Earnings Labs

Nucor Corporation (NUE)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 23, 2015

$222.92

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Nucor Corporation Second Quarter of 2015 Earnings Call. As a reminder, today's call 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 websites. The forward-looking statements made in this conference call speaks 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. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. John Ferriola, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Nucor Corporation. Please go ahead, sir. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon. 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 senior management team: Chief Financial Officer, Jim Frias, and our other Executive Vice Presidents, Jim Darsey, Ladd Hall, Ray Napolitan, Joe Stratman, Dave Sumoski, and Chad Utermark. The entire executive team would like to thank you all, all of our key members on our Harris, Nucor, David J. Joseph, Duferdofin, NuMit Steel Technologies, and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go first to Luke Folta with Jefferies. Sir, your line is open.

Luke Folta - Jefferies LLC

Management

Hi, good afternoon. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon.

Luke Folta - Jefferies LLC

Management

Hey, first question I had was on non-res. We saw a bit of slowing in terms of – well, I mean, you saw really nice year-over-year growth in joist, deck and rebar fab last year in the first quarter. And that seemed to have dropped off quite a bit in 2Q and similar things out of Steel Dynamics' downstream business yesterday with volumes. The commentary still seems pretty positive around non-res. Can you just give us some sense of what's going on in terms of the shipment levels? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, let me start with the overall markets. The pundits are still saying that they expect a 7% to 8% increase in non-res this year over last year. We think that number is a little bit optimistic. We see it close to be being around 5% to 6% this year in non-residential construction. As far as our downstream businesses go, we're seeing some very positive things. Our backlogs are stronger than they have ever been. Frankly, the pricing of the products in our backlog are stronger than we've seen in quite some time. So, although we see things over the course of the year slowing a little bit more compared to last year, was still pretty optimistic about non-residential construction and our downstream businesses going into it.

Luke Folta - Jefferies LLC

Management

Okay. All right. Just on the trade side, the language that went with the TPA bill here recently, how big of a deal do you think that is? And when you, I guess, think about the impact for imports, is it fair to say that Nucor probably has more upside than the industry as a whole in terms of – if there is a change in a way import protection is – if the enforcement approves here, do you think that there is more upside just given your southern presence? And I think I would guess that more of your business enters into the spot market than maybe some of your integrated peers to the north. So any commentary around that would be helpful. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, let me respond in general, we think that there's tremendous upside, I won't compare it to any of our competitors, but for us, we are very optimistic about potential upside. We're very positive about the language in the legislation. Clearly gives us much stronger tools to fight back against unfair trade. Just to mention maybe a couple of the things that it does for us, number one is it changes the definition of injury, it gives the International Trade Commission, a much broader list of factors when determining whether an industry has been injured, not just profitability, that's important. It will no longer be necessary for us to suffer severe financial damage before action can be taken. Another provision enhances the commerce's department – excuse me, the commerce department's discretion in dealing with foreign companies and foreign governments that are un-corporative or very slow to provide the information they need to make a determination. So although I have to say that this is a very positive first step, there is more work to be done. And we believe that this will create a much more balanced and fair marketplace competition here in the United States, but there is still work to be done. So we will continue to work in Washington with our elected officials and continue to press for even stronger trade laws in the future.

Luke Folta - Jefferies LLC

Management

If I could ask one more just on the raw material segment outlook. The Louisiana plant seems like it's ramping up very nicely. Heading into 3Q, you're not going to have the Trinidad outage and I would think that the headwind from the high cost raw materials would be lesser quarter-on-quarter. Just trying to get a sense of why we're still looking for a flat outcome in that business quarter-to-quarter. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, Trinidad will do better. As you mentioned, we won't have the shut down there. In the case of Louisiana, it will probably be towards the end of the third quarter by the time we work through all of the high priced inventory and the reason that it might be the same, even with the improvement in Trinidad is that we won't see the same impact as we did with the $10 million payment on a vendor liability.

