
Steel Winners: Worthington, U.S. Steel
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Steelmaker stocks pushed higher again on Friday -- a few of them touching new 52-week highs and extending a sharp weeklong rally -- as investors continued to place their bets on the recession's end.
Economic data released Friday sent conflicting messages. On the one hand, businesses
cut jobs at a surprisingly brisk pace
. On the other, sales at the wholesale level rose to a degree that was stronger than expected, indicating that factory orders may also continue to pick up.
That, of course, would be good news for steel manufacturers, which have spent the last year shuttering and idling plants around the world in a bid to cut costs and scale back production to the level of real demand.
Bullish news has scrolled across the wires all week.
Worthington Industries
(WOR) - Get Report
surprised investors on Wednesday with a
, while Goldman Sachs' research department made a bullish call on American industry in general and the steel sector in particular, upgrading a slew of stocks and ratcheting up price targets in the process, including Worthington and
Steel Dynamics
(STLD) - Get Report
.
Spurring Goldman's optimism was yet another sanguine economic data point: December figures from the Institute of Supply Management, released Monday, which indicated that manufacturing in the U.S. expanded at rates not seen since 2007.
On Friday, Mark Parr, an analyst at
KeyBank
Capital Markets, joined the party, upgrading Worthington shares to buy from hold. His chief rationale was a predicted rebound in the auto industry -- he believes 12 million cars will sell in 2010, which would mean a 75% return to normal levels. About a quarter of Worthington's business is with carmakers.
Worthington shares paced the advancers among steel companies. Midday Friday, the stock was gaining 8.2% to $17.39 on heavy volume after earlier setting a fresh 52-week high at $17.53.
Shares of
AK Steel
(AKS) - Get Report
were rising 7.6% to $25.35; Steel Dynamics was up 4.7% to $20.27; and industry stalwart
U.S. Steel
(X) - Get Report
was up 5.7% to $64.39. All reached new year highs during the Friday session.
Nucor
(NUE) - Get Report
, the biggest producer of steel in the U.S., saw its stock rise more modestly, adding 1.2% to $49.83.
-- Written by Scott Eden in New York
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Scott Eden has covered business -- both large and small -- for more than a decade. Prior to joining TheStreet.com, he worked as a features reporter for Dealmaker and Trader Monthly magazines. Before that, he wrote for the Chicago Reader, that city's weekly paper. Early in his career, he was a staff reporter at the Dow Jones News Service. His reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Men's Journal, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and the Believer magazine, among other publications. He's also the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a nonfiction book about Notre Dame football fans and the business and politics of big-time college sports. He has degrees from Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis.









