NUCOR CORP (NUE) Business

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces and procures ferrous and non-ferrous materials primarily for use in its steel manufacturing business. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2025, we recycled approximately 20 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 62% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2025.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to end-use markets such as nonresidential construction, durable goods and capital spending that are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling, cold finish bar steel, steel electrical conduit pipe and insulated metal panels), we are the leading supplier.

In recent years we have embarked on a strategy to advance Nucor’s capabilities and further its value creation, as summarized in our Mission Statement: Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live Our Culture.

We have examined and prioritized growth opportunities across our core steelmaking, steel products and raw materials operations, and we have identified and executed on several acquisitions and investments to expand the products and services we offer beyond our traditional capabilities. We believe that the growth opportunities we are pursuing leverage our core competency as a highly efficient, industrial manufacturer working primarily with steel and steel products.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality (“SBQ”)). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”) along with continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investment in NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) (see “Steel joint venture”- below), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold approximately 19,848,000 tons to outside customers in 2025. In 2025, 79% of the shipments made by our

steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 21% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our steel products segment.

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Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, infrastructure, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is estimated at approximately 9,800,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

In April 2022, Nucor announced that it would build a new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. Construction of the new rebar micro mill is complete and the facility is in the production ramp-up phase. Additionally, Nucor Wire Products Connecticut, Inc. (formerly Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc.) no longer produces bar products and will be represented in the wire group going forward.

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Sheet mills - Nucor operates six sheet mills that produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Included in our six sheet mills is California Steel Industries, Inc. ("CSI"), in which Nucor has a 51% controlling ownership position. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 14,500,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for further processing of hot-rolled sheet steel.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that approximately 85% of our sheet steel sales in 2025 were to contract customers. These sheet sales contracts are noncancellable agreements that generally incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months. The balance of our sheet steel sales were made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The number of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions.

Nucor owns a 51% controlling economic and voting interest in Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. ("NJSM"). NJSM is a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons, that is expected to supply the country’s automotive market.

In January 2022, Nucor announced it had selected Mason County, West Virginia as the site for its new three-million-ton state-of-the-art sheet mill. When operational, the new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines capable of producing advanced high-end automotive and construction grades.

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Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long-span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for use in all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. The benefits of high-strength, low-alloy beams are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space, and overall environmental impact. Nucor sells its high-strength, low-alloy beams under the trade name AEOS®.

Nucor also owns a structural mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,300,000 tons per year.

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

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Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 3,600,000 tons per year.

Certain plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

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Steel joint venture - Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 30 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet exacting specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, galvanized torque tubes used in solar arrays, hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating and expanded metal, wire and wire mesh, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, steel racking for warehouse systems and data centers, overhead doors, and utility towers and structures for communications and energy transmission. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor.

Our capabilities in insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors and towers and structures have all been acquired over the past several years as part of our Expand Beyond strategy, which we believe can enhance our profit margins, return on invested capital and free cash flow generation and, over time, accelerate our overall growth while reducing the volatility of our earnings. A value driver in each of these businesses is to readily leverage our core competencies as a highly efficient manufacturer of steel products, as well as our inclusive, safety-focused, performance-oriented culture.

Our steel products businesses primarily serve the nonresidential construction and infrastructure markets. Our door technologies businesses also serve the garage door repair and replacement market.

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Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s leading producer of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel decking, which are used primarily for nonresidential building construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United

States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada—one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada—that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist and deck production capacity is approximately 1,300,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in warehouses, data centers, manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to our customers’ specifications and typically deliver them directly to a construction site according to a prearranged schedule and sequence. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers.

Our Vulcraft/Verco group also manufactures and fabricates steel bar grating products at four of its facilities and serves the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 50,000 tons.

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Tubular products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has seven tubular facilities that are located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, galvanized solar torque tube, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, data centers, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Galvanized solar torque tube is an essential component for ground-mount solar systems. Total annual tubular products capacity is approximately 1,600,000 tons.

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Rebar fabrication – Nucor Rebar Fabrication fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities and airports) and various building projects, including manufacturing facilities, warehouses, data centers, hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office buildings and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect concrete from cracking. In many markets, Nucor Rebar Fabrication sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Nucor Rebar Fabrication fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Nucor Rebar Fabrication operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,700,000 tons.

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Buildings group – The Nucor Buildings group is the nation’s leading supplier of pre-engineered metal buildings. Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company and Kirby Building Systems.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood, insulated metal panels and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including

distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

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Insulated metal panels (“IMP”) – We believe the Nucor Insulated Panels Group, which includes industry-leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span, broadens the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group can provide to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations related greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions for owners and lessees.

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Racking – Nucor Racking Group (“NRG”) produces and installs standard and custom designed steel racking systems for warehouse applications, including rack supported buildings and warehouses designed to leverage emerging automatic storage and retrieval (ASRS) technology. In April 2024 we acquired Southwest Data Products, Inc. to expand and enhance NRG's ability to serve the rapidly growing data center market with steel racking and other products. NRG's added capabilities now include airflow containment structures, cabinet/enclosures, caging and other products for both new data centers and data center retrofits. NRG now has six primary manufacturing locations and a team of dedicated installers.

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Door Technologies – The Nucor Door Technologies group includes industry-leading brands C.H.I. Overhead Doors, LLC ("CHI") and Rytec Corporation ("Rytec"). CHI is a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. We believe that by leveraging Nucor’s existing sales channels into the broader nonresidential construction market we can facilitate CHI’s continuing growth. CHI has two manufacturing locations.

In July 2024, Nucor acquired Rytec, a manufacturer and seller of high-speed, high-performance commercial doors. We believe adding high-performance doors will create cross selling opportunities with other Nucor businesses. Rytec has two manufacturing facilities.

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Towers & Structures – Nucor Towers & Structures (“NTS”), a division created in 2022 following the acquisition of Summit Utility Structures LLC and a related company, Sovereign Steel Manufacturing LLC, produces steel poles and other steel structures for utility infrastructure.

In 2023, Nucor announced it would build new manufacturing locations to expand the nationwide footprint of NTS. Those new facilities are located adjacent to Nucor's existing steel mills in Decatur, Alabama and Crawfordsville, Indiana. In 2024, Nucor announced an additional NTS location to be built in Brigham City, Utah.

Construction is complete at the Decatur, Alabama facility and is in the production ramp-up phase. Construction is ongoing at both the Crawfordsville, Indiana and Brigham City, Utah facilities, with Crawfordsville planned to be completed in 2026 and Brigham City planned to be completed in 2027.

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Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily steel foundation distributors serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, flood protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, and cold-formed sheet piling.

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Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities is approximately 1,000,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities produce cold finished bars for demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance, automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

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Steel mesh, wire and fasteners – Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Wire Products Utah and in Canada at Laurel Steel. Nucor produces wire at Nucor Wire Products Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications.

Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces direct reduced iron ("DRI") and, through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates ("DJJ"), brokers ferrous and non-ferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas production operations and our industrial gas business, Universal Industrial Gases. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to raw materials supply.

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Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 6,800,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and non-ferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services.

Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing non-ferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various non-ferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2025, approximately 7% of the ferrous and non-ferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we brokered and processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

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Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants which supplied approximately 3,300,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content to our steel mills in 2025. Nucor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is located in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production and brokering capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust their metallic input mix to changing market conditions, enabling them to maintain competitiveness in the often-volatile ferrous scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap to become scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over metallics supply to its steel mills.

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Natural gas production programs - Nucor owns operating wells and leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is a component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s production operations is sold to third parties to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

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Process Gases – Universal Industrial Gases provides the capability to build and operate our own air separation units to serve our steel mills, providing us with an alternative to long-term service contracts with outside providers. Where economies of scale and regional market conditions warrant, we can also sell excess output from these plants on a merchant basis. As of December 31, 2025, Nucor had 10 industrial gas plants operating, and six others at various stages of commissioning, construction, or planning.

We have a diverse customer base and are not dependent on any single customer. Our largest single customer in 2025 represented approximately 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment while our steel products segment uses approximately 21% of our steel mills' output.

Nonresidential construction is the largest end-use market that we serve. Products from our steel mills and steel products segments are used in a variety of nonresidential construction applications (e.g., commercial, industrial and infrastructure).

In recent years, we have come to see our EAF-based steelmaking method, with its lower GHG intensity when compared with blast furnace technology that is reliant on mined or extracted virgin iron ore and coking coal, as a competitive advantage for reasons beyond its flexible, highly variable cost base.

We have developed branded product lines and other advantages conferred by our specialized capabilities:

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Our AEOS® line of high-strength, low-alloy steel beams is one such example. Nucor’s customers in the construction sector increasingly recognize the benefits of AEOS® steel products. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space and overall environmental impact.

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Our ECONIQTM line of net-zero carbon steel is another example. We launched the ECONIQTM brand during 2021 and continue to find interest from customers in both the automotive and construction end-use markets. These are the two largest end-use markets for steel in the United States.

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Our ELCYON® line of sustainable heavy gauge steel plate product will be made specifically for wind energy producers. We launched the ELYCON® brand in January 2023 and plan to manufacture this product at our new plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky.

We have also invested in people and processes to organize more of our commercial activities around large customers and end-use markets. We have developed dedicated teams tasked with developing relationships and educating decision makers in these sectors.

Consistent with our strategy to Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live our Culture, Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products and capabilities, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and increase our exposure to markets with attractive growth prospects, such as data centers and renewable energy. These investments totaled approximately $9.73 billion over the last three years, with approximately 91% going to capital expenditures and the remainder going to acquisitions. We believe that these investments will help us deliver higher returns on invested capital and long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products will make our overall business less volatile.

In our steel mills segment, Nucor has initiated several new capital projects in recent years to support our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies.

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In January 2022, Nucor announced that its new state-of-the-art sheet mill will be located in Mason County, West Virginia. Construction of the new sheet mill began in the third quarter of 2023 and the mill is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. In February 2025, Nucor’s Board of Directors approved the allocation of additional capital to the project as the estimate of total construction costs increased to approximately $4 billion. Factors contributing to the increased cost estimate include higher labor, material and equipment costs. The State of West Virginia has committed $350 million for the project. Nucor expects its net cash outlay for the West Virginia sheet mill will be approximately $3.65 billion.

The West Virginia sheet mill is expected to have an annual production capacity of approximately 3,000,000 tons. The new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines. Galvanizing capabilities will include an advanced automotive line with full inspection capabilities as well as a construction-grade line. In addition to its advanced capabilities and strategic location, the new greenfield mill’s product mix is anticipated to have a significantly lower GHG intensity than blast furnace based competitors who have historically supplied the region.

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In April 2022, Nucor announced that it would build a new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. This is Nucor's third rebar micro mill, joining its other micro mills in Missouri and Florida. We expect this $440 million investment to have an annual capacity of approximately 430,000 tons. Construction of the new rebar micro mill was completed in 2025 and the facility is currently in the production ramp-up phase.

These mills are referred to as micro mills because they have a smaller operational footprint than our traditional rebar mills, as well as less productive capacity – typically about 400,000 tons per year. This makes them suitable for regional markets and enables us to serve these markets with a logistics cost advantage relative to competitors operating from further away. Micro mills also have a lower environmental footprint due to their smaller size and the fact that their plant design does not include a natural gas fired reheat furnace that is common in many steel mills.

Nucor has made strategic acquisitions in the steel products segment over the last three years. These were largely to further the Expand Beyond component of our strategy.

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In April 2024, Nucor acquired Southwest Data Products, Inc. ("SWDP"), a manufacturer and installer of data center infrastructure for $115 million. SWDP provides Nucor with expanded capabilities in airflow containment structures, as well as new product capabilities that include manufacturing cabinets/enclosures and caging for data centers and installation services. SWDP combined with Nucor's steel racking business to form NRG.

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In July 2024, Nucor acquired Rytec, a manufacturer and seller of high-speed, high-performance commercial doors, for $565 million. We believe the combination of Rytec and CHI will create an overhead door platform designed to deliver superior product breadth and solutions to Nucor's commercial customers.