Luke Folta - Jefferies LLC

Management

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Evan Kurtz with Morgan Stanley. Evan L. Kurtz - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hey, good afternoon. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon, Evan. How are you? Evan L. Kurtz - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Doing well, thanks. Just a couple of follow-ups on the trade front. So I was just wondering, so the rules now changed as far as injury definition goes. Does that mean that some of the trade cases that people have been working on for the past, I guess, year-plus now on hot-rolled, cold-rolled that we haven't really seen yet, do they have to be rewritten to kind of match the new rules? Is that going to cause some sort of a delay? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Now, frankly just the opposite. As we go forward and we press for any potential cases that we might file in the future, what will happen is the new law will apply to them. So it will not cause delays. If anything, just the opposite will happen. Now the countries that we would potentially file against will be required to submit the data faster. They will not have the same list of reasons for not getting the data in, in a timely manner. And as we look at the pressing the point of whether there was an injury or not, there's a different set of guidelines that will be used. So certainly this will not cause any delay. If anything we expect it to speed up the process in cases that we press in the future. Evan L. Kurtz - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great, thanks. And then, from what I understand, there's actually some additional trade protection that we could…

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Matt Murphy with UBS.

Matt Murphy - UBS Securities Canada, Inc.

Management

Hi. John, you made a comment your backlogs are stronger than you've seen in some time. Structural rebar and joist in Q2 were all flat to down, so I'm just wondering is the backlog stronger now than it was at the end of Q1? And do you think that's a result of underlying demand uplift? Or is it more imports sort of easing off? Or is it a combo of the two? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Ray, why don't you take that?

Raymond S. Napolitan - Executive Vice President

Management

Sure. Good afternoon. This is Ray Napolitan. I would say our downstream backlogs are up as a combination of several things, but improved underlying demand and overall the slow growth of the non-res market, plus the worsen delayed shipments in the first quarter, first half of the year due to weather, but overall the team is doing a good job in increasing our backlog levels and in both – well, for the second half of the year, for all three of our major downstream products.

Matt Murphy - UBS Securities Canada, Inc.

Management

Okay, thanks. And then, I guess, the one other question is when you talk about the flexibility DRI offers, and I appreciate it, it probably plays a role with helping the current pricing environment in the scrap market. But presumably the flexibility means you run it hard when scrap prices are high, and you maybe don't focus on it as much when they're low. So I'm wondering how you're thinking about your raw material strategy as iron ore spirals and maybe we see some more weakness coming in scrap. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, you are exactly right. It gives us the ability to switch back and forth in which area we want to press, whether it's in scrap or whether it's in DRI, depending upon what the cost of the iron unit is. At the end of the day, an iron unit is an iron unit. What it does is it gives us the ` to change and modify our feedstock mix, so that we can optimize our mix base upon current pricing in the different commodities. It gives us a lot of flexibility. We have pig iron out there, now we have HBI which gives us DRI. We have scrap that's under our control. So we have a lot of flexibility, but we'll drive the decision on where we're focusing is the price of the iron unit in each one of those areas.

Matt Murphy - UBS Securities Canada, Inc.

Management

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Timna Tanners with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Timna Beth Tanners - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Yeah, good afternoon, guys. How are you, guys? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon. How are you?

