better to be in mini-mill and/or specialty steel companies at this point, but I’m still mostly lukewarm on Nucor. I do see some risk of overspending on M&A, as well as some vulnerability to increasing capacity, though I will emphasize again that this is a very well-run company in the sector. I continue to believe that fair value is above $70 per share, but this may be a tough place to make money unless/until there’s a reason to believe this cycle will persist beyond current expectations.

Click here for more:
Nucor's Healthy Spreads Aren't Enough As The Cycle Moves Past The Peak

2010 - A Year Of Only Modest Recovery In Steel

As much as people want to write about the "new economy" and the new rules of economic development, the fact remains that steel is a key component. When economies are strong, there is higher demand for steel in non-residential construction, automobiles and all manner of industrial and consumer goods. To that point, 2010 was a challenging year for steel companies and steel stocks as soft demand capped not only shipment volume but restrained companies from fully pushing on the impact of higher input prices. 

A Rare Laggard In Materials
In almost every other respect, 2010 was a great year for materials companies. While the steel sector still did relatively well (basically tracking the S&P 500), much of that came from a late rally after third quarter earnings and rising optimism about higher prices in 2011. Relative to gold, copper, coal and other industrial metals, steel was a laggard for the year as a whole.

It made relatively little difference whether a company was an integrated global steel producer or a mini-mill. World-leaders like Korea's POSCO (NYSE:PKX) and Europe's ArcelorMittal (NYSE:MT) both saw their stocks decline by double-digit percentages, while U.S. mini-mill operators Nucor (NYSE:NUE) and Steel Dynamics (Nasdaq:STLD) did a fair bit better on a relative basis. American integrated producers U.S. Steel (NYSE:X) and AK Steel (NYSE:AKS) had very mixed performance, as AK Steel's stock fared quite poorly and U.S. Steel did relatively well. (For more, see Is Now The Time To Invest In Steel?.)


Please follow this link for the full piece:
http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2010/2010-A-Year-Of-Only-Modest-Recovery-In-Steel-STLD-NUE-MT-X-AKS1224.aspx