We continue to have a balanced capital allocation framework with three primary aspects:

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Investing in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

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Returning capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases.

Nucor has paid $1.55 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 11% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The Company repurchased $700 million of its common stock in 2025 ($2.22 billion in 2024 and $1.55 billion in 2023).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years, we have returned approximately 73% of our net income in this manner.

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Maintaining a strong balance sheet, with relatively low financial leverage, as measured in terms of funded debt to total capital, as well as ample liquidity.

At year-end 2025, our debt to total capital was approximately 24% and we had cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments on hand of $2.70 billion. At the end of 2025, Nucor had the strongest credit ratings in the North American steel sector (A-/A-/A3) with stable outlooks at Standard & Poor’s, Fitch Ratings and Moody’s, respectively.

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF-based steel producers, such as Nucor, are more sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers. EAF-based steel producers also typically emit fewer GHGs per ton of steel produced than integrated steel producers.

Fluctuations in the supply of steel from non-U.S. competitors are a source of significant volatility in our primary markets. In 2025, vigorous enforcement of U.S. trade remedy laws and the full reinstatement of the Section 232 steel tariffs without exemptions or exclusions resulted in a lower volume of steel

imports compared to 2024. Imports of finished carbon and alloy steel products decreased 17.4% from 2024, supplying approximately 18% of U.S. demand in 2025.

The strength and size of the U.S. economy make the United States an attractive market to our foreign competitors. Many of these non-U.S.-based competitors operate in non-market economies and are often state subsidized or state owned, such that employment stability or other concerns take priority over the need to generate returns on their capital. They can receive support in the form of direct subsidies, low-cost energy, labor, raw material and capital. They also often face less stringent environmental and safety regulations and can benefit from an artificially low exchange rate relative to the U.S. dollar.

Many Chinese steel producers receive these kinds of support and China continues to be the largest steel producing country. In 2025, despite a continuing downturn in its property market and lower domestic demand, China still produced more than one billion net tons of steel, accounting for approximately 53% of all steel produced globally. To offset weak domestic consumption, China exported a record 131 million net tons in 2025, dampening steel prices in markets around the world.

Trade remedies implemented by the U.S. International Trade Commission, (the "USITC”) such as antidumping duties ("AD") and countervailing duties ("CVD") and similar measures play a key role in allowing the American steel industry to compete on a level playing field against unfairly traded imports. There are currently 142 AD/CVD orders in place on core steel product lines made by Nucor, and sunset reviews are typically held with respect to specific exporters and products every five years.

During 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the USITC made important rulings regarding unfairly traded imports of corrosion-resistant steel and rebar. The U.S. government kept in place duty orders on large diameter welded pipe from Japan and wire rod imports from China as the result of sunset reviews.

Circumvention of trade duties also continues to pose a threat. Besides producing over a billion net tons of steel in its own country, China continues to invest heavily in steel production in other countries to avoid being subject to trade duties on exports to the U.S. market. Most of the investment being done by Chinese state-owned companies outside of the country’s borders is occurring in other Southeast Asia countries and Africa.

After recent years of weakened effectiveness due to country exemptions and product exclusions, the Section 232 steel tariffs were fully reinstated in 2025 without exceptions or exclusions, and were broadened to cover approximately 600 fabricated steel products. These comprehensive tariffs have been more effective in combating circumvention behaviors and keeping unfairly traded imports out of the U.S. market.

Tariffs and quota arrangements impacting steel and steel products may be enacted, enforced, extended, modified or terminated in the future. No assurance can be given as to the timing or extent of any of these changes.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are often other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

In our steel products segment we manufacture a wide range of products that primarily have construction applications. In each of our product lines, we face competition from well capitalized domestic and international providers offering similar products and services. We compete on price, service (e.g., consulting on engineering requirements, facilitating logistics, and timeliness of order fulfillment) and quality (e.g., reliably producing to exacting custom specifications). We believe we have established a reputation as a market leader who can consistently meet customer needs for these products in a timely

manner due to our nationwide footprint of modern production facilities and entrepreneurial, performance driven culture.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $3.35 billion and $2.13 billion at December 31, 2025 and 2024, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $4.46 billion and $4.02 billion at December 31, 2025 and 2024, respectively. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not meaningful because the vast majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. The goal of Nucor’s raw materials segment is to safely produce, source, trade and transport steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for our steelmaking operations, through a global information network and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment remained relatively stable from $394 per gross ton used in 2024 to $392 per gross ton used in 2025. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. We employ variable steel pricing mechanisms so that we are better able to maintain operating margins and meet our customer commitments as scrap and scrap substitute costs fluctuate.

Nucor remains focused on securing reliable access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. We believe Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater control over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material mix. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil, such as Ukraine, Russia and Brazil. We believe the continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us navigate significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. In recent years, we have developed closed loop recycling programs with some of our larger customers, through which we are able to reliably source more high purity prime scrap while reducing the waste inherent in our customers’ operations.

We purchase pig iron as needed primarily from overseas sources. We received over 2,000,000 gross tons of pig iron in 2025. Our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana supplied approximately 3,370,000

metric tons of DRI to our steel mills in 2025. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is pelletized iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Steel manufacturing is an energy-intensive, trade exposed industry. As a result, we continuously strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. In addition, we proactively engage with suppliers, regulators and other energy industry participants to ensure the continued domestic availability of reliable, low-cost sources of energy in various forms.

Our steelmaking operations utilize EAFs for 100% of their production. The total energy consumed by Nucor includes electricity, natural gas, and other carbon raw material inputs. For the scrap melting process, electricity is the primary energy source, with natural gas combustion serving as the fuel for reheat furnaces and other pre-heating operations. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas.

The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, the regulatory environment, technological innovation, and pipeline/transmission infrastructure.

We closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. We engage with policymakers to provide technical information that can inform policy decisions and avoid unintended adverse consequences of legislative and regulatory actions. We believe that a thoughtful approach to domestic energy policy can help ensure that steel and steel products manufactured in the United States remain competitive in the global marketplace.

While steel is widely understood to be essential in any modern economy, and is increasingly seen as a critical material for addressing challenges associated with climate change, the sector also has received increased attention for its GHG emissions and their potential contribution to climate change.

As the leading U.S. supplier of numerous essential steel products using primarily recycled ferrous scrap metal, we believe we are in a competitively advantageous position. Our circular production process has approximately one-third the GHG emissions intensity of the average extractive steelmaking process using a blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace.

In addition, we are committed to further reducing our GHG footprint over time. After announcing our net-zero, science-based GHG targets for 2050 and our interim emissions-reduction target for 2030, we achieved third-party certification of these targets in December 2024. Our GHG intensity targets are defined in accordance with the Global Steel Climate Council’s (GSCC) Steel Climate Standard and have been verified to conform with the emissions-reduction glidepath required to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5°C goal by 2050.

Nucor’s net-zero 2050 and interim 2030 targets include scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions from the production of hot rolled steel as defined by the GSCC, making Nucor the first diversified steelmaker in the United States to set GHG reduction targets encompassing all three scopes. In December 2025, Nucor set an industry record achieving GSCC product-level certification for 12 steel mills covering 22 products.

We plan to achieve our decarbonization goals by procuring clean electricity, deploying carbon capture and sequestration where practical, and developing near-zero GHG ironmaking technologies, as well as through the development and deployment of technologies enabling us to reduce our consumption of injection and charge carbon and natural gas.

Clean Electricity Initiatives

GHG emissions associated with our consumption of electrical power constitute approximately 30% of our current footprint.

We have invested in companies developing next generation nuclear power technologies, and are exploring ways in which we can work with these companies and with our electric utility partners to accelerate deployment of these and other clean energy technologies on the regional power grids serving our operations as they mature and become scalable.

Currently, we are a party to two Power Purchase Agreements (“PPAs”). Under these PPAs, we have agreed to purchase for a fixed price output from one solar and one wind project in the United States. The PPAs are structured for monthly financial settlement. We have undertaken these initiatives to support the ongoing diversification of generation technologies on the U.S. power grid. As part of these arrangements, we will also receive Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) commensurate with the renewable power we purchase. These RECs can be applied against a portion of our GHG emissions, enabling us to receive credit for reducing them. The pay-fixed, receive-floating nature of these arrangements also offsets a portion of our exposure to higher prices for electricity over the life of the contract.

In collaboration with our electric utility partner, we evaluated opportunities to deploy battery storage and solar generation in support of the expansion at our Kingman, Arizona bar mill. In 2025, we contracted with a third party to install and operate a 50 MW onsite battery energy storage system which became operational in the fourth quarter of 2025. The Kingman site will also host a 25 MW solar project, with construction planned for 2026. The goal of combining the two systems is to provide our Kingman division with access to reliable power for years to come.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Activity

In 2023, we signed an agreement with ExxonMobil Corporation ("ExxonMobil") to capture, transport, and inject carbon from our DRI plant in Convent, Louisiana. ExxonMobil will capture between 600,000 and 800,000 metric tons per year of CO2 from our DRI plant. We expect start-up in late 2026. ExxonMobil will receive the related tax credits and pay Nucor a fee for each ton of CO2 supplied.

Near-Zero Ironmaking

We have invested in Electra, a company that is working to develop and scale a process to produce carbon-free iron that can be used to make steel. Electra’s technology relies on intermittent electrical energy to refine low-grade iron ores through electrochemical and hydrometallurgical processes. Electra’s process operates at 60°C and removes critical impurities from low-grade ores to produce high purity iron that can be charged directly into EAF steelmaking. Electra is still in the startup phase to scale this technology.

We have entered into a partnership with Tata Steel to explore the possibility of scaling and commercializing HIsarna, a technology that enables the production of high-purity iron from low grade iron ore fines without using coke ovens. Coke ovens consume bituminous coal at high temperature to make coke, an essential ingredient for producing iron in a blast furnace. Both coke ovens and blast furnaces are GHG emissions intensive. While the HIsarna process produces GHG emissions, its CO2 rich waste gas stream can be efficiently captured and sequestered. HIsarna also produces a slag co-product that has high value for use in the cement industry.

Government Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations, the most significant of which are intended to protect our teammates and the environment. Due to the nature of the steel industry, we are subject to substantial regulations related to safety in the workplace. In addition to the requirements of the state and local governments of the communities in which we operate, we must comply with federal health and safety regulations and environmental regulations, the most

significant of which are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the "EPA"). Safety and environmental stewardship are important values to Nucor. We expect that capital expenditures we will direct toward our efforts in these areas will total approximately $250 million in 2026.

Nucor operates a robust and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of each individual teammate, as well as management, being responsible for environmental performance. All steel mills that have been owned and operated by Nucor for over five years are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification requires Nucor’s steel mills to implement an environmental management system with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use.

The principal federal environmental laws that regulate our business include the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), which regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”), which regulates water withdrawals and discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”), which addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act ( the “CERCLA”), which governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of contaminated sites. Our operations are also subject to state and local environmental laws and regulations.

As it relates to air emission rates, EAFs are the most efficient and one of the cleanest steel making processes commercially available today. In comparison to blast furnaces, EAF emissions of sulfur oxides, particulate matter and GHGs per ton of steel are significantly less than the extractive steelmaking process utilizing a blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace. Operating EAFs instead of blast furnaces is a proven air quality improvement strategy.

The process of melting scrap metal to make steel generates particulate matter emissions that include contaminants such as paint, zinc, lead, and other metals. Each of our steel mills operates air pollution control devices (baghouses) to collect and capture these particulate matter emissions (“EAF dust”) from the steelmaking process. Initially, the particulate matter captured and collected is classified as hazardous waste under the RCRA. However, Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it collects to recycling facilities that recover zinc, lead and other valuable metals from this dust.

In addition to recycling EAF dust, Nucor mills beneficially reuse steel slag in road materials as a granular base, embankments, engineered fill, highway shoulders, and hot mix asphalt pavement. The physical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties of steel slag provide a vital resource for construction companies and activities. We take considerable pride in all of our recycling efforts.