Timna Beth Tanners - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

All righty, thanks. So two big areas I wanted to touch on. One is we've heard so much about flat rolled and improvements expected there, but we were kind of surprised the year-over-year declines in bar structurals and plate. So just wanted to drill down a little bit more, if you could provide some information on how much of that might be destocking imports or underlying demand? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I can tell you that it's underlying demand in the United States it's very, very strong, but that's not the issue. The issue isn't demand, it's on the supply side. And the fact that the imports are coming in so heavy, which I'm sure you know Timna they captured about 32% of the steel market today and although that we're looking at – again, I'm talking about the whole market there. Although we're looking at demand levels that are probably just about the same as last year, the import level has gone up from 27% to about 32% to 33%. So demand is not the issue. Demand is strong, but imports are taking a much bigger bite out of our potential long product business. When I talk about 32% to 33%, that's across all of our products. When you look at – you mentioned beams specifically, so I'll comment on that. Imports are up 33% in beams year-over-year. That's a huge increase. So the short answer to your question, demand is strong. We see good demand. We believe it will grow moderately throughout the rest of the year. The issue is not the imports – and I stress the issue is actually not the imports, the issue is illegally unfairly traded imports.

Timna Beth Tanners - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Okay, got you. The other question I want to ask is on huge amount of free cash flow in the first half of the year. And I know that Jim stressed the importance of your cash generation as a competitive strength. And not to pick on you, but you did point out that DRI is obviously less attractive in the current commodity environment that none of us forecasted, and I get that. But can you talk to us a little bit about how you can deploy that capital going forward in ways that we can be confident will grow the business? In light of the fact that you've already done a lot of investments to grow organically, do you start to steer maybe toward other uses of cash going forward? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I would say that our first goal is always to invest to grow our business. Now we believe that there's still a lot of opportunity to do that, and we would focus on areas that brought value-added higher margin products, investments that we've made similar to what we did at Hertford County with the heat treat and the normalizing line. Investments that we've made in SBQ, investments that we made at Berkeley with the wildlife project, the investments that we made with the wider piling sections, and all of these cases were at focusing on investments on higher margin products that are also more important resistant. Although we're taking it light, we feel good about the action that's being taken in Washington to fade off these illegally traded products. The focus that we have is to continue to work to better insulate Nucor from that flood of imports and the way to do that is to focus on those value-added…

Timna Beth Tanners - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Okay. The point of my question wasn't to belabor the DRI issue because those are all good points, and I understand that. I guess, the point of my question was to try to ask if the use of this cash to protect against imports has been the primary source or use of cash over the last several years, and yet the benefit of those uses has yet to show up. Do you start to think about more direct return to shareholders to deploy that capital in a more direct way? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We always look at all options. And we look at the potential investments that we can make in our business and if we believe that they're good investments to make and how we believe that they bring long-term earnings to our shareholders that's the direction we'll take. On the other hand, if we don't see them out there, we will consider all other options.

Timna Beth Tanners - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Okay. Great. Thank you. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Michael Gambardella with JPMorgan.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Yes, good afternoon. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

How much sheet capability do you have left for the third quarter? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: That might be a different way of asking what's our utilization rate in sheet, is that where you're going?

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Well, I just want to say, even beyond your stated capacity, how much more volume could you put out into the marketplace in sheet in the third quarter versus the second? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Let's see how I can answer that without getting too specific here. How much more we put out? Listen, we could certainly put out several more million tons. And you are talking about just for the quarter – just for the third quarter?

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Yeah, just in the quarter. Just on a quarterly basis. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We could probably improve it about 20%.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

20%. So, I mean, with your relative cost advantage with scrap where it has come down to, is it just a question of letting the import supplies dry up in the marketplace? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, there's several things. Certainly that would help. It's also the issue of allowing the inventories in our warehouses continue to come down. It's a function that you look at our business in where was our product going? How those markets performed? Obviously, we talked about our increased participation in the automotive market and that's a strong market. We talked about non-residential construction and clearly lot of all of our products, including sheet were going to non-residential construction and we see that picking up. But on the other hand, we also have a lot of products that goes into oil-related products such as OCTG and that's obviously struggling right now, we don't see that changing for the rest of the year. So, we see some of the markets that we sell into – our sheet products into as continuing to get better and we see others that will continue to struggle. But overall as we look at the third quarter and fourth quarter, what we could put into that, another 20% to 25%, whether we'll be able to do that will be a function of what happens and how quickly it happens with trade cases, or potential trade cases on hot-rolled and on cold-rolled products, how quickly that impacts the imports coming in. That, of course, will also help drive how quickly the warehouse inventories deplete. But at the end of the day, I will say that I believe that we will be making more and more progress against imports. I feel really good about this recent legislation and the impact that's going to have short-term and long-term in our business. And so, as I look forward to the rest of the year, we do have, as a company, we're heavily weighted on the hot band side. Sometimes that's a real advantage, sometimes it's not. Right now we're in markets where that's not advantage but that will turn around also. So I feel good about where we're going, I feel good about the import situation and the impact that'll have on the markets.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

