Leon J. Topalian
President and Chief Executive Officer at Nucor
Good afternoon, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. Before we get to our second quarter results, I want to highlight some changes we've made to our executive leadership team. As we announced in May, MaryEmily Slate retired on June 11th. MaryEmily is a dedicated and an exceptional leader and we thank her for her more than 21 years with Nucor. Her impact on our teams across the enterprise contributed greatly to Nucor's success and profitable growth. The Nucor team wishes the very best for you MaryEmily and your family, and you will always be a tremendously valued member of the Nucor family.
With MaryEmily's retirement, Dan Needham has assumed the role of EVP of Commercial. John Hollatz was promoted to Executive Vice President of Bar, Engineered Bar and Rebar Fabrication. John is a proven leader. Over his 23 year Nucor career, he has served in our joist and deck, building systems and flat rolled businesses. We welcome John to the executive team. As part of this reorganization, Chad Utermark has been appointed to the newly created role of Executive Vice President of New Markets and Innovation. In this new role, Chad will focus on our continued growth into new markets and integrating new businesses into the core operations of Nucor.
Also, joining me today on the call are members of the Nucor's executive team including, Dave Sumoski, our Chief Operating Officer; Steve Laxton, our Chief Financial Officer; Al Behr, responsible for Plate and Structural Products; Doug Jellison, responsible for Raw Materials and Logistics; Greg Murphy, responsible for Business Services and General Counsel; and Rex Query, responsible for Sheet and Tubular Products.
Our mission to become the world's safest steel company is the greatest measure of our culture and our most important value. Halfway through the year, we are on pace to have our new safest year in history, which is coming off back to back to back record safety years. I want to thank each and every member of the Nucor family for your focus and dedication in ensuring every team member is safe.
Turning to our financial performance. We achieved a record second quarter earnings per share of $9.67 and record first half earnings of $17.30. This record performance was driven by strength across our diversified portfolio of businesses. Strong financial results were recorded by number of our businesses, including bar, plate, sheet, structural, joist, deck, buildings, tubular and our raw material operations. Since entering the steel business, we are focused on growing long-term earnings power and shareholder value. This month, we are celebrating 50 years since Nucor was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. During that time, we have led the transformation of the domestic steel industry and we are the envy of the world in terms of Nucor's environmental footprint, safety performance and efficiency as well as profitability.
Nucor has grown revenues by more than 13% per year from $83 million when we were first listed on the Exchange in 1972 to last year's record of $36.5 billion, even as the total size of the domestic industry is shrunk. We have also grown our workforce from 1,800 team members back in 1972 to more than 31,000 team members today, and in the process created a huge amount of shareholder value. $1,000 invested in Nucor when we were first listed would be worth over $1.6 million today. Our record first half results continue the history of delivering new highs in profitability and cash flow through successive, economic and steel market cycles, demonstrating the sustainability and adaptability of Nucor's business model. We have world-class manufacturing talent and we are making the right investments to continue our track record of outperformance.
Several of our recently completed organic growth projects in our core steel-making business are already contributing to a record first half profitability and there is more to come as additional projects ramp up production or come online. For example, our Nucor Steel Gallatin modernization and expansion project is now fully operational, having completed the last of their project related outage work on June 6th. Our Brandenburg Kentucky plate mill is on schedule and on budget for a late 2022 production start with almost 400 team members on board. This is a game-changing mill in the U.S plate market that will firmly establish us as the market leader in plate. And in May, the state of West Virginia approved the air quality permit for our new sheet mill in Mason County. Groundbreaking for the project will happen later this year.
Also, during the second quarter, we completed our purchase of C.H.I. Overhead Doors and announced two acquisitions that will lead to the establishment of Nucor Towers & Structures, which will serve the utility, transportation, and telecommunication sectors. We are so excited to welcome our new team members into the Nucor family as we execute on our mission statement to Grow The Core, Expand Beyond, and Live Our Culture. These investments are excellent examples of what we look for and Expand Beyond businesses. They serve growing markets and leverage Nucor's core manufacturing capabilities and are safety and team-focused, incentive-driven entrepreneurial culture. We look forward to rapidly scaling up their operations as we continue to broaden our portfolio of construction market solutions.
As we evaluate growth initiatives either in our core business or by expanding beyond, we focused on driving incremental value by leveraging our capabilities and existing positions of strength as we have done for the last 5.5 decades throughout our history.
Earlier, I mentioned the 50th anniversary of our New York Stock Exchange listing. Our July 12, 1972 news release announcing the listing gave our firm's business description as quote, "The nation's largest producer of steel joist." And it mentioned that the Company also produces carbon and alloy steel. At that time, we just operated one steel mill which was Nucor Steel, Darlington. Nucor's tremendous growth and profitability and market value over the past five decades has been fueled by our decision back then to expand upstream into steel making. The result is that today we were the leading North American manufacturer of a diverse array of steels and steel products providing essential solutions for construction, infrastructure, energy, transportation, automotive, capital goods and consumer durable market applications.
Today, Expand Beyond is a disciplined strategy for profitable growth and value creation. Just as our expansion into steel making was 50 years ago. With it, we are targeting a higher-growth sectors of the economy and leveraging Nucor's core competency and efficient, variable cost-based manufacturing as well as our broad product portfolio and existing channels to market.
Turning to policy issues. I want to mention that we support swift passage of legislation to address semiconductor manufacturing and beneficial updates to our trade loss through legislation, known as Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0. Congress must get this important bipartisan priority across the finish line. Since the COVID-19 pandemic first disrupted our lives more than two years ago, it has become clear that the U.S. need strong, resilient domestic supply chains for all sorts of critical materials such as semiconductors made by great American companies. Re-shoring semiconductor production here in America gives us a tremendous opportunity to unleash a manufacturing renaissance in the United States.
Also, last week, the U.S. International Trade Commission unanimously extended anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders for an additional five years on imports of corrosion-resistant steel from China, India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan. While this is a positive development, unfairly traded imports remain a concern for our industry. The ITC is conducting several more five-year sunset reviews this year of key trad orders on flat rolled products. These orders are critical to market stability and industry performance and are an important part of our government trade enforcement toolkit. Nucor is working hard to ensure that they all remain in place.
Finally, today's headlines are full of concerns regarding inflation, interest rate hikes, and whether we'll experience a recession. While we are all aware of these factors, Nucor's sustainable and flexible business model gives me great confidence in our ability to continue to grow and create value for our shareholders. Our team is focused on enhancing our capabilities not simply adding capacity and on delivering a differentiated value proposition for our customers by reliably and safely providing a broad offering of the most environmentally responsible steels and steel products found anywhere in the world.
Before I turn it over to Steve, I want to congratulate our 31,000 Nucor team members for a fantastic first half of the year. Thank you for your hard work and dedication, and commitment to delivering exceptional customer service. Let's continue our progress towards delivering the safest, cleanest, and most profitable year in Nucor's history.
Now, Steve Laxton will share additional details on our first half performance and our outlooks as we move forward into the second half of the year. Steve?
