Reliance, Inc. Jefferies Global Industrials Conference 2026

Great. We'll dive into that. First off, thank you all for being here this morning. I'm guessing none of you were at the tennis match last night because you made it into the meeting today. Thanks to Jefferies and Albert for asking Reliance to be here. As Albert mentioned, we are a metal service center company. For those of you not familiar, we buy from the major producers, primarily here in the U.S. We're the most diversified from a product mix and market exposure standpoint, and the largest service center in North America. So we cover a lot of different products and end markets. Overall, we would agree with the mills. The mills are very bullish. We typically follow what they're seeing in demand, and we also typically service a lot of smaller orders.

At Reliance, with $15 billion of sales, our average order size is about $3,000 an order. So we're doing several transactions. 40% of our orders, customer calls us today, we deliver tomorrow. We also do sell into some larger projects and larger OEMs. At a high level, and then I'll let Steve talk a little more specifically on the markets. At a high level, as I said, overall, pretty bullish. Carbon steel products, a third of our business, non-residential construction and infrastructure, which has been healthy for us for the last couple of years and getting stronger. About a third general manufacturing, where we started to finally see a pickup after a couple of years of operating at fairly low levels in all of the U.S. The other third's kind of transportation with aerospace, shipbuilding, et cetera.

We strategically don't sell metal directly into the automotive end market, but we process and ship a significant number of tons to the auto OEMs on what we call a toll processing basis, where it's customer-owned material. We don't take possession of the metal, so we don't have metal price risk, and we don't get squeezed on profits, on margins by the OEMs. We are able to participate meaningfully in that market with the mills as the producers, as our customers, and we charge a fee to process the metal, to handle the metal, to store the metal, to deliver the metal, et cetera. That has been a very profitable way for us to participate in the automotive market. Steve, if you could maybe talk about some of the end markets.

Yeah. Thank you, Karla. Basically, when people ask us about which end markets are strong, which are weak, there are many more strong markets than weak markets. We used to point back to ag and semiconductor and some other markets that were lagging, but it just seems like everything seems to be really coming to the forefront. There is a lot of products that are in short supply at our mill suppliers level, which might make some of our customers who are on the sidelines come out and try to make sure that they secure those products. Copper products for electrification and data centers, copper busbar, aluminum plate is in short supply. Many carbon products, whether it is structural tube, sheet, wide flange beams, which are at the highest price they have ever traded at. Supply is basically on allocation into 2027.

There is carbon plate that has recently become more scarce. We feel like our customer base, we serve all markets. We have 320 locations, mostly in the U.S., but we are in Canada, Mexico, and Asia, and Europe also. Everybody is trying to get their supply, and fortunately, our model is 95% domestic suppliers, and we have some really good relationships with them. They are doing a really good job making sure that our customers have what they need, no matter what the end market is.

Yeah, I think just in that, a little specifically, data center electrification around it continued to be strong. On the non-res side, we have seen a lot of schools, hospitals, public infrastructure, airport type of business over the last couple of years, and we continue to see the activity there on the non-res side. Automotive continues at healthy levels for us. We haven't really seen a dip. We continue to have opportunity for more demand there. As I mentioned, general manufacturing, fairly broad-based. As Steve said, ag probably the one lagging, but we are starting to see a little activity there. Consumer products, industrial machinery, most of the heavy equipment, construction equipment, we have seen those pick up. Aerospace has been picking up. There has been some excess supply inventory in the supply chain that is being worked through.

There is still some there, but for a lot of the products we sell, that has been worked through. With the higher build rates now and the multi-year backlog, we are very positive on aerospace going forward, as well as semiconductor. We were lagging a bit, but we are starting to see that pick up as well.

Yeah. This is kind of unchartered waters, so we do not know exactly what the impact would be or how that would happen or play out. But in general, we think a trade deal in North America with Canada and the U.S. would be positive for trade flow and for activity levels. On the steel side, also, I think a lot of that is dependent upon what each of those countries, how they handle their overall trade policies, including countries outside of North America. If they limit some of the metal, the import that was coming in to each Canada, Mexico, and then making its way to the U.S. So we are hopeful that they have protections in place there to prevent some of that from happening, which I think is probably part of a trade deal.

But as Albert mentioned, particularly on the aluminum side of things, last year when the tariffs were announced, the U.S. aluminum producers who we buy from, they bring in about two-thirds of the primary alumina from Canada. So that was immediately hit with the 50% tariffs, and that created some disruption in the U.S. market. Prices went up very high immediately because the tariffs were real. There was not strong underlying demand at that time to support customers paying higher prices. There was a lot of pre-tariff aluminum in the system, and it was pretty readily available. So there was a bit of a hit to margins. Customers were not buying and not buying at the full tariff costed prices a little over a year ago.

Since then, demand has improved for a lot of those products, and we are seeing now the customers are paying our markup on the base aluminum price. They are paying the tariff, but they are not paying our markup on that. The other behavior it caused at our customer base last year was both our customers and other service centers really skinny down on their inventory because everyone was concerned there was going to be a trade deal with Canada any day, and their inventory would be immediately devalued, and they did not want to get stuck holding that. Also, a lot of our smaller customers and competitors have to worry about credit lines, and with prices as high as they are, they are very hesitant to hold any extra aluminum inventory. There is still the concern that if the tariffs do get reduced, there will be a devaluation.

We saw a little bit with the rumors or the talks the other week where there was a little bit of a pullback on aluminum pricing. There is more to go if there would be a trade deal. I think at Reliance, we are better positioned than most other companies because of our size. If aluminum prices go down, we can stop buying from the mills and basically supply each other and get rid of that high-cost aluminum faster than most other of our competitors to protect our margin, hopefully a little better than others in a declining price environment. I do not know, Steve, if you have anything.