When you think about market share, in the long products part of your business, everyone is subject to the same raw material cost issue, scrap basically in an open market. But in the other half of your business, pretty much in the sheet business, you have maybe 35% of the market is scrap-based and the other 65% is iron ore-based and that's where you can get a real advantage in terms of market share pick up. How much market share in the sheet business did you pick up in the second quarter? And then can you talk about what you think you can do in the back half of the year? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You mean pick up because of the cost advantages in the DRI?

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

The DRI and the scrap business, just scrap prices coming down relative to iron ore in the last several months. James D. Frias - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Versus the integrated scrap. I think he is thinking versus integrated.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Yeah, versus integrated. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I would have to almost answer that on a product-by-product basis. I mean, if we were to look at automotive, we think that we will pick up some market share in automotive. In construction, we feel good about our ability to pick up 2%, 3%, 4% in construction. And as I mentioned earlier, in some of our other markets, we think they'll continue to struggle.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Okay. Because I think you had about a 12% increase quarter-over-quarter in your sheet shipments and one of your other – your primary competitor, in terms of mini mill, Steel Dynamics, had about a 24% increase in sheet shipments quarter-over-quarter. So clearly both you guys are gaining share in the sheet business versus the integrateds and imports. I was just wondering, how much more share do you think you can pick up in the back half of the year? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, can I answer that by saying how much would I like to pick up?

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Sure. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I'm just kidding, but listen, we continuously work against all of our competitors both scrap-based and integrated. I don't want to make any comments in particular against any one of our competitors.

Michael F. Gambardella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Okay. Thanks a lot, John.

Operator

Operator

Up next, we'll go to David Gagliano with BMO Capital Markets.

David Gagliano - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Hi. I just – I wanted to just quickly follow up on the DRI math. I think this is right but I just want to make sure. So you mentioned 4 million tons and we don't know the cost of the iron ore inventory on the ground at this point, but is it reasonable to assume it's about $30 a ton higher than current prices? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: The inventory on the ground. James D. Frias - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: I'm sorry. Say again, I missed the question.

David Gagliano - BMO Capital Markets

United States

I'm trying to figure out what the average cost of the iron ore inventory that we've used in the second quarter. What that is relative to the current iron ore market? James D. Frias - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: The difference between the higher cost iron ore and the lower cost inventory and this is (47:11) delivered all-in is about $30 ton, $35 a ton. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So you were pretty close.

David Gagliano - BMO Capital Markets

United States

That's what I needed. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll now go to Phil Gibbs with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

I had a question, John, on sheet pricing. If we were to assume that sheet price stayed relatively level with where they are now just in terms of the spot market, would you expect that your pricing realizations will be improved in the third quarter relative to second or would we need to see more uplift to get that? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Actually I would say that we see a small amount of improvement.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Okay. I appreciate that. And then in the – and then the M&A landscape, what opportunities are you seeing there, and do you think that there is going to be more consolidation in the industry in the next 6 months, 12 months, 2 years – I mean, is there going to be more consolidation here that we see? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We don't comment on any potential merger or acquisition activity that we're involved in. As a general statement – this has been a long tough period for the industry and in the past, based on historical reference points, we see consolidation occur when you've gone through these tough times. So as a general statement it's possible but i'm not going to make any more comments than that.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Okay. And then, lastly, you made a comment that Yamato had a pretty, pretty strong quarter. Is that a mix piece or is that a demand element, just anything that you could provide in terms of color there because I saw your structural pricing held up relatively well relative to the first quarter? Thanks. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: It was a little bit of both to be honest with you. Demand was up a little bit, also mix came into play. As we mentioned, our new filing sections were involved. So mix had something, certainly had a role to play in it. The demand was up a little bit also.

