Domestic steel prices: Steel prices continued to rise, and sheet prices performed better than long products. The price of hot rolled steel, which was once lower than the price of rebar in previous months, rose again after five weeks and was higher than rebar prices. The transaction is still sluggish, and Xibo's monitoring of the purchase of Shanghai terminal line snails has decreased by 50% from last week.

International steel prices: Prices in the international market continue to rise: US sheet prices continue to rise by about 4% under the influence of price adjustments by mainstream steel mills, and the Korean market price also rises by about 3%. The CRU international steel price index stood at 199.7, which was the same as last week, up 11.1% from the previous month and up 25% from the same period of last year. The sharp increase in international coking coal and iron ore prices caused by extreme weather in Australia and Brazil is the main reason driving the rise in international steel prices. This has made the competitiveness of domestic steel products gradually reflected. In the first quarter, steel exports were better than expected.

Raw materials: Ore prices continue to rise: Tangshan mine rose 0.7%; Indian mines rose 4% due to higher export tariffs. Platts index 62% of the price of 62% of ore fines in the second quarter of 2011 was US$165.5/ton, unchanged from last week, which was 11 US dollars/ton lower than the spot discount; shipping from Western Australia to Beilun Port and freight from Brazil to Beilun Port remained unchanged. The BDI index continued to decline, dropping 5% to 1370 in the week. The price of coke rose 10.9% to 210 yuan/ton. Scrap and pig iron prices remain basically unchanged. The total annual production capacity of coal in flood-stricken areas in Australia exceeds 100 million tons, which is equivalent to 40% of the global market trade volume. Coking coal and coke in the domestic two weeks or so will increase the cost of steel mills.

Earnings trends: The overall gross tonnage gross margin of the industry continues to improve. After considering the inventory, the costs of steel mills remain basically unchanged. After the price rises, the gross profit per ton of steel mills will increase by RMB 20-69/t. If we do not consider the inventory cycle, the spot steel mills will lose 50 yuan/ton due to the increase in cost, and the intermediate and long-term steel mills will recover from 26-72 yuan/ton per ton of gross profit. We expect the overall profitability of the industry to increase month-on-month in December of last year and January of this year. In particular, there was a significant improvement in the earnings ratio in January.

Inventory: As a whole, the national steel society stocks continue to increase by 1.79%. Among which, long products inventories increased by 3.7%; sheet stocks increased by 0.2%; and iron ore stocks in the ports totaled 77.21 million tons, an increase of 0.8% from the previous week.