T4 Market Intelligence

Highlighting mixed-to-negative titanium survey reads and macro headlines over the past few weeks. At this point, our market intelligence and analysis indicate a slight downward bias to near-term earnings expectations for companies levered to titanium and other specialty alloys. Continue reading

Tower… Requesting permission to release Buzzing The Tower… A high-speed flyby fully armed with research note summaries, a sampling of interesting quotes collected from the channel, and industry headlines that can be enjoyed with a morning coffee. Admittedly, we deployed the initial review later than planned and Viper is incensed. We had a minor setback after getting caught in Iceman’s jet wash again, but that will never happen again-again. Going forward, we plan to release a new update near the start of every other weekend and then hop into some blue jeans for another beach volleyball match… Continue reading

The titanium snapshot report is compilation of unique channel insights, collected during our market checks and interactions with high-level industry executives, that emphasize new demand data points, spot market price trends, producer lead time management, and inventory management. There is so much great information worth sharing that we issue these reports bi-monthly (as part of the T4 Supplier Intelligence Service). Shifting to today’s update and supporting analysis, we saw a modest sequential improvement in the titanium survey reads but the global market still appears to be far from a period of real recovery. Industry contacts characterize the current environment as challenging or uncertain and still provide data points that suggest business conditions are trending in-line or slightly below expectations. There now appears to be an even lower level of probability that titanium will transition into a top-line tailwind for the individual companies at any point this year. Continue reading

Positive data points and contact commentary collected during quarterly checks on the specialty materials group serves as the key catalyst behind the upward estimate revisions we applied to certain names within our coverage universe. We are somewhat intrigued by an interesting setup developing around the upstream aerospace suppliers levered to premium alloy production (including nickel-based alloys) and/or jet engine demand. Continue reading

In this Flash Note, we provide an immediate reaction to the update commercial aircraft production schedule issued by the Airbus management team earlier today, including: modeling implications; the most impacted suppliers; and other bearish headlines that could soon follow. Continue reading

Ahead of the quarterly updates set to be released by several aerospace-levered companies over the next few weeks, and the swearing-in of President Joe Biden, we are submitting our Aerospace Flight Plan For 2021, broadly defined as an industry preview and data point refresher. The intention of this report is to provide a simple listing of industry headlines expected to materialize over the next twelve months that could sway investor sentiment or become a catalyst for estimate revisions on individual companies. We sat down over the weekend and updated our industry models to fully reflect our increasing conservative macro-outlook and to match some of the new data points provided by channel contacts. Continue reading

We are still picking up indications of strength throughout the steel channels and there appears to be increasing probability of upward movement in spot market prices (looking out 3-4 quarters). HRC prices are hitting the highest point in 12 years on supply constraints, heading into a normally seasonal-slow demand period. Continue reading