THE STAINLESS PIPE AND TUBE MARKET

摘要

Through April, including licenses andestimates, the shipping volume in stainlessis just over 22% behind last year. Weattribute this all to the energy component ofdemand. We warned you early on aboutour back-loaded forecast but now we arebeginning to see signs that the start of therecovery of activity will be delayed for a bit.Whether that will be a 60-90 day delay orsomething a little longer is not yet clear butat this point we are expecting just a Q4improvement - and it will be smaller thanour originial forecast. To be clear, it is notthat the decline in demand so far has beengreater than we expected it is truly all aboutthe timing of the recovery. And theuncertainty about the recovery is related tothe fact that we don’t yet appear to be at thebottom. The reduction in energy relateddemand has been a slow, steady fall –despite the deficit in shipments year overyear – which is uncharacteristic in thissegment. Add to that the fact that NGASactivity and LNG revivials have been slow torestart and we have an unfortuante recipefor a slow year.