Not only does the RCRA establish standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes, the RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from past waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. When the EPA determines that properties are contaminated, Nucor quickly evaluates such claims and, if Nucor is determined to be responsible, we do our part to remediate our share of such issues. Nucor believes all identified liabilities under the RCRA are either currently being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves appropriate to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence provides reasonable assurance as to these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition or cash flow.

To protect water resources, the CWA regulates water withdrawals and discharges. When applicable, Nucor maintains water withdrawal and discharge permits at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments if the facility discharges into publicly owned treatment works.

Capital expenditures at our existing facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2026 and 2027 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

We employ approximately 33,000 teammates. The vast majority of them are not represented by unions and are based in the United States, where most of our operations are located.

Nucor’s Culture

We consider our teammates the most important part of Nucor, as they are the true source of our competitive advantage. We believe that our culture, and the encouragement that we provide our teammates, will enable us to deliver on our mission to “Grow the Core; Expand Beyond; and Live Our Culture.”

While our business strategy shapes "what we do", our culture shapes "how" we go about doing it. We believe that consistent adherence to the key tenets of our culture — safety, integrity, trust, innovation, open communication, teamwork, inclusion, courage, can-do attitude and ownership — is a powerful differentiator for Nucor, enabling us to attract and retain talent, and to position the Company favorably for value-creating growth.

Safety

Nucor’s most important value is our teammates’ well-being and safety, and it is our goal to become the safest steel company in the world. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. In recent years, we have built a broader safety leadership team dedicated to discovering, developing and sharing technology and best practices across the organization.

We will continue working to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement.

Two key metrics Nucor uses to measure safety are: the Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (“DART”) Case Rate.

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Nucor calculates the annual Injury/Illness Rate by dividing the number of work-related injuries and illnesses by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2025, we achieved an annual Injury/Illness Rate of 0.71, the lowest injury and illness rate in our history, marking the eighth consecutive year of improvement.

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Nucor uses the DART Case Rate to assess and manage the risk of serious injury in the workplace. Nucor calculates the annual DART Case Rate by dividing the number of cases resulting in days away from work, restricted work activity and/or job transfers by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2025, we achieved an annual DART Case Rate of 0.30, which was a 27% improvement over the prior year period.

Since 1998, Nucor has used the President’s Safety Award to recognize divisions that achieve strong records of safety performance based on objective metrics. The President’s Safety Award has the following three levels: Platinum, which is awarded to divisions with zero recordable illnesses or injuries; Gold, which is awarded to divisions that have an Illness/Injury Rate below 0.6 and a DART Case Rate below one-third of the national average for their NAICS code; and Silver, which is awarded to divisions that achieve one-third the national average on Illness/Injury Rate and DART Case Rate. In 2025, 21 divisions achieved the Platinum level award, 25 divisions achieved the Gold level award and 26 divisions achieved the Silver level award. Nucor also has 26 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program Sites, OSHA’s highest level of recognition.

In 2020, the Company introduced the Nucor President’s Safety Cup to foster more safety benchmarking throughout the Company. The President’s Safety Cup is an additional annual award that is presented to the region that has the best safety record across all of Nucor. Not only does this reward a facility for exceeding their individual safety goals, but it encourages our teams to innovate and to share ideas and improve safety across operating divisions. The President’s Safety Cup trophy travels among the mills and divisions that make up the winning region.

We believe, however, that safety is about more than just avoiding injuries. At Nucor, safety means what we call “whole person safety”. We want to make sure our teammates feel safe, welcome and valued when they come to work each day. We are accelerating our efforts with the objective of ensuring that each teammate feels a sense of belonging at Nucor. By creating an inclusive workplace, we believe we will attract top talent, foster innovation, increase a sense of empowerment and make Nucor a stronger company.

Recruiting, Retention and Development

Our focus on inclusiveness as supportive of our culture, and the competitive advantage we derive from it, has led us to grow more intentional in our efforts to discover, recruit, retain and develop the best talent available.

Our initiatives are focused on embracing differences and building an environment of mutual respect while providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for all teammates. By prioritizing diversity of thought, background and experience, Nucor strives to reinforce our culture to drive innovation, strengthen collaboration and deliver exceptional results.

In 2024, we introduced “Assemble, Unlock and Win” ("AUW") in an effort to ensure continued success in recruiting, retaining, and developing our team, and to more explicitly connect these activities to our mission and culture. AUW’s core elements include:

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Assemble a diverse team positioned to lead our Company into the future.

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Attract a broad and diverse talent pool.

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Seek the skills, experience and leadership needed to win.

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Retain our teammates through a sense of belonging.

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Represent and connect to the communities where we live.

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Unlock each teammate’s full potential.

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Foster an inclusive environment where every teammate is visible, connected, and supported.

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Advocate for all and ensure whole person safety of our team.

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Develop each teammate to empower their unique potential.

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Connect with every teammate through curiosity and open communication.

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Win together.

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Amplify the competitive advantage of our team and our culture.

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Fuel innovation, creativity and solutions through diversity.

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Deliver on the demand for talent.

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Exceed expectations for our team, communities, customers and stockholders.

Ownership

Another Nucor core value is ownership. By recruiting and empowering entrepreneurial teammates, our goal is to foster a competitive mindset, along with a strong sense of personal responsibility and a culture of accountability and belonging.

We believe that our streamlined organizational structure reinforces this ownership aspect of our culture by allowing our teammates to make quick decisions and innovate to win. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their teams. Approximately 200 teammates work in our principal executive offices in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Our operations are also highly automated, allowing us to achieve industry-leading productivity and improve safety outcomes while providing our teammates with compensation that we believe is highly competitive compared to businesses in our industry.

Our compensation policies are structured to reinforce and reward an ownership mentality among our teammates, so that they are incentivized to drive results and contribute to our success. Put simply, at Nucor, we believe in “Pay-for-Performance.” Nucor teammates typically earn a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production teammates work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly in most cases. Nucor has also historically contributed 10% of earnings before federal taxes to a profit-sharing plan for most teammates below the officer level.

Monitoring and Measuring

Teammate input is essential for us to sustain our culture of empowered teammates enabling efficient operational decisions. Aside from our practice of everyday open communication, to maintain and build trust, we periodically ask our teammates to formally provide feedback. Since 1986, our teammates have completed a comprehensive survey providing feedback on a range of topics, including matters relating to the effectiveness of our culture. We view the survey as an important tool in continually

improving our company and ensuring our teammates remain engaged and satisfied. This survey is conducted every three years, the last of which was conducted during the third quarter of 2025.

In this most recent survey, we had a 93% participation rate and teammate satisfaction with Nucor as a place to work remained high at 85%. The overwhelming majority of responses continue to register as positive or neutral, with less than 10% registering as negative. We are absorbing the key learnings from the survey to inform how we can further improve our overall talent strategy.

Policies

Nucor has a long history of conducting our businesses in a manner consistent with high standards of social responsibility. We have adopted a comprehensive Human Rights Policy, which operates in conjunction with many other Nucor policies related to ethical conduct and human rights, including our Health and Safety Policy, Standards of Business Conduct and Ethics, Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Professionals, Supplier Code of Conduct and Policy on Eliminating Forced Labor from our Supply Chain.

More information about these and other relevant policies can be found at www.nucor.com/esg.

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). These filings are also available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

We use the investor relations portion of our website, investors.nucor.com, to distribute information, including as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We routinely post and make accessible financial and other information regarding the Company on our website. Accordingly, investors should monitor the investor relations portion of our website, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and other public communications. Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not a part of this report and is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces and procures ferrous and non-ferrous materials primarily for use in its steel manufacturing business. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2024, we recycled approximately 18 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 61% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2024.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to end-use markets such as nonresidential construction, durable goods and capital spending that are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling, cold finish bar steel, steel electrical conduit pipe and insulated metal panels), we are the leading supplier.

In recent years we have embarked on a strategy to advance Nucor’s capabilities and further its value creation, as summarized in our Mission Statement: Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live Our Culture.

We have examined and prioritized growth opportunities across our core steelmaking, steel products and raw materials operations, and we have identified and executed on several acquisitions and investments to expand the products and services we offer beyond our traditional capabilities. We believe that the Expand Beyond growth opportunities we are pursuing leverage our core competency as a highly efficient, industrial manufacturer working primarily with steel and steel products, while positioning us to generate attractive profit margins and returns on our invested capital selling products into growing end-use markets.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality (“SBQ”)). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”) along with continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investment in NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) (see “Steel joint venture”- below), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold

approximately 18,480,000 tons to outside customers in 2024. In 2024, 80% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 20% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our steel products segment.

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Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, infrastructure, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is estimated at approximately 9,560,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

In April 2022, Nucor announced that it will build a new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. The new micro mill is currently under construction.

In February 2024, Nucor announced that the Board of Directors approved $860 million to construct a rebar micro mill in the Pacific Northwest. Nucor is evaluating potential locations, and the project is expected to take two years to construct, subject to regulatory approvals.

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Sheet mills - Nucor operates six sheet mills that produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Included in our six sheet mills is California Steel Industries, Inc., in which Nucor has a 51% controlling ownership position. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 14,600,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for further processing of hot-rolled sheet steel.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that greater than 80% of our sheet steel sales in 2024 were to contract customers. These sheet sales contracts are noncancellable agreements that generally incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months. The balance of our sheet steel sales were made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The number of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions.

Nucor owns a 51% controlling economic and voting interest in Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. ("NJSM"). NJSM is a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation (“JFE”) of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons, that is expected to supply the country’s automotive market.

In January 2022, Nucor announced it had selected Mason County, West Virginia as the site for its new three-million-ton state-of-the-art sheet mill. When operational, the new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch

tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines capable of producing advanced high-end automotive and construction grades.

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Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long-span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for use in all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. The benefits of high-strength, low-alloy beams are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space, and overall environmental impact. Nucor sells its high-strength, low-alloy beams under the trade name AEOSTM.

Nucor also owns a steel beam mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,250,000 tons per year.

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

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Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 3,600,000 tons per year.

Certain plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

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Steel joint venture - Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 32 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet exacting specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, galvanized torque tubes used in solar arrays, hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating and expanded metal, wire and wire mesh, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, steel racking for warehouse systems and data centers, overhead doors, and utility towers and structures for communications and energy transmission. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor.

Our capabilities in insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors and towers and structures have all been acquired over the past several years as part of our Expand Beyond strategy, which we believe can enhance our profit margins, return on invested capital and free cash flow generation and, over time, accelerate our overall growth while reducing the volatility of our earnings. A value driver in each of these businesses is to readily leverage our core competencies as a highly efficient manufacturer of steel products, as well as our inclusive, safety-focused, performance-oriented culture.

Our steel products businesses primarily serve the nonresidential construction and infrastructure markets. Our door technologies businesses also serve the garage door repair and replacement market.

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Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s leading producer of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel decking, which are used primarily for nonresidential building construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada—one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada—that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist production capacity is approximately 745,000 tons and the annual deck production capacity is approximately 560,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in warehouses, data centers, manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to our customers’ specifications and typically deliver them directly to a construction site according to a prearranged schedule and sequence. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers.

Our Vulcraft/Verco group also manufactures and fabricates steel bar grating products at four of its facilities and serves the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 49,000 tons.

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Tubular products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has eight tubular facilities that are located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, galvanized solar torque tube, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, data centers, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Galvanized solar torque tube is an essential component for ground-mount solar systems.

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Rebar fabrication – Nucor Rebar Fabrication fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities and airports) and various building projects, including manufacturing facilities, warehouses, data centers, hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office buildings and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect concrete from cracking. In many markets, Nucor Rebar Fabrication sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Nucor Rebar Fabrication fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Nucor Rebar Fabrication operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,736,000 tons.

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Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily steel foundation distributors serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, flood protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, and cold-formed sheet piling.

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Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities is approximately 1,065,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities produce cold finished bars for demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance, automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

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Steel mesh and fasteners – Nucor manufactures wire products and industrial fasteners.

Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah. Nucor also produces mesh in Canada at Laurel Steel.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications.