Philip N. Gibbs - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Thanks, John. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll now take our question from Brian Yu with Citi.

Brian Hsien Yu - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Thanks and good afternoon. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon, Brian.

Brian Hsien Yu - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Hey, John. I got an outlook and then a product question for you on scrap. Scrap price in U.S., it seems like they've come back down to where they were back in February and when that happened back then, we saw a lot of volume dry up. So question is, is there some theoretical or numerical floor to where scrap could go given collection and just cost associated with aggregating it? And then two, how are you guys thinking about the scrap markets in third quarter? I think one of your competitors said, look, we think it's going to go down lower, but you guys are pretty big in it too, just wanted to get your views there too? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I'll start with that one. I think that going into the – we're kind of bearish on scrap prices going forward. We think that into the third quarter, it will – if we say, sideways with some downward pressure. So it will either be down a little bit or sideways, but we think probably down a little bit going into the third quarter. In terms of your first question, I don't think there is a numerical floor as such, but certainly as pricing goes down, again depending on the time of the year also. If it was winter and pricing is going down, a little harder to go out in the field and start tearing apart that old tractor and scrapping it, but in the summer time, nice weather, pricing goes down a little bit, but we don't see any major impact on the flows in our yards, and we don't expect to see it going forward.

Brian Hsien Yu - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Okay. And then second one back to kind of the trade – I know the industry has got to work with the tools and avenues available. I've heard others describe it as trying to herd cats when you're trying to deal with imports coming in. Say, do you lock out coated products from China and other countries. Is there a way to prevent bad Chinese product from finding a home elsewhere in the world depressing those local markets and then we end up getting imports here from another country? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, there certainly is a way, and it's actually happening today, and that is other countries react much quickly to the flood of imports than we do, and they apply the appropriate tariffs and duties in a much quicker manner. So it's not a case of whether or not there is going to be product substitution going on and where that end up going. They have learned the lesson of what's been going on, and they're reacting quicker. The recent legislation is going to give us not quite the same speed, but it is going to improve our ability to deal with that issue by dealing more quickly with each product as it comes out. And ultimately there are mechanisms in the world and if we find this to be a problem that spreads across all products in any one particular country or across group of countries that we might be able to take the action. It's much harder to pursue that type of action, but we've been successful with it in the past. I'm sure you're familiar with it, it's the – we refer it as the 201. And should the problem become so obvious that countries are employing the concept of product substitution or country substitution, we would not hesitate to go down that path again in the future.

Brian Hsien Yu - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Broker

Okay. Thank you. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Certainly it's a challenging situation, the imports, and one that we recognize as probably the largest – it's the largest challenge our industry faces, but again I'm going to stress, I feel good about the action, I mentioned this couple of calls ago, that I felt better about what was happening in the Washington than I've had in the past 20 years of my steel career and I feel even better today than I did two calls ago.

Operator

Operator

We'll now take our next question from Andrew Lane with Morningstar.

Andrew Lane - Morningstar Research

Management

Hi, Good afternoon. I wanted to ask on a cash basis, how close are you to reaching the breakeven point at the Louisiana DRI facility and do you expect that facility to be even cash positive possibly at some point later this year, even though pig iron prices continued their steady decline over the second quarter? James D. Frias - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Yeah, we believe if the iron ore situation were passed right now based on the volumes we're running at in the month of – at the end of the quarter, that they would have been cash breakeven then. So clearly by the end of this year they will be cash breakeven and cash positive.

