Louis L. Schorsch
Analyst · UBS
Yes, I think as we discussed, most of our operations are, in fact, in the part of the U.S. that was most heavily hit by the severe weather. And that disrupted not only our operations, but the flow of materials to our customers. So we did lose some shipments in the U.S. relative to where we were in the previous quarter, where we'd expect it to be. And typically, when that happens, then you're focused more on serving the contract customers, where you have commitments to those customers versus the spot. So I think any time you see the shipments being down a bit, in a company like ours that does have a very substantial involvement in those OEM markets and customer bases, then the -- what's cut back is, in fact, the spot business. So I think Q1, for a lot of reasons, was not a very representative quarter. I think we'll be back on track as you grow -- as we come out of those bad situations. I have already mentioned, we look to the April shipments actually being a bit higher than what we had expected in our business plan or even our forecast from earlier this year. Looking forward, I think it's difficult for us to comment about prices. Whenever this comes up, I think we always communicate that we recognize we're in a market that is affected by trade flows, and that there's certain arbitrage opportunities that can emerge or disappear depending on the differentials across regions. Clearly, by world standards, U.S. price levels are relatively high right now. How that plays out in terms of that differential being adjusted over time, we'll see. I would say that supply disruptions, when you really look at the sort of volume involved here, particularly as we exit from the much more difficult first quarter, really are not substantial enough to drive big swings, at least as we see it in a pricing level. So again, we come back to thinking that the underlying demand in the U.S. is good, but that price differential is something that we're always looking at. How it plays out going forward and when it plays out, that's something that's not really appropriate for us to comment on.