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Buildings group – The Nucor Buildings group is the nation’s leading supplier of pre-engineered metal buildings. Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company and Kirby Building Systems.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood, insulated metal panels and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

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Insulated metal panels (“IMP”) – We believe the Nucor Insulated Panels Group, which includes industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span, broadens the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group can provide to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations related greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions for owners and lessees.

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Racking – Nucor Racking Group (“NRG”) produces and installs standard and custom designed steel racking systems for warehouse applications, including rack supported buildings and warehouses designed to leverage emerging automatic storage and retrieval (ASRS) technology. In April 2024 we acquired Southwest Data Products, Inc. to expand and enhance NRG's ability to serve the rapidly growing data center market with steel racking and other products. NRG's added capabilities now include airflow containment structures, cabinet/enclosures, caging and other products for both new data centers and data center retrofits. NRG now has five primary manufacturing locations and a team of dedicated installers.

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Door Technologies – In June 2022, Nucor acquired C.H.I. Overhead Doors, LLC (“CHI”), a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. We believe that by leveraging Nucor’s existing sales channels into the broader nonresidential construction market we can facilitate CHI’s continuing growth. CHI has two manufacturing locations.

In July 2024, Nucor acquired Rytec Corporation ("Rytec"), a leading manufacturer and seller of high-speed, high-performance commercial doors. We believe adding high-performance doors will create cross selling opportunities with other Nucor businesses. Rytec has two manufacturing facilities

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Towers & Structures – In August 2022, Nucor acquired Summit Utility Structures LLC and a related company, Sovereign Steel Manufacturing LLC. These companies form Nucor Towers & Structures (“NTS”). NTS produces metal poles and other steel structures for utility infrastructure and highway signage.

In 2023, Nucor announced it will build new manufacturing locations to expand NTS adjacent to Nucor's existing steel mills in Decatur, Alabama and Crawfordsville, Indiana. Construction on those locations is in process and we expect them to be complete in 2025. In 2024, Nucor announced an additional NTS location to be built in Brigham City, Utah.

Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces direct reduced iron ("DRI") and, through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates ("DJJ"), brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas production operations and our industrial gas business, Universal Industrial Gases. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to raw materials supply.

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Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 5,648,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and nonferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services.

Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2024, approximately 8% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we brokered and processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

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Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants which supplied approximately 3,500,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content to our steel mills in 2024. Nucor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is located in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production and brokering capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust their metallic input mix to changing market conditions, enabling them to maintain competitiveness in the often-volatile ferrous scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap to become scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over metallics supply to its steel mills.

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Natural gas production programs - Nucor owns operating wells and leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is a component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s production operations is sold to third parties to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

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Process Gases – Universal Industrial Gases ("UIG") provides the capability to build and operate our own air separation units to serve our steel mills, providing us with an alternative to long-term service contracts with outside providers. Where economies of scale and regional market conditions warrant, we can also sell excess output from these plants on a merchant basis. As of December 31, 2024, Nucor had six industrial gas plants operating, and eight others at various stages of commissioning, construction, or planning.

We have a diverse customer base and are not dependent on any single customer. Our largest single customer in 2024 represented approximately 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment while our steel products segment uses approximately 20% of our steel mills' output.

We believe that nonresidential construction is the largest end-use market that we serve. Products from our steel mills and steel products segments are used in a variety of nonresidential construction applications (e.g., commercial, industrial and infrastructure).

In recent years, we have come to see our EAF-based steelmaking method, with its lower GHG intensity when compared with blast furnace technology that is reliant on mined or extracted virgin iron ore and coking coal, as a competitive advantage for reasons beyond its flexible, highly variable cost base. Customers are expressing greater concern for the GHG emissions in their supply chains and are prioritizing sourcing their steel requirements from EAF steelmakers for incorporation into their projects and products.

We have developed branded product lines to leverage this, and other advantages conferred by our specialized capabilities:

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Our AEOSTM line of high-strength, low-alloy steel beams is one such example. AEOSTM’s benefits are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space and overall environmental impact.

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Our ECONIQTM line of net zero carbon steel is another example. We launched ECONIQTM during 2021 and continue to find interest from customers in both the automotive and construction end-use markets. These are the two largest end-use markets for steel in the United States.

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Our ElcyonTM line of sustainable heavy gauge steel plate product will be made specifically for wind energy producers. We launched ElcyonTM in January 2023 and plan to manufacture this product at our new plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky.

We have also invested in people and processes to organize more of our commercial activities around large customers and end-use markets. We have developed dedicated teams tasked with developing relationships and educating decision makers in these sectors.

Consistent with our strategy to Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live our Culture, Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products and capabilities, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and increase our exposure to markets with attractive growth prospects, such as data centers and renewable energy. These investments totaled approximately $11.84 billion over the last three years, with approximately 63% going to capital expenditures and the remainder going to acquisitions. We believe that these investments will help us deliver higher returns on invested capital and long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products will make our overall business less volatile.

In our steel mills segment, Nucor has initiated several new capital projects and an acquisition of a majority ownership position of a steel mill over recent years to support our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies.

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In July 2022, Nucor completed construction of its approximately $650 million investment to modernize and expand the production capability at its Gallatin flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. The project increased the production capability of the mill from approximately 1,600,000 tons to approximately 2,800,000 tons annually. This enables the Gallatin mill to cast new, thicker slabs and wider coils, expanding our product capabilities so that we can serve new markets, such as API (American Petroleum Institute) grade pipelines and new opportunities in the heavy equipment sector.

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Nucor has completed construction of its approximately $1.70 billion state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky on the Ohio River. The new plate mill rolled its first plate in December 2022 and began shipping tons to customers in the first quarter of 2023. We expect the mill to be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products. With the capability to manufacture nearly all the different types of plate products consumed in the United States, we believe this mill will position Nucor as the supplier of choice in the domestic plate market.

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In January 2022, Nucor announced that its new state-of-the-art sheet mill will be located in Mason County, West Virginia. Construction of the new sheet mill began in the third quarter of 2023 and the mill is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. In February 2025, Nucor’s Board of Directors approved the allocation of additional capital to the project as the estimate of total construction costs increased to approximately $4 billion. Factors contributing to the increased cost estimate include higher labor, material and equipment costs. The State of West Virginia has committed $350 million for the project. Nucor expects its net cash outlay for the West Virginia sheet mill will be approximately $3.65 billion.

Nucor Steel West Virginia is expected to have an annual production capacity of approximately 3,000,000 tons. The new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines. Galvanizing capabilities will include an advanced automotive line with full inspection capabilities as well as a construction-grade line. In addition to its advanced capabilities and strategic location, the new greenfield mill’s product mix is anticipated to have a significantly lower GHG intensity than blast furnace based competitors who have historically supplied the region.

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In February 2022, Nucor completed its acquisition of a majority ownership position in California Steel Industries, Inc. (“CSI”) by purchasing a 50% equity ownership interest from a subsidiary of Vale S.A. for a cash purchase price of $400 million, adjusted for net debt and working capital at closing, as well as a 1% equity ownership stake from JFE. CSI is a flat-rolled steel converter based in Fontana, California.

Our acquisition of CSI expanded the reach of Nucor’s sheet mill group to the west coast of the United States and increased our exposure to more value-added sheet steel. CSI’s product

capabilities include hot-rolled, pickled and oiled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steels. Its annual capacity is approximately 2,000,000 tons.

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In April 2022, Nucor announced that it will build its new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. This will be Nucor's third rebar micro mill, joining its existing micro mills in Missouri and Florida. We expect this $440 million investment to have an annual capacity of approximately 430,000 tons and we expect it to be in operation in 2025.

These mills are referred to as micro mills because they have a smaller operational footprint than our traditional rebar mills, as well as less productive capacity – typically about 400,000 tons per year. This makes them suitable for regional markets and enables us to serve these markets with a logistics cost advantage relative to competitors operating from further away. Micro mills also have a lower environmental footprint due to their smaller size and the fact that their plant design does not include a natural gas fired reheat furnace that is common in many steel mills.

Nucor has made strategic acquisitions in the steel products segment over the last three years. These were largely to further the Expand Beyond component of our strategy.

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In April 2022, Nucor expanded its steel racking capabilities by acquiring Elite Storage Solutions for $75 million.

In April 2024, Nucor acquired Southwest Data Products, Inc. ("SWDP"), a manufacturer and installer of data center infrastructure for $115 million. SWDP provides Nucor with expanded capabilities in airflow containment structures, as well as new product capabilities that include manufacturing cabinets/enclosures and caging for data centers and installation services.

These acquisitions combined with Nucor’s initial steel racking business, Hannibal, form the NRG group.

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In June 2022, Nucor completed the largest acquisition in its history with the purchase of CHI for approximately $3 billion. CHI is a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. Commercial overhead doors are used in warehousing and retail, areas that Nucor has focused its attention on recently through other value-added products such as insulated metal panels and steel racking solutions.

CHI has approximately 800 teammates across two manufacturing plants in Arthur, Illinois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, and regional warehouses located in California, Colorado, New Hampshire and New Jersey. With a highly diversified national customer network of professional garage door dealers, CHI is able to maintain minimal inventory levels and realize industry-leading fulfillment times, while providing direct delivery to customers.

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In July 2024, Nucor acquired Rytec Corporation, a manufacturer and seller of high-speed, high-performance commercial doors, for $565 million. We believe the combination of Rytec and CHI will create an overhead door platform designed to deliver superior product breadth and solutions to Nucor's commercial customers.

Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

Our second priority is to return capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. Nucor has paid $1.57 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 7% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The

Company repurchased $2.22 billion of its common stock in 2024 ($1.55 billion in 2023 and $2.76 billion in 2022).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years, we have returned approximately 57% of our net income in this manner. At December 31, 2024, the Company had approximately $1.11 billion available for share repurchases under the currently authorized share repurchase program.

We intend to execute on our capital allocation strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet, with relatively low financial leverage, as measured in terms of funded debt to total capital, as well as ample liquidity. At year-end 2024, our debt to total capital was approximately 25% and we had cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash and cash equivalents on hand of $4.14 billion. At the end of 2024, Nucor had the strongest credit ratings in the North American steel sector (A-/A-/Baa1) with stable outlooks at Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings and a positive outlook at Moody’s.

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF-based steel producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers. EAF-based steel producers also typically emit fewer GHGs per ton of steel produced than integrated steel producers.

Fluctuations in the supply of steel from non U.S. competitors are a source of significant volatility in our primary markets. Finished steel imports supplied approximately 23% of U.S. demand in 2024, an increase of 3.7% from 2023. Increases in the volume of steel and fabricated steel products tend to occur during periods of relatively stronger U.S. economic conditions, or a stronger U.S. dollar, resulting in U.S. domestic pricing that is attractive to our foreign competitors.

Many of these non-U.S. based competitors operate in non-market economies and are often state subsidized or state owned, such that employment stability or other concerns take priority over the need to generate returns on their capital. They can receive support in the form of direct subsidies, low-cost energy, labor, raw material and capital. They also often face less stringent environmental and safety regulations and can benefit from an artificially low exchange rate relative to the U.S. dollar.

Many Chinese steel producers receive these kinds of support and China continues to be the largest steel producing country. In 2024, despite a continuing downturn in its property market and a government-mandated freeze on steel output in order to lower carbon emissions, China still produced more than one billion tons of steel, accounting for approximately 53% of all steel produced globally. China exported 122 million net tons in 2024, which was their highest level of exports since 2015, dampening steel prices in markets around the world.

Trade remedies implemented by the U.S. International Trade Commission, (“the USITC”) such as antidumping duties ("AD") and countervailing duties ("CVD") and similar measures play a key role in allowing the American steel industry to compete on a level playing field against unfairly traded imports. There are currently 128 AD/CVD orders in place on core steel product lines made by Nucor, and sunset reviews are typically held with respect to specific exporters and products every five years.

During 2024, sunset review hearings by the U.S. International Trade Commission (the "USITC") kept in place AD orders on rebar imports from several countries, as well as circular welded pipe imports from China. Also during 2024, U.S. steel producers also initiated a new trade case seeking AD/CVD orders against imports of corrosion-resistant flat-rolled steel products ("CORE") from 10 different countries. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the USITC are expected to issue their final determinations later in 2025.