Andrew Lane - Morningstar Research

Management

Okay. Great. I appreciate that. And then along the same lines, in addition to the benefits of putting that high cost iron ore inventory behind you, how much could the unit cost at that DRI facility improve, if you tick this utilization slightly higher or are you comfortable with the current utilization rate, which I am guessing is somewhere just about 85% or so. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Well, we believe that we can get the utilization rate up another 5%, maybe 7% or 8% and certainly that's going to have an impact on our costs, but there's also other areas that we believe we can improve – to improve our overall cost structure. One is yield, obviously, and we're focused on that. We have just installed and started up a briquetter, which will take some of the waste product from the path and turn into briquette that we can feed back into the furnace, we believe that will have a significant impact on the yields going forward. So in addition to getting the utilization up, we're confident that we can continue to work down our conversion costs by improving operation, that something Nucor has always been very good at and I'm sure that our team will be able to accomplish the same results in that facility.

Andrew Lane - Morningstar Research

Management

Great. And just to be clear, what is the current utilization rate at the facility right now at the end of the quarter? John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: It's about 90%, 91%, something like that.

Andrew Lane - Morningstar Research

Management

Okay. Fantastic. I appreciate the color. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll now take Scott Nicholls with Bishop, Rosen & Company. Go ahead, sir. Scott Nicholls - Bishop Rosen & Co: Good afternoon, gentlemen. I've got a two-part question. First part is Sachs of Chicago have a consensus earnings estimate for the year 2016 at about $2.95 a share, could you comment on that? James D. Frias - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: This is Jim Frias. We're in a very cyclical business and making predictions about 2016 is very challenging. So our comment would be that's within the range of possibilities, but we'll have to wait and see. Scott Nicholls - Bishop Rosen & Co: Okay. Thank you very much. James D. Frias - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

And we'll now go to Matthew Korn with Barclays.

Matthew J. Korn - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Management

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Following up now... John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Matt.

Matthew J. Korn - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Management

Hey, John. Following up on the trade case questions, in your press release, you noted that even you don't think the trade cases right now are enough to fight off the pressures of global over-capacity. Is it really mill closures do you think in the end that's going to take that that what it's going to take to the lift the outlook for all the mills over the cycle? And do you see any tangible signs where this over capacity is beginning to be addressed, do you think some of this over-capacity is actually here in the U.S? Last, do you think that this new cascade of global protections measures here, the EU, Mexico, India, do you think that's going to really prompt the kind of capacity review in places like China that seem to be needed? Thanks. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I might be the eternal optimist, but I do believe that in China they are beginning to understand that too much of a good thing is not such a good thing. I believe that they are starting to see that they do have too much capacity, we're hearing a little bit about some potential capacity cut-backs there, it's being driven by economics, is also being driven by environmental concern that are very real. So long-term, I do think that you're going to see some capacity reduction in China. Here in the States it's impossible for me to say what's going to happen in the way of closures going forward. But in a world where there's over-capacity sooner or later, there will be those players who cannot survive and that will happen. The key here is to remember that, Nucor has always been a low cost producer of steel and steel products. And that's where we – that's all okay, that's where we are really – that's where we shine. So at the end of the day, if there is potential closures here in the United States or somewhere else around the world, this (58:51) I can assure you. One of the names of the places closing will not be Nucor. We'll be in business. So it's hard for me to comment on who will close or how much will close, but I can assure is this and my teammates can assure that, we won't be one of the one that will be closing .

Matthew J. Korn - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Management

Got it. I appreciate the comment.

Operator

Operator

That concludes our question-and-answer session for today. At this time, Mr. Ferriola I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks. John J. Ferriola - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you. Let me conclude by saying as I always do, thank you to our shareholders, we appreciate your confidence and your support. Thank you to our customers. We really appreciate your business. And 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. And as always, most importantly, thank you all for doing it safely. Thanks for your interest in Nucor. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.