Leon Topalian
Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer at Nucor
Thanks, Jack, and welcome, everyone. I'd like to begin by highlighting two recent changes to our executive team. In June, Doug Jellison retired after 33 years with Nucor. Doug worked across many of our businesses and made tremendous contributions to Nucor over the three decades he was part of our team, most recently as EVP for Strategy. We wish Doug, Luanna, and his entire family the very best in retirement.
And in May, Randy Spicer was promoted to Executive Vice President to run our bar and engineered bar businesses. Randy is a talented leader who has most recently served as President of Nucor Tubular Products. He's been with Nucor now for more than 20 years and we are excited to have him part of our executive team.
Turning to our second-quarter performance, I'd like to congratulate our entire team on achieving the safest first half of any year in Nucor's history. With 52 of our 109 divisions accomplishing our ultimate goal of zero recordable injuries, these are fantastic results and I'd like to thank our 32,000 team members for your steady progress toward making Nucor the world's safest steel company.
In terms of financial results, we generated earnings of $2.68 per diluted share in the second quarter, bringing our year-to-date earnings to $6.14 per diluted share. Second quarter earnings decreased compared to the first quarter, primarily due to lower average selling prices in both our Steel Mills and Steel Product segments.
Returning capital to shareholders and maintaining a strong balance sheet are key components of our overall capital allocation philosophy and we made progress in both fronts during the quarter. Nucor repurchased approximately 2.9 million shares for $500 million and Moody changed its outlook on Nucor's senior unsecured credit rating from stable to positive.
One thing I'm especially proud of is the progress our team continues to make in advancing our long-term, value-creating strategy. During the quarter, we continued to make progress in growing our core steelmaking operations, while expanding into new downstream businesses. I'd like to just take a minute and highlight a few of these initiatives. At our Lexington, North Carolina greenfield bar mill, we hit key milestones during the quarter and remain on track to commission the mill in the first quarter of 2025.
At our West Virginia sheet mill, we've made considerable progress since our groundbreaking last fall and expect construction to wrap up by the end of 2026. As for recently completed projects, we continue to build momentum in production and shipments out of our Gallatin and Brandenburg mills. Gallatin shipped almost 500,000 tons for the quarter, establishing new daily and ship production records and in late June, we celebrated the grand opening of its new tube mill.
At Brandenburg, we shipped nearly 60,000 tons in Q2, but we no longer expect to ship 0.5 million tons for the year due to softer market conditions, elevated plate imports, and our focus on capabilities rather than volume. However, we will continue to focus on achieving full run-rate capabilities and becoming EBITDA-positive by year's end. We also took additional steps to expand the set of solutions we offer customers, recently announcing two acquisitions as part of our Expand Beyond strategy. As a reminder, this strategy involves targeting steel-adjacent businesses with attractive growth profiles, high margins, and compelling synergy potential.
In June, we announced the planned acquisition of Rytec, a leading manufacturer of high-performance overhead doors. In conjunction with its acquisition, we're forming Nucor Door Technologies, our overhead door growth platform, which will include C.H.I. Overhead Doors as well as Rytec. Rytec has two manufacturing facilities in Wisconsin that produce high-performance doors for warehouse, auto dealerships, advanced manufacturing facilities, and cold storage.
The company has a strong reputation for quality products and superior customer service. The combination of Rytec and C.H.I. to form Nucor Door Technologies allows us to offer customers a diverse portfolio of residential and commercial doors. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of July, and we're excited to welcome Rytec's 300 team members to the Nucor family.
Earlier in the second quarter, we closed on the acquisition of Southwest Data Products, a manufacturer and installer of data center infrastructure. This acquisition gives us expanded capabilities to serve a rapidly growing market, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. By combining the capabilities of Southwest Data Products, Nucor Warehouse Systems, and Nucor Buildings Group, we can now provide customers with nearly all steel products that go into a data center, from the building to the interior infrastructure. We believe the cross-selling opportunities that Rytec and Southwest Data Products create with existing Nucor business units will create meaningful value for our customers and our shareholders.
Now, I'd like to take a minute to revisit our long-term growth plan and how the investments we're making today can create value for our customers and shareholders for years to come. In raw materials, we're investing in new technologies to enhance our scrap segregation and recovery rates, while reducing our carbon footprint. In our Steel Mills segment, each investment is aligned with our broader strategy to increase Nucor's product mix towards higher-margin, value-added products to address specific customer needs in key markets.
For steel products, we're investing in automation to drive efficiencies and create a safer work environment, and we're innovating new products and production methods that our customers value. And finally, we're investing in new downstream platforms where we identify steel-adjacent businesses underpinned by strong secular growth trends.
Nucor embarked on this long-term growth strategy in 2020, when I became CEO. Over the past several years, we've accomplished a lot, but we've still got plenty left to do. The next two years will likely be our most capital-intensive with several active construction projects occurring simultaneously. We plan to fund this with operating cash flow and cash on hand, which was approximately $5.4 billion at the end of Q2.
Our largest current project is the West Virginia Sheet Mill, which will begin supplying customers in the Midwest and Northeast with a more sustainable sheet product once construction is completed in late 2026. Between now and then, we're excited about the start-ups of several other projects.
In the first quarter of 2025, we'll begin ramping up our new Rebar Micro Mill in Lexington, North Carolina to supply construction markets in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. In the spring and fall of '25, we'll complete construction of two highly automated utility tower manufacturing plants to serve the high-growth power transmission and telecommunications markets.
After that, we'll be bringing on new finishing capabilities, including a new galv line and coating complex at Crawfordsville in late '25 and a second galv line at Nucor Berkley in mid '26. Each of these projects, along with several others throughout the company serve important roles. It's not about adding capacity, it's about a differentiated capability set for our customers while doubling the through-cycle earnings potential for Nucor. We have crossed the midpoint of our multi-year capex plan, but several recently completed projects have yet to reach their full earnings potential.
We know what it takes to accomplish the goals we've laid out for you at our Investor Day nearly two years ago and our leadership team is laser-focused on the execution required to get us there. Finally, I'd like to address concerns the domestic steel industry has regarding unfair trade practices. Over the last 18 months, we've seen a material uptick in steel imported from Mexico and Canada to levels far above historic levels contrary to the Section 232 agreements with both countries.
It's also clear that China and other countries have been evading the Section 232 tariffs and other duties by transshipping steel through our neighbors to the North and South. Fortunately, a few weeks ago, trade representatives from the U.S. and Mexico announced an agreement designed to stop the flow of illegally imported steel from China and elsewhere.
Under this new agreement, the U.S. will impose a 25% tariff on Mexican steel that is melted and poured outside of North America. And Mexico agreed to raise its tariff rates on imports from countries it does not have free trade agreements with. In our view, this was an important first step to stop the surge of steel imports from Mexico and address the problem of circumvention. However, more stringent efforts are needed and any exceptions to this new requirement, including through the exclusion process, will largely negate the benefits of the agreement.
And we still have concerns about trade practices involving Rebar, electrical conduit, and the rise in fabricated steel products coming in from Mexico. We urge the U.S. government to continue working with Mexican leaders to address each of these issues. We also urged Congress to pass the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0. This legislation includes critical updates to the U.S. trade remedy laws that would enhance domestic industries' ability to defend against unfairly traded imports with new tools to address Chinese cross-border subsidies and expedite investigations of repeat offenders that simply move production from one country to another. We appreciate the bipartisan support that exists for strong trade enforcement.
With that, I'll turn it over to Steve, who will share additional details on our Q2 financial results. Steve?