Circumvention of trade duties also continues to pose a threat. Besides producing over a billion tons of steel in its own country, China continues to invest heavily in steel production in other countries to avoid being subject to trade duties on exports to the U.S. market. Most of the investment being done by Chinese state-owned companies outside of the country’s borders is occurring in other Southeast Asia countries and Africa.

The Section 232 steel tariffs enacted in 2018 have also been effective in keeping unfairly traded imports out of the U.S. market. However, over time their impact has waned, due to the granting of country exemptions, product exclusions and quota arrangements. On February 10, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order reimposing Section 232 25% tariffs on steel imports from all sources, ending country and product exemptions, and broadening the application of the tariffs on fabricated steel products. This order is scheduled to go into effect on March 12, 2025.

Tariffs and quota arrangements impacting steel and steel products may be enacted, enforced, extended, modified or terminated in the future. No assurance can be given as to the timing or extent of any of these changes.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are often other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

In our steel products segment we manufacture a wide range of products that primarily have construction applications. In each of our product lines, we face competition from well capitalized domestic and international providers offering similar products and services. We compete on price, service (e.g., consulting on engineering requirements, facilitating logistics, and timeliness of order fulfillment) and quality (e.g., reliably producing to exacting custom specifications). We believe we have established a reputation as a market leader who can consistently meet customer needs for these products in a timely manner due to our nationwide footprint of modern production facilities and entrepreneurial, performance driven culture.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $2.13 billion and $2.71 billion at December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $4.02 billion and $4.97 billion at December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not meaningful because the vast majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. The goal of Nucor’s raw materials segment is to safely produce, source, trade and transport steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for our steelmaking operations, through a global information network and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment decreased approximately 6% from $421 per gross ton used in 2023 to $394 per gross ton used in 2024. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. We employ variable steel pricing mechanisms so that we are better able to maintain operating margins and meet our customer commitments as scrap and scrap substitute costs fluctuate.

Nucor remains focused on securing reliable access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. We believe Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater control over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material mix. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil, such as Ukraine, Russia and Brazil. We believe the continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us navigate significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. In recent years, we have developed closed loop recycling programs with some of our larger customers, through which we are able to reliably source more high purity prime scrap while reducing the waste inherent in our customers’ operations.

We purchase pig iron as needed primarily from overseas sources. We received over 1,500,000 gross tons of pig iron in 2024. Our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana supplied approximately 3,350,000 metric tons of DRI to our steel mills in 2024. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is pelletized iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Steel manufacturing is an energy-intensive, trade exposed industry. As a result, we continuously strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. In addition, we proactively engage with suppliers, regulators and other energy industry participants to ensure the continued domestic availability of reliable, low-cost sources of energy in various forms.

Our steelmaking operations utilize EAFs for 100% of their production. The total energy consumed by Nucor includes electricity, natural gas, oxygen and carbon raw material inputs. For the scrap melting process, electricity is the primary energy source, with natural gas combustion serving as the fuel for reheat furnaces and other pre-heating operations. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas.

The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, the regulatory environment, technological innovation, and pipeline/transmission infrastructure.

We closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. We engage with policymakers to provide technical information that can inform policy decisions and avoid unintended adverse consequences of legislative and regulatory actions. We believe that a thoughtful approach to domestic energy policy can help ensure that steel and steel products manufactured in the United States remain competitive in the global marketplace.

While steel is widely understood to be essential in any modern economy, and is increasingly seen as a critical material for addressing challenges associated with climate change, the sector also has received increased attention for its GHG emissions and their potential contribution to climate change.

As the leading U.S. supplier of numerous essential steel products using primarily recycled ferrous scrap metal, we believe we are in a competitively advantageous position. Our circular production process has one third the GHG emissions intensity of the average traditional extractive steelmaking process using a blast furnace.

We are committed to further reducing our GHG footprint over time. In November 2023, we announced net-zero, science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) targets for 2050 and established a new interim emissions reduction target for 2030. These new GHG intensity targets are defined by the Global Steel Climate Council’s ("GSCC") “Steel Climate Standard”, an ambitious standard that is aligned with both the Paris Climate Agreement’s emission reduction goals for the steel sector by 2050, and the International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy System” glidepath.

Nucor’s net-zero 2050 and interim 2030 targets include scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions from the production of hot rolled steel as defined by the GSCC, making Nucor the first diversified steelmaker in the U.S. to set GHG reduction targets encompassing all three scopes. In December 2024, the GSCC independently certified both science-based targets set in accordance with the GSCC’s Steel Climate Standard.

We plan to achieve our goals by increasing the use of clean electricity, deploying carbon capture and sequestration where practical and developing near zero GHG ironmaking technologies, as well as through the development and deployment of technologies enabling us to reduce our consumption of injection and charge carbon and natural gas.

Clean Electricity Initiatives

GHG emissions associated with our consumption of electrical power constitute approximately 32% of our current footprint.

We have invested in two companies developing next generation nuclear power technology, and we are exploring ways in which we can work with these companies and with our electric utility partners to accelerate deployment of these technologies on the regional power grids serving our operations, as they mature and become scalable.

Currently, we are a party to two Power Purchase Agreements (“PPAs”). Under these PPAs, we have agreed to purchase for a fixed price output from one solar and one wind project in the United States. The PPAs are structured for monthly financial settlement. We have undertaken these initiatives to support the ongoing transition of the U.S. power grid to a greater reliance on renewable power. As part of these arrangements, we will also receive Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) commensurate with the renewable power we purchase. These RECs can be applied against a portion of our GHG emissions,

enabling us to receive credit for reducing them. The pay-fixed, receive-floating nature of this arrangement also offsets a portion of our exposure to higher prices for electricity over the life of the contract. We continue to evaluate and consider similar additional transactions, as well as opportunities to deploy renewable power generation and storage assets on site at our facilities.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Activity

In 2023, we signed an agreement with ExxonMobil Corporation ("ExxonMobil") to capture, transport, and inject carbon from our DRI plant in Convent, Louisiana. ExxonMobil will capture between 600,000 and 800,000 metric tons per year of CO2 from our DRI plant and store the CO2 at an ExxonMobil-owned deep underground geological formation in Texas. We expect start-up in 2026. ExxonMobil will receive the related tax credits and pay us a fee for each ton of CO2 we supply.

Near Zero Ironmaking

We have invested in Electra, a company that is working to develop and scale a process to produce carbon-free iron that can be used to make steel. Electra’s technology relies on intermittent, clean energy to refine low-grade iron ores through electrochemical and hydrometallurgical processes. Electra’s process operates at 60°C and removes critical impurities from low-grade ores to produce high purity iron that can be charged directly into EAF steelmaking. Electra’s technology is unproven at scale at this stage.

We have entered into a partnership with Tata Steel to explore the possibility of scaling and commercializing HIsarna, a technology that enables the production of high-purity iron from low grade iron ore fines without using coke ovens. Coke ovens consume bituminous coal at high temperature to make coke, an essential ingredient for producing iron in a blast furnace. Both coke ovens and blast furnaces are GHG emissions intensive. While the HIsarna process produces GHG emissions, its CO2 rich waste gas stream can be efficiently captured and sequestered. HIsarna also produces a slag co-product that has high value for use in the cement industry.

Government Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations, the most significant of which are intended to protect our teammates and the environment. Due to the nature of the steel industry, we are subject to substantial regulations related to safety in the workplace. In addition to the requirements of the state and local governments of the communities in which we operate, we must comply with federal health and safety regulations and environmental regulations, the most significant of which are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) and the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"). Safety and environmental stewardship are important values to Nucor. We expect that capital expenditures we will direct toward our efforts in these areas will total approximately $344 million in 2025.

Nucor operates a robust and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of each individual teammate, as well as management, being responsible for environmental performance. All steel mills that have been owned and operated by Nucor for over five years are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification requires Nucor’s steel mills to implement an environmental management system with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use.

The principal federal environmental laws that regulate our business include the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), which regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”), which regulates water withdrawals and discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”), which addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”), which governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of contaminated sites. Our operations are also subject to state and local environmental laws and regulations.

As it relates to air emission rates, EAFs are the most efficient and cleanest steel making process commercially available today. In comparison to blast furnaces, EAF emissions of sulfur oxides, particulate matter and GHGs per ton of steel are significantly less than integrated steelmaking operations utilizing blast furnaces. Operating EAFs instead of blast furnaces is a proven air quality improvement strategy. In addition, each of our steel mills operates air pollution control devices (baghouses) to collect and capture particulate emissions (“EAF dust”) from the steelmaking process.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of melting scrap metal to make steel generates particulate matter emissions that includes contaminants such as paint, zinc, lead, chrome and other metals. Initially, the particulate matter captured and collected is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. However, because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this EAF dust is recycled to recover these metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it collects to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust.

In addition to recycling EAF dust, Nucor mills beneficially reuse steel slag in road materials as a granular base, embankments, engineered fill, highway shoulders, and hot mix asphalt pavement. The physical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties of steel slag provide a vital resource for construction companies and activities. We take considerable pride in our recycling efforts.

Not only does the RCRA establish standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes, the RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. Periodically, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted that may now pose a contamination threat are discovered. When the EPA determines that properties are contaminated, Nucor quickly evaluates such claims and, if Nucor is determined to be responsible, we do our part to remediate our share of such issues. Nucor believes all identified liabilities under the RCRA are either currently being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves appropriate to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence provides reasonable assurance as to these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

To protect water resources, the CWA regulates water withdrawals and discharges. When applicable, Nucor maintains water withdrawal and discharge permits at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments if the facility discharges into publicly owned treatment works.

Capital expenditures at our existing facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2025 and 2026 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Culture, Organization and Compensation

We consider our teammates the most important part of Nucor and believe that our culture—and the encouragement that we provide to our teammates to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture” —provides us with a competitive advantage.

While our business strategy shapes "what we do", our culture shapes "how" we go about doing it. We believe adherence to the key tenets of our culture — safety, integrity, trust, innovation, open communication, teamwork, inclusion, courage, can-do attitude and ownership — is a powerful differentiator for Nucor and positions the Company favorably to deliver ongoing stockholder value to our investors.

Nucor has a streamlined organizational structure that allows our teammates to make quick decisions and innovate. Our organization is also highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their teams. With approximately 32,700 teammates, fewer than 200 work in our principal executive offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. By empowering our teammates, our goal is to foster an entrepreneurial mindset, along with a strong sense of personal responsibility and a culture of accountability and belonging. This empowerment is reinforced by our compensation policies (see discussion on “Pay for Performance” in Our Teammates - Compensation, Training & Development section below) to drive results and contribute to our success.

Teammate input is essential for us to maintain our culture of empowered teammates enabling efficient operational decisions. Aside from our practice of everyday open communication, we periodically ask our teammates to formally provide feedback. Since 1986, we have asked our teammates to complete a comprehensive survey in order to gather feedback on a range of topics, including matters relating to the effectiveness of our culture. We view the survey as an important tool in continually improving our company and ensuring our teammates remain engaged and satisfied. This survey is conducted every three years, the last of which was conducted in 2022. In the most recent survey, 89% of the responses were favorable in the category of “Satisfaction & Commitment.” The overall percentage of negative responses in the most recent survey has dropped by 25 percentage points since the survey began in 1986. The next survey will be conducted in the summer of 2025. Teammates of certain previously acquired businesses – which accounted for approximately 13% of our workforce as of December 31, 2024 – complete a comparable survey that has also shown an improving trend over time.

Safety

One of Nucor’s core values is our teammates’ well-being and safety, and it is our goal to become the safest steel company in the world. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. We will continue working to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement. Two key metrics Nucor uses to measure safety are: the Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (“DART”) Case Rate.

Nucor calculates the annual Injury/Illness Rate by dividing the number of work-related injuries and illnesses by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2024, we achieved an annual Injury/Illness Rate of 0.77, which marks the safest year in the Company's history. This marks an improvement over our annual Injury/Illness Rate of 0.79 in 2023.

