Nucor Earnings are Down

Nucor said it expects second-quarter earnings of $1.05 to $1.15 per share. Analysts, on average, were expecting $1.39. This warning caused Nucor shares to fell by 6 percent and made the steel sector to go down.

The company representative said it expects shipments of its steel bar products to drop about 17 percent from the first quarter because many customers built up inventories during the first quarter in anticipation of rising prices. The automotive and residential construction weakness also hurt demand for the products. Bar shipments for the first six months of the year will be down about 5 percent from a year earlier. It expects full-year shipments to be more in line with the year-to-date pace than the second-quarter rate.

Nucor and affiliates are manufacturing steel products, which operating facilities are situated primarily in the U.S. and Canada. Its product mix include: carbon and alloy steel -- in bars, beams, sheet and plate; steel joists and joist girders; steel deck; fabricated concrete reinforcing steel; cold finished steel; steel fasteners; metal building systems; light gauge steel framing; steel grating and expanded metal; and wire and wire mesh. Moreover Nucor is North America's largest recycler.

HISTORY
Nucor traces its origins to auto manufacturer Ransom E. Olds, who founded Oldsmobile and then, in 1905, REO Motor Car Company. The new company was an innovator, producing the first commercial cars with electric lights, an electric starter, and pneumatic tires.
Through a series of transactions, the company Olds founded eventually became, in 1955, Nuclear Corporation of America. By that time, the company was involved in the nuclear instrument and electronics business. Nuclear bought several companies over the next few years, including a South Carolina maker of steel joists and joist girders called Vulcraft Corp. that would soon provide the spark for the company's remarkable evolution.

Nuclear Corp. suffered through several money-losing years and was facing bankruptcy in 1965, when it installed Vulcraft's top executive, Ken Iverson, as president, and Nuclear Corp's controller, Sam Siegel, as financial vice president. The new management quickly sold many of the company's wide-ranging operations to focus on profitable Vulcraft. The company moved its corporate office from Phoenix to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1966.

Today, Vulcraft is the nation's largest producer of steel joists and steel deck, standard building components in non-residential construction. Nucor's tireless workers and modern techniques can make steel and steel products at a cost that is competitive anywhere in the world.- Alla Harutyunyan for HULIQ.COM