US service centre chain Ryerson witnessed a strong uptick in both profits and revenues during 2018, a pattern it expects to continue throughout 2019,Kallanish learns from the company’s year-end earnings review.
Ryerson earned $106 million on sales of $4.4 billion in 2018, up from a profit of $17.1m on sales of $3.4 billion. Ryerson’s 2018 net income includes a gain-on-bargain purchase of $70m due to the company’s July acquisition of Central Steel and Wire.
On-year, Ryerson saw average selling prices rise by 16% and average tons shipped rise by 4.1%.
In 2019, Ryerson expects relatively strong end-user demand to offset weather issues experienced during the first quarter.
“Customer sentiment continues to be positive as we moved through the early part of 2019 supported by stronger year-over-year shipments out of the gate despite some severe winter weather across the network in late January through mid-February,” the company says. “We believe average selling prices remain well supported year-over-year and gross margins have begun to expand gradually after bottoming in mid-February. We expect to see continued strength in most of our end-markets while commodity pricing across carbon, aluminum, and nickel has stabilised or moved higher compared to levels transacted in the fourth quarter of 2018.”
Posted in Latest Updates
Fill in the form below and we will be in touch soon