Nucor uses the DART Case Rate to assess and manage the risk of serious injury in the workplace. Nucor calculates the annual DART Case Rate by dividing the number of cases resulting in days away from work, restricted work activity and/or job transfers by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2024, we achieved an annual DART Case Rate of 0.41 (0.36 in 2023).

Since 1998, Nucor has used the President’s Safety Award to recognize divisions that achieve strong records of safety performance based on objective metrics. The President’s Safety Award has the following three levels: Platinum, which is awarded to divisions with zero recordable illnesses or injuries; Gold, which is awarded to divisions that have an Illness/Injury Rate below 0.6 and a DART Case Rate below one-third of the national average for their NAICS code; and Silver, which is awarded to divisions that achieve one-third the national average on Illness/Injury Rate and DART Case Rate. In 2024, 28 divisions achieved the Platinum level award, 24 divisions achieved the Gold level award and 19 divisions achieved the Silver level award. Nucor also has 24 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program Sites, OSHA’s highest level of recognition.

In 2020, the Company introduced the Nucor President’s Safety Cup as a way to foster more safety benchmarking throughout the Company. The President’s Safety Cup is an additional annual award that is presented to the region that has the best safety record across all of Nucor. Not only does this reward a facility for exceeding their individual safety goals, but it encourages our teams to innovate and to share ideas and improve safety as a group. The President’s Safety Cup trophy travels among the mills and divisions that make up the winning region.

We believe, however, that safety is about more than just avoiding injuries. At Nucor, safety means making sure our teammates feel safe, welcome and valued when they come to work each day. We are accelerating our efforts with the objective of ensuring that each teammate feels a sense of belonging at Nucor. By creating an inclusive workplace, we believe we will attract top talent, foster innovation, increase a sense of empowerment and make Nucor a stronger company.

Some of the relevant initiatives include:

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Conducting focused discussion groups to share experiences of the workplace and the effects of race and gender;

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Taking feedback onboard to enhance training and development;

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Webcasts by diverse senior leaders sharing their career progression and life experiences, and

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Increasing focus and intensity of engagement with supportive external partners, such as:

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National Society of Black Engineers;

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Society of Women Engineers;

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National Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers;

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Tuskegee University; and

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Black Engineer of the Year Award.

Our Teammates - Compensation, Training & Development

Nucor had approximately 32,700 teammates as of December 31, 2024. The vast majority of our teammates are located in the United States, with only a small number of teammates located outside of North America. Our operations are highly automated, allowing us to improve safety outcomes and take advantage of lower employment costs while still providing our teammates with compensation that we believe is highly competitive as compared to businesses in our industry. At Nucor, we believe in “Pay-for-Performance.” Nucor teammates typically earn a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production teammates work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly in most cases. Nucor has also historically contributed 10% of earnings before federal taxes to a profit sharing plan for the majority of teammates below the officer level. We believe such compensation practices incentivize our workforce and reinforce our culture.

While Nucor seeks to hire qualified and talented individuals as new teammates, we also believe in developing the skills of our existing team by providing educational and on-the-job training, in addition to safety training. Further, Nucor believes it is important for senior management to also be familiar with, and have had direct experience running, Nucor’s mills and other operational divisions. The vast majority of our teammates are not represented by labor unions and we believe our teammate turnover is low.

At Nucor, we believe that a diversity of perspectives and background helps to facilitate the “Nucor Way” as we work to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture.” We also believe that recruiting and hiring the best talent available will continue to provide us with the best opportunity for continued future success.

Policies

Nucor has a long history of conducting our businesses in a manner consistent with high standards of social responsibility. We have adopted a comprehensive Human Rights Policy, which operates in conjunction with many other Nucor policies related to ethical conduct and human rights, including our Standards of Business Conduct and Ethics, Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Professionals, Supplier Code of Conduct and Policy on Eliminating Forced Labor from our Supply Chain.

More information about our social strategies, including our most recent Equal Employment Opportunity EEO-1 report, can be found at www.nucor.com/esg.

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

We use the investor relations portion of our website, investors.nucor.com, to distribute information, including as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We routinely post and make accessible financial and other information regarding the Company on our website. Accordingly, investors should monitor the investor relations portion of our website, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and other public communications.

Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not a part of this report and is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces and procures ferrous and non-ferrous materials primarily for use in its steel manufacturing business. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2023, we recycled approximately 18.4 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 58% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2023.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to end-use markets such as nonresidential construction, durable goods and capital spending that are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling, cold finish bar steel, steel electrical conduit pipe and insulated metal panels), we are the leading supplier.

In recent years we have embarked on a strategy to advance Nucor’s capabilities and further its value creation, as summarized in our Mission Statement: Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live Our Culture.

We have examined and prioritized growth opportunities across our core steelmaking, steel products and raw materials operations, and we have identified and executed on several acquisitions and investments to expand the products and services we offer beyond our traditional capabilities. We believe that the Expand Beyond growth opportunities we are pursuing leverage our core competency as a highly efficient, industrial manufacturer working primarily with steel and steel products, while positioning us to generate attractive profit margins and returns on our invested capital selling products into growing end-use markets.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality (“SBQ”)). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”) along with continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investment in NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) (see “Steel joint ventures”- below), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold

approximately 18,552,000 tons to outside customers in 2023. In 2023, 80% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 20% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our steel products segment.

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Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, furniture, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is estimated at approximately 9,560,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

In April 2022, Nucor announced that it will build a new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. The new micro mill is currently under construction.

In February 2024, Nucor announced that the Board of Directors approved $860 million to construct a rebar micro mill in the Pacific Northwest. Nucor is evaluating potential locations, and the project is expected to take two years to construct, subject to regulatory approvals.

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Sheet mills - Nucor operates six sheet mills that produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Included in our six sheet mills is California Steel Industries, Inc., in which Nucor has a 51% controlling ownership position. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 14,600,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for further processing of hot-rolled sheet steel.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that greater than 80% of our sheet steel sales in 2023 were to contract customers. These sheet sales contracts are noncancellable agreements that generally incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months. The balance of our sheet steel sales were made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The number of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions.

Nucor owns a 51% controlling economic and voting interest in Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. ("NJSM"). NJSM is a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation (“JFE”) of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons, that is expected to supply the country’s automotive market.

In January 2022, Nucor announced it had selected Mason County, West Virginia as the site for its new 3-million-ton state-of-the-art sheet mill. When operational, the new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines capable of producing advanced high-end automotive and construction grades.

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Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long-span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for use in all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. The benefits of high-strength, low-alloy beams are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space, and overall environmental impact. Nucor sells its high-strength, low-alloy beams under the trade name AEOSTM.

Nucor also owns a steel beam mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,250,000 tons per year. .

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

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Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 4,000,000 tons per year.

Plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

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Steel joint venture - Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 30 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet exacting specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, galvanized torque tubes used in solar arrays, hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating and expanded metal, wire and wire mesh, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors, and utility towers and structures for communications and energy transmission. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor.

Our capabilities in insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors and towers and structures have all been acquired over the past several years as part of our Expand Beyond strategy, which we believe can enhance our profit margins, return on invested capital and free cash flow generation and, over time, accelerate our overall growth while reducing the volatility of our earnings. A value driver in each of these businesses is to readily leverage our core competencies as a highly efficient manufacturer of steel products, as well as our inclusive, safety-focused, performance-oriented culture.

Except for our overhead doors business, which at present is focused primarily on the garage door repair and replacement market, our steel products businesses primarily serve the nonresidential construction and infrastructure markets.

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Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s leading producer of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel decking, which are used primarily for nonresidential building

construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada—one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada—that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist production capacity is approximately 745,000 tons and the annual deck production capacity is approximately 560,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in warehouses, data centers, manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to our customers’ specifications and typically deliver them directly to a construction site according to a prearranged schedule and sequence. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers.

Our Vulcraft/Verco group also manufactures and fabricates steel bar grating products at four of its facilities and serves the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 49,000 tons.

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Tubular products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has eight tubular facilities that are located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, galvanized solar torque tube, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Solar torque tube is an essential component for ground-mount solar systems.

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Rebar fabrication – Nucor Rebar Fabrication fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities and airports) and various building projects, including manufacturing facilities, warehouses, data centers, hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office buildings and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect concrete from cracking. In many markets, Nucor Rebar Fabrication sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Nucor Rebar Fabrication fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Nucor Rebar Fabrication operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,736,000 tons.

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Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily steel foundation distributors serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, flood protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, and cold-formed sheet piling.

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Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities is approximately 1,069,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities produce cold finished bars for demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance, automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

Nucor owns a fully integrated precision castings company, Corporacion POK, S.A. de C.V. (“POK”), with a facility in Guadalajara, Mexico. POK produces complex castings and precision machined products used by the oil and gas, mining and sugar processing industries. POK produces a wide array of precision castings using steel, bronze, iron and specialty alloys. POK complements NCF’s businesses and Nucor’s cold finish facility in Monterrey, Mexico.

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Steel mesh and fasteners – Nucor manufactures wire products and industrial fasteners.

Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah. Nucor also produces mesh in Canada at the Harris Steel Group, Inc. ("Harris") operations of Laurel Steel.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications.

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Buildings group – The Nucor Buildings group is the nation’s leading supplier of pre-engineered metal buildings. Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company and Kirby Building Systems.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

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Insulated metal panels (“IMP”) – We believe the Nucor Insulated Panels Group, which includes industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span, broadens the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group can provide to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations related greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions for owners and lessees.

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Warehouse Systems – Nucor Warehouse Systems (“NWS”) produces and installs custom designed steel racking systems for a variety of applications, including data centers and warehouses.

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Overhead doors – In June 2022, Nucor acquired C.H.I. Overhead Doors, LLC (“CHI”), a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. We believe that by leveraging Nucor’s existing sales channels into the broader nonresidential construction market we can facilitate CHI’s continuing growth. CHI has two manufacturing locations.

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Towers & Structures – In August 2022, Nucor acquired Summit Utility Structures LLC and a related company, Sovereign Steel Manufacturing LLC. These companies form Nucor Towers & Structures (“NTS”). NTS produces metal poles and other steel structures for utility infrastructure and highway signage.

In 2023, Nucor announced it will build two new manufacturing locations to expand NTS adjacent to Nucor's existing steel mills in Decatur, Alabama and Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI and, through our DJJ subsidiary, brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas production operations and our industrial gas business, Universal Industrial Gases. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to raw materials supply.

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Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 5,878,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and nonferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services. These activities have value to Nucor as the leading and most diversified North American steel producer.

Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2023, approximately 8% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we brokered and processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

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Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants which supplied approximately 3,350,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content to our steel mills in 2023. Nucor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is located in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production and brokering capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust their metallic input mix to changing market conditions, enabling them to maintain competitiveness in the often-volatile ferrous scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap to become scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over metallics supply to its steel mills.

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Natural gas production programs - Nucor owns operating wells and leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is a component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s production operations is sold to third parties to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

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Process Gases – Universal Industrial Gases ("UIG") provides the capability to build and operate our own air separation units to serve our steel mills, providing us with an alternative to long term service contracts with outside providers. Where economies of scale and regional market conditions warrant, we can also sell excess output from these plants on a merchant basis. As of December 31, 2023, Nucor had six industrial gas plants operating, and eight others at various stages of commissioning, construction, or planning.

We have a diverse customer base and are not dependent on any single customer. Our largest single customer in 2023 represented approximately 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment while our steel products segment uses approximately 20% of our steel mills' output.

We believe that nonresidential construction is the largest end-use market that we serve. Products from our steel mills and steel products segments are used in a variety of nonresidential construction applications (e.g., commercial, industrial and infrastructure).

In recent years, we have come to see our EAF-based steelmaking method, with its lower GHG intensity when compared with blast furnace technology that is reliant on mined or extracted virgin iron ore and coking coal, as a competitive advantage for reasons beyond its flexible, highly variable cost base. Customers are expressing greater concern for the GHG emissions in their supply chains and are prioritizing sourcing their steel requirements from EAF-based steelmakers for incorporation into their projects and products.

