Leon J. Topalian
Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer at Nucor
Thanks, Jack, and welcome, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to say that our hearts go out to our neighbors in Western North Carolina, Florida and across the Southeast in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton. While Nucor operations were not adversely impacted by the storms, we do have many friends and team members in these areas who were and [Phonetic] now face the difficult task of putting their lives back together, Nucor will continue to support the relief effort and the monumental task of rebuilding.
Turning to Nucor's third quarter performance. Our 32,000 team members continue to raise the bar on safety performance and Nucor remains on track for the safest year in the company's history. Building on the progress we have been making for the last six years, our injury and illness rates continue to trend lower with 35 of 109 divisions injury-free through September. This is an amazing accomplishment especially since it has occurred through all phases of the economic cycle and bring a period of rapid expansion for the company. Through it all, Nucor team members have remained steadfast in their commitment to becoming the world's safest steel company. Congratulations to the entire Nucor team and let's continue to stay focused as we close out the year.
In the third quarter, Nucor generated EBITDA of $869 million and adjusted earnings of $1.49 per share. These figures exclude the impact of noncash pretax charges totaling $123 million or $0.44 per share, which Steve will provide more color on shortly. Nucor is committed to returning cash to shareholders and making prudent investments that create long-term shareholder value. And so far this year, we've made significant headway on both objectives. Through September, Nucor has returned $2.3 billion to shareholders through our share repurchases and dividends, and we've completed $2.3 billion of capital expenditures. All of this has been funded with operating cash flow and cash on hand, which ended the quarter at approximately $4.9 billion.
Let me take a moment to provide a brief update on where things stand for some of our largest capital projects. In the first half of '25, we will commence operations of the new melt shop at our existing bar mill in Kingman, Arizona and we will commission our new rebar micro mill located in Lexington, North Carolina. Also in 2025, we plan to complete construction of two highly automated utility tower manufacturing facilities and a new galv line and coating complex at Nucor Steel Indiana. Turning to 2026. We expect to commission our automotive galv line at our Berkeley County sheet mill in South Carolina by the middle of the year. And by the end of 2026, we expect to complete construction of our new state-of-the-art sheet mill in West Virginia. Each of these projects is designed to address specific customer needs and will serve as catalyst for long-term earnings growth. And while it can take time for large projects like these to reach their full earnings potential, our team has a strong track record of safely doing whatever it takes to get there.
We're also making progress integrating the teams and operations from recent acquisitions including Rytec and Southwest Data Products. These businesses present compelling growth opportunities for our overhead door in racking platforms and we are pleased with the early progress we're already starting to recognize. While the broader U.S. economy continues to be resilient decreased steel demand from several of our end-use markets, along with higher import volumes has put pressure on our margins throughout the year, the Federal Reserve's recent actions are a good start, but it will likely take more time, more rate relief and looser lending conditions before we start to see the flow-through effect in the construction, industrial and consumer durables market that are so impactful to steel demand.
That said, several markets do remain quite healthy. For example, construction related to semiconductor factories, advanced manufacturing facilities, data centers, and institutional buildings are still very strong. There are several near-term catalysts with the potential to improve underlying steel fundamentals for 2025. A few leading indicators we monitor have started to trend higher and further easing of monetary policy could spur increased construction activity as we get into next year. And while we recognize that new infrastructure spending has been less deal intensive than originally expected, we do still expect to generate incremental demand in the years ahead.
When we look to the future, Nucor is well positioned given our diverse set of capabilities. And moving forward, we'll continue to seek ways to further diversify by investing in higher-margin businesses that are less cyclical and more aligned with secular growth trends. We have seen this play out in 2024 as returns from our steel products segment have shown more resilience than our steel mills.
Steel product bookings and volumes may have fallen from their peaks, but current EBITDA margins remain well above historic averages. During the 12-month period ending in September, our steel products segment contributed 42% of Nucor's pretax earnings, which is nearly three times that of historical averages. There's been a lot of attention on trade recently. So let me touch on that topic now. Nucor, along with other domestic steel producers continues to advocate for the vigorous enforcement of trade laws, the recent surge in high emissions imported steel continues to negatively affect both domestic steel prices and mill utilization rates. As a result, Nucor recently joined several other steel producers in filing cases against imports of corrosion-resistant flat-rolled steel from 10 nations. As we have done for decades, we will continue to closely monitor imports and bring cases when products are illegally traded in our market.
We applaud the International Trade Commission preliminary determination that there is a reasonable indication that the domestic corrosion-resistant steel industry has been materially injured as a result of legally dumped and subsidized imports. We also applaud the Department of Commerce decision in August to continue classifying Vietnam as a nonmarket economy. State-owned enterprises continue to play a major role in Vietnam's economy, and China continues to circumvent trade duties by relocating production and shipping products through Vietnam. Any change to Vietnam's market status would have significantly impacted the calculation of U.S. antidumping duties. With the 2024 presidential election, just two weeks away, we believe the American steel industry is well positioned regardless of the outcome. We have made it a priority to work with elected officials from both parties, in Congress and with both Republican and Democratic administrations and both have a strong grasp of our trade issues.
After years of work by our industry, there is now bipartisan consensus, a strong trade enforcement is a priority and that we need to fix our trading relationship with China. There's also been strong bipartisan support for infrastructure spending. We look forward to working with whichever administration is in office just as we have done for decades.
With that, I'll turn it over to Steve, who will share additional details on our third quarter financial results. Steve?
