Despite widespread belief that US domestic HSS tubing mills were “on the verge” of announcing yet another price increase announcement by the end of last week, that increase has yet to materialize.
“As far as where the market is going, it’s really tough to call right now,” a source said, noting that with HRC prices holding flat last week, and only up slightly this week, that the tube mills “don’t want to come out with an increase that they’ll have to back out of.”
Other sources agree that in the absence of a notable uptick in HRC prices, that HSS prices are likely to stay flat.
“I think the tube mills didn’t want to pull the trigger [on a price increase] based on the psychological effect of [mostly flat] HRC prices,” another source added. “But we’ll have to wait and see what happens next week. If HRC is mostly flat, or [prices] go down a little bit, or it doesn’t go up by more than a buck or two, I don’t imagine that the tube mills will announce anything.”
Order activity has also slowed a bit, which is largely tied to fabricators having stocked up early.
“A lot of the big jobs were pre-bought, and the fabricators are still working through the inventory they have for those jobs,” a source noted. “Most of the big [fabricators] are still in pretty good shape with the inventory they have. But, on the other hand, while we’re selling less material, we’re still making good margins on what we’re selling based on our inventory costs.”
In terms of current prices, US HSS spot market tons are still being sold in an average range of $119-$120 cwt. ($2,624-$2,646/mt or $2,380-$2,400/nt), FOB mill, reflecting no change since our last report a week ago.