We have developed branded product lines to leverage this, and other advantages conferred by our specialized capabilities:

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Our AEOSTM line of high-strength, low-alloy steel beams is one such example. AEOSTM’s benefits are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space and overall environmental impact.

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Our ECONIQTM line of net zero carbon steel is another example. We launched ECONIQTM during 2021 and have found interest from customers in both the automotive and construction end-use markets. These are the two largest end-use markets for steel in the United States.

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Our ElcyonTM line of sustainable heavy gauge steel plate product will be made specifically for America’s wind energy producers. We launched ElcyonTM in January 2023 and plan to manufacture this product at our new plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky.

We have also invested in people and processes to organize more of our commercial activities around large customers and end-use markets (e.g., automotive, construction, wind energy and solar energy). We have developed dedicated teams tasked with developing relationships and educating decision makers in these sectors.

Consistent with our strategy to Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live our Culture, Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added

steel mill products and capabilities, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and increase our exposure to markets with attractive growth prospects, such as data centers and renewable energy. These investments totaled approximately $10.92 billion over the last three years, with approximately 54% going to capital expenditures and the remainder going to acquisitions. We believe that these investments will help us deliver higher returns on invested capital and long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products will make our overall business less volatile.

In our steel mills segment, Nucor has initiated several new capital projects and an acquisition of a majority ownership position of a steel mill to support our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies.

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Nucor has completed construction of its approximately $650 million investment to modernize and expand the production capability at its Gallatin flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. The project increased the production capability of the mill from approximately 1,600,000 tons to approximately 2,800,000 tons annually. This enables the Gallatin mill to cast new, thicker slabs and wider coils, expanding our product capabilities so that we can serve new markets, such as API (American Petroleum Institute) grade pipelines and new opportunities in the heavy equipment sector.

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Nucor has completed construction of its approximately $1.70 billion state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky on the Ohio River. The new plate mill rolled its first plate in December 2022 and completed final commissioning and began shipping tons to customers in the first quarter of 2023. Nucor Steel Brandenburg is still in its ramp-up phase and we estimate that the mill will ship approximately 500,000 tons in 2024. We expect the mill to be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products. With the capability to manufacture nearly all the different types of plate products consumed in the United States, we believe this mill will position Nucor as the supplier of choice in the domestic plate market. We expect domestic demand for steel plate to grow in the coming years as wind farms are permitted and developed with increasing frequency. Steel plate is essential to constructing onshore and offshore wind towers, as is steel rebar.

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In January 2022, Nucor announced that its new state-of-the-art sheet mill will be located in Mason County, West Virginia. The project is estimated at a net cost of $3.1 billion, which is net of $275 million in cash proceeds received from the State of West Virginia for costs related to the site location. Construction of the new sheet mill began in the third quarter of 2023 after receiving all the necessary permits, and is expected to take two to three years to complete.

Nucor Steel West Virginia (“NSWV”) is expected to have an annual production capacity of approximately 3,000,000 tons. The new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines. Galvanizing capabilities will include an advanced high-end automotive line with full inspection capabilities as well as a construction-grade line. In addition to its advanced capabilities and strategic location, the new greenfield mill’s product mix is anticipated to have a significantly lower GHG intensity than blast furnace based competitors who have historically supplied the region.

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In February 2022, Nucor completed its acquisition of a majority ownership position in California Steel Industries, Inc. (“CSI”) by purchasing a 50% equity ownership interest from a subsidiary of Vale S.A. (Vale) for a cash purchase price of $400 million, adjusted for net debt and working capital at closing, as well as a 1% equity ownership stake from JFE. CSI is a flat-rolled steel converter based in Fontana, California.

Our acquisition of CSI expanded the reach of Nucor’s sheet mill group to the west coast of the United States and increased our exposure to more value-added sheet steel. CSI’s product capabilities include hot rolled, pickled and oiled, cold rolled and galvanized sheet steels, as well as electric resistance welded pipe. Its annual capacity is approximately 2,000,000 tons.

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In April 2022, Nucor announced that it will build its new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. This will be Nucor's third rebar micro mill, joining its existing micro mills in Missouri and Florida. We expect this $350 million investment to have an annual capacity of approximately 430,000 tons and we expect it to be in operation in 2024.

These mills are referred to as micro mills because they have a smaller operational footprint than our traditional rebar mills, as well as less productive capacity – typically about 400,000 tons per year. This makes them suitable for regional markets and enables us to serve these markets with a logistics cost advantage relative to competitors operating from further away. Micro mills also have a lower environmental footprint due to their smaller size and the fact that their plant design does not typically include a natural gas fired reheat furnace that is common in many steel mills.

Nucor has made strategic acquisitions in the steel products segment over the last three years. These were largely to further the Expand Beyond component of our strategy.

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In August 2021, Nucor acquired the assets of the IMP business of Cornerstone for a cash purchase price of approximately $1.0 billion. The acquired IMP business is comprised of two industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span. The brands are now part of the Nucor Insulated Panel group, which also includes the Company's initial IMP business, TrueCore.

We believe this acquisition has broadened the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group provides to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years and that the use of IMP products within them will also increase. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations-related GHG emissions for owners and lessees.

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In August 2021, Nucor acquired Hannibal, now known as Nucor Warehouse Systems, for $370 million. Hannibal was a leading national provider of racking solutions to warehouses and serves the e-commerce, industrial, food storage and retail segments. Hannibal has manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles and Houston, as well as three distribution centers. It utilizes sheet and bar steel, as well as steel decking, wire deck and fasteners to produce its racking solutions, providing potential supply chain efficiencies with other Nucor businesses. In addition to manufacturing racking solutions, Hannibal works closely with customers during the construction and design phases of a warehouse build-out by offering turn-key services such as installation, procurement and facility integration. Hannibal also provides retrofit services to support customers’ efforts to modernize and/or repurpose existing facilities.

In April 2022, Nucor expanded its steel racking capabilities by acquiring Elite Storage Solutions for $75 million. This acquisition combined with Nucor’s initial steel racking business, Hannibal, form the NWS group.

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In June 2022, Nucor completed the largest acquisition in its history with the purchase of CHI for approximately $3 billion. CHI is a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. Commercial overhead doors are used in warehousing and retail, areas that Nucor has focused its attention on recently through other value-added products such as insulated metal panels and steel racking solutions. It is expected that the CHI acquisition also will benefit from supply chain efficiencies due to Nucor’s paint line investments at its Hickman, Arkansas and Crawfordsville, Indiana sheet mills.

CHI has approximately 800 teammates across two manufacturing plants in Arthur, Illinois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, and regional warehouses located in California, Colorado, New Hampshire and New Jersey. With a highly diversified national customer network of professional garage door dealers, CHI is able to maintain minimal inventory levels and realize industry-leading fulfillment times, while providing direct delivery to customers.

Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

Our second priority is to return capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. Nucor has paid $1.53 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 7% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The Company repurchased $1.55 billion of its common stock in 2023 ($2.76 billion in 2022 and $3.28 billion in 2021).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years, we have returned approximately 48% of our net income in this manner. At December 31, 2023, the Company had approximately $3.32 billion available for share repurchases under the currently authorized share repurchase program.

We intend to execute on our capital allocation strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet, with relatively low financial leverage, as measured in terms of debt to total capital, as well as ample liquidity. At year-end 2023, our debt to total capital was approximately 24% and we had cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash and cash equivalents on hand of $7.13 billion. At the end of 2023, Nucor had the strongest credit ratings in the North American steel sector (A-/A-/Baa1) with stable outlooks at Standard & Poor’s, Fitch Ratings and Moody’s.

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF-based steel producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers. EAF-based steel producers also typically emit fewer GHGs per ton of steel produced than integrated steel producers.

Global steel production overcapacity continues to be an ongoing risk to Nucor and the entire steel industry. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ( the “OECD”) estimated that global steel production overcapacity would grow from approximately 556.1 million metric tons in 2022 to approximately 610.8 million tons in 2023, with additional global capacity coming online and economic uncertainty in some parts of the world, particularly China, impacting steel demand. An OECD report states that in Asia, 75 percent of the new capacity coming online between 2024 and 2026 will utilize blast furnace technology. Other regions of the world are not expected to see new blast furnace projects in those years. Adding additional blast furnace capacity will increase carbon emissions. See 'Item 1A. Risk Factors- Industry Specific Risk Factors" for further discussion of overcapacity risks.

China continues to be the largest steel producing country. In 2023, despite much slower economic growth and a continuing downturn in its property market, China still produced more than one billion tons of steel, near its all-time record, accounting for approximately 54% of all steel produced globally.

Circumvention of trade duties also continues to pose a risk. Besides producing over a billion tons of steel in its own country, China is investing heavily in steel production in other countries which is one way it tries to avoid being subject to trade duties on exports to the U.S. market. According to the OECD, Chinese steel companies will account for 65% of cross-border investments or joint venture investments in 2023 or later and will account for more than 80% of the investment in new steelmaking capacity in southeast Asian countries.

The Section 232 steel tariffs enacted in 2018 and successful trade cases have been effective in keeping unfairly traded imports out of the U.S. market. The U.S. government has reached agreements with several allied countries to replace applicable Section 232 tariffs on steel with quota systems or other trade agreements.

The U.S. and European Union are also negotiating the world’s first carbon-based sectoral arrangement, the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum, that will restrict access to their markets for higher-emitting steel imports and countries that dump cheap imports. Other countries will be able to join if they meet criteria for restoring market orientation and reducing trade in high-carbon steel and aluminum products. At the end of 2023, the U.S. and EU agreed to extend both the negotiations and existing tariff rate quotas into 2025.

During 2023, sunset review hearings by the U.S. International Trade Commission kept in place antidumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD) orders on cut-to-length steel plate from several countries. Trade remedy orders such as these play a key role in allowing the American steel industry to compete on a level playing field against unfairly traded imports, and recent sunset reviews have left the orders almost entirely in place. Sunset reviews are typically held with respect to specific exporters and products every five years.

In December of 2022, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the Section 232 tariffs violated U.S. WTO commitments. The U.S. government has appealed the ruling. Imports of finished steel in 2023 were down approximately 14% from 2022 levels and finished steel imports accounted for approximately 21% of U.S. market share.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are often other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

In our steel products segment we manufacture a wide range of products that primarily have construction applications. In each of our product lines, we face competition from well capitalized domestic and international providers offering similar products and services. We compete on price, service (e.g., consulting on engineering requirements, facilitating logistics, and timeliness of order fulfillment) and quality (e.g., reliably producing to exacting custom specifications). We believe we have established a reputation as a market leader who can consistently meet customer needs for these products in a timely manner due to our nationwide footprint of modern production facilities and entrepreneurial, performance driven culture.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $3.27 billion and $2.33 billion at December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $4.97 billion and $6.65 billion at December 31,

2023 and 2022, respectively. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not meaningful because the vast majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. The goal of Nucor’s raw materials segment is to safely produce, source, trade and transport steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for our steelmaking operations, through a global information network and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment decreased approximately 14% from $492 per gross ton used in 2022 to $421 per gross ton used in 2023. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. We employ variable steel pricing mechanisms so that we are better able to maintain operating margins and meet our customer commitments as scrap and scrap substitute costs fluctuate.

Nucor remains focused on securing reliable access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. We believe Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater control over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material mix. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil, such as Ukraine, Russia and Brazil. We believe the continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us navigate significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. In recent years, we have developed closed loop recycling programs with some of our larger customers, through which we are able to reliably source more high purity prime scrap while reducing the waste inherent in our customers’ operations.

We purchase pig iron as needed primarily from overseas sources. We received over 1,600,000 gross tons of pig iron in 2023. Our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana supplied approximately 3,350,000 metric tons of DRI to our steel mills in 2023. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is pelletized iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Steel manufacturing is considered an energy-intensive, trade exposed industry. As a result, we continuously strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. In addition, we proactively engage with suppliers, regulators and other energy industry participants to ensure the continued domestic availability of reliable, low-cost sources of energy in various forms.

Our steelmaking operations utilize EAFs for 100% of their production. The total energy consumed by Nucor includes electricity, natural gas, oxygen and carbon raw material inputs. For the scrap melting

process, electricity is the primary energy source, with natural gas combustion serving as the fuel for reheat furnaces and other pre-heating operations. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas.

The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, the regulatory environment and pipeline/transmission infrastructure.

We use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including financial hedges and physical hedges resulting from our owned natural gas drilling operations. In addition to the currently producing wells in the Piceance Basin, Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin, in the Western Slope of Colorado. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on these properties, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with third-party gathering and processing service providers. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is sold to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana, and by our steel mills in the United States. Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments, however, in the fourth quarter of 2022 we decided that it is unlikely that we will develop the remaining portions of our unproved oil and natural gas properties.

We closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. We engage with policymakers to provide technical information that can inform policy decisions and avoid unintended adverse consequences of legislative and regulatory actions. We believe that a thoughtful approach to domestic energy policy can help ensure that steel and steel products manufactured in the United States remain competitive in the global marketplace.

While steel is widely understood to be essential in any modern economy, and is increasingly seen as a critical material for addressing challenges associated with climate change, the sector also has received increased attention for its GHG emissions and their potential contribution to climate change.

As the leading U.S. supplier of numerous essential steel products using primarily recycled ferrous scrap metal, we believe we are in a competitively advantageous position. Our circular production process has one third the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of the average traditional extractive steelmaking process using a blast furnace.

We are committed to further reducing our GHG footprint over time. In November 2023, we announced net-zero, science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) targets for 2050 and established a new interim emissions reduction target for 2030. These new GHG intensity targets are defined by the Global Steel Climate Council’s (GSCC) “Steel Climate Standard”, an ambitious standard that is aligned with both the Paris Climate Agreement’s emission reduction goals for the steel sector by 2050, and the International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy System” glidepath.

Nucor’s net-zero 2050 and interim 2030 targets include scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions from the production of hot rolled steel as defined by the GSCC, making Nucor the first diversified steelmaker in the U.S. to set GHG reduction targets encompassing all three scopes.

We plan to achieve our goals by increasing the use of clean electricity, deploying carbon capture and sequestration where practical and developing near zero GHG ironmaking technologies, as well as through the development and deployment of technologies enabling us to reduce our consumption of injection and charge carbon and natural gas.

Clean Electricity Initiatives

GHG emissions associated with our consumption of electrical power constitute approximately 21% of our current footprint.

We have invested in two companies developing next generation nuclear power technology, and we are exploring ways in which we can work with these companies and with our electric utility partners to accelerate deployment of these technologies on the regional power grids serving our operations, as they mature and become scalable.

Currently, we are a party to two Power Purchase Agreements (“PPAs”). Under these PPAs, we have agreed to purchase for a fixed price output from one solar and one wind project in the United States. The PPAs are structured for monthly financial settlement. We have undertaken these initiatives to support the ongoing transition of the U.S. power grid to a greater reliance on renewable power. As part of these arrangements, we will also receive Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) commensurate with the renewable power we purchase. These RECs can be applied against a portion of our GHG emissions, enabling us to receive credit for reducing them. The pay-fixed, receive-floating nature of this arrangement also offsets a portion of our exposure to higher prices for electricity over the life of the contract. We continue to evaluate and consider similar additional transactions, as well as opportunities to deploy renewable power generation and storage assets on site at our facilities.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Activity

In 2023, we signed an agreement with Exxon Mobil to capture, transport, and store carbon from our DRI plant in Convent, Louisiana. ExxonMobil will capture between 600,000 and 800,000 metric tons per year of CO2 from our DRI plant and store the CO2 at an ExxonMobil-owned facility in Louisiana. We expect start-up in 2026. ExxonMobil will receive the related tax credits and pay us a fee for each ton of CO2 we supply.

Near Zero Ironmaking

We have invested in Electra, a company that is working to develop and scale a process to produce carbon-free iron that can be used to make steel. Electra’s technology relies on intermittent, clean energy to refine low-grade iron ores through electrochemical and hydrometallurgical processes. Electra’s process operates at 60°C and removes critical impurities from low-grade ores to produce high purity iron that can be charged directly into EAF steelmaking. Electra’s technology is unproven at scale at this stage.

We have entered into a partnership with Tata Steel to explore the possibility of scaling and commercializing HIsarna, a technology that enables the production of iron from low grade iron ore fines without using coke ovens. Coke ovens consume bituminous coal at high temperature to make coke, an essential ingredient for producing iron in a blast furnace. Both coke ovens and blast furnaces are GHG emissions intensive. While the HIsarna process produces GHG emissions, its CO2 rich waste gas stream can be more readily captured and sequestered. HISarna also produces a slag co-product that has high value for use in the cement industry.

Government Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations, the most significant of which are intended to protect our teammates and the environment. Due to the nature of the steel industry, we are subject to substantial regulations related to safety in the workplace. In addition to the requirements of the state and local governments of the communities in which we operate, we must comply with federal health and safety regulations and environmental regulations, the most significant of which are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) and the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"). Safety and environmental stewardship are important values to Nucor. We expect that capital expenditures we will direct toward our efforts in these areas will total approximately $280 million in 2024.

Nucor operates a robust and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of each individual teammate, as well as management, being responsible for environmental performance. All steel mills that have been owned and operated by Nucor for over five years are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification requires Nucor’s steel mills to implement an environmental management system with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use.

The principal federal environmental laws that regulate our business include the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), which regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”), which regulates water withdrawals and discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”), which addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”), which governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of contaminated sites. Our operations are also subject to state and local environmental laws and regulations.

As it relates to air emission rates, EAFs are the most efficient and cleanest steel making process commercially available today. In comparison to blast furnaces, EAF emissions of sulfur oxides, particulate matter and GHGs per ton of steel are significantly less than integrated steelmaking operations utilizing blast furnaces. Operating EAFs instead of blast furnaces is a proven air quality improvement strategy. In addition, each of our steel mills operates air pollution control devices (baghouses) to collect and capture particulate emissions (“EAF dust”) from the steelmaking process.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal generates particulate matter emissions that includes contaminants such as paint, zinc, lead, chrome and other metals. Initially, the particulate matter captured and collected is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. However, because these contaminants contain valuable metals, the EAF dust is recycled to recover these metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it collects to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust.

In addition to recycling EAF dust, Nucor mills beneficially reuse steel slag in road materials as a granular base, embankments, engineered fill, highway shoulders, and hot mix asphalt pavement. The physical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties of steel slag provide a vital resource for construction companies and activities. We take considerable pride in our recycling efforts.

Not only does the RCRA establish standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes, the RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. Periodically, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted that may now pose a contamination threat are discovered. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determines these off-site properties are contaminated, Nucor quickly evaluates such claims and, if Nucor is determined to be responsible, we do our part to remediate our share of such issues. Nucor believes all identified liabilities under the RCRA are either currently being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves appropriate to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence provides reasonable assurance as to these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

To protect water resources, the CWA regulates water withdrawals and discharges. When applicable, Nucor maintains water withdrawal and discharge permits at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments if the facility discharges into publicly owned treatment works.

Capital expenditures at our existing facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2023 and 2024 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Culture, Organization and Compensation

We consider our teammates the most important part of Nucor and believe that our culture—and the encouragement that we provide to our teammates to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture” —provides us with a competitive advantage.

While our business strategy shapes "what we do", our culture shapes "how" we go about doing it. We believe adherence to the key tenets of our culture — safety, integrity, trust, innovation, open communication, teamwork, inclusion, courage, can-do attitude and ownership — is a powerful differentiator for Nucor and positions the Company favorably to deliver ongoing stockholder value to our investors.

Nucor has a streamlined organizational structure that allows our teammates to make quick decisions and innovate. Our organization is also highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their teams. With approximately 32,000 teammates, fewer than 200 work in our principal executive offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. By empowering our teammates, our goal is to foster an entrepreneurial mindset, along with a strong sense of personal responsibility and a culture of accountability and belonging. This empowerment is reinforced by our compensation policies (see discussion on “Pay for Performance” in Our Teammates - Compensation, Training & Development section below) to drive results and contribute to our success.

Teammate input is essential for us to maintain our culture of empowered teammates enabling efficient operational decisions. Aside from our practice of everyday open communication, we periodically ask our teammates to formally provide feedback. Since 1986, we have asked our teammates to complete a comprehensive survey in order to gather feedback on a range of topics, including matters relating to the effectiveness of our culture. We view the survey as an important tool in continually improving our company and ensuring our teammates remain engaged and satisfied. This survey is conducted every three years, the last of which was conducted in 2022. In the most recent survey, 89% of the responses were favorable in the category of “Satisfaction & Commitment.” The overall percentage of negative responses in the most recent survey has dropped by 25 percentage points since the survey began in 1986. The next survey will be conducted in the summer of 2025. Teammates of certain previously acquired businesses – which accounted for approximately 15% of our workforce as of December 31, 2023 – complete a comparable survey that has also shown an improving trend over time.

Safety, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

One of Nucor’s core values is our teammates’ well-being and safety, and it is our goal to become the safest steel company in the world. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. We will continue working to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement. Two key metrics Nucor uses to measure safety are: the Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (“DART”) Case Rate.

Nucor calculates the annual Injury/Illness Rate by dividing the number of work-related injuries and illnesses by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2023, we achieved an annual Injury/Illness Rate of 0.79, which marks the fifth consecutive year of a reduced rate. This marks an improvement over our annual Injury/Illness Rate of 0.95 in 2022.

Nucor uses the DART Case Rate to assess and manage the risk of serious injury in the workplace. Nucor calculates the annual DART Case Rate by dividing the number of cases resulting in days away from work, restricted work activity and/or job transfers by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2023, we achieved an annual DART Case Rate of 0.36 (0.43 in 2022).

Since 1998, Nucor has used the President’s Safety Award to recognize divisions that achieve strong records of safety performance based on objective metrics. The President’s Safety Award has the following three levels: Platinum, which is awarded to divisions with zero recordable illnesses or injuries; Gold, which is awarded to divisions that have an Illness/Injury Rate below 0.6 and a DART Case Rate below one-third of the national average for their NAICS code; and Silver, which is awarded to divisions that achieve one-third the national average on Illness/Injury Rate and DART Case Rate. In 2023, 31 divisions achieved the Platinum level award, 17 divisions achieved the Gold level award and 24 divisions achieved the Silver level award. Nucor also has 24 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program Sites, OSHA’s highest level of recognition.

In 2020, the Company introduced the Nucor President’s Safety Cup as a way to foster more safety benchmarking throughout the Company. The President’s Safety Cup is an additional annual award that is presented to the region that has the best safety record across all of Nucor. Not only does this reward a facility for exceeding their individual safety goals, but it encourages our teams to innovate and to share ideas and improve safety as a group. The President’s Safety Cup trophy travels among the mills and divisions that make up the winning region.

We believe, however, that safety is about more than just avoiding injuries. At Nucor, safety means making sure our teammates feel safe, welcome and valued when they come to work each day. We are accelerating our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts with the objective of ensuring that each teammate feels a sense of belonging at Nucor. By creating an inclusive workplace, we believe we will attract top talent, foster innovation, increase a sense of empowerment and make Nucor a stronger company. Over the past two years, approximately 31% of Nucor teammates hired or promoted to the Manager or General Manager level were diverse.

Some of the initiatives focused on inclusion, equity and diversity we have launched include:

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Conducting focused discussion groups to share experiences of the workplace and the effects of race and gender;

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Taking feedback onboard to enhance training and development;

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Webcasts by diverse senior leaders sharing their career progression and life experiences

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Increasing focus and intensity of engagement with supportive external partners, such as:

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National Society of Black Engineers;

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Society of Women Engineers;

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National Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers;

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INROADS (non-profit focused on addressing the lack of diversity in corporate America)

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Tuskegee University; and

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Purdue University’s Women in Engineering Program and Minorities in Engineering Program.

Our Teammates - Compensation, Training & Development

Nucor had approximately 32,000 teammates as of December 31, 2023. The vast majority of our teammates are located in the United States, with only a small number of teammates located outside of North America. Our operations are highly automated, allowing us to improve safety outcomes and take advantage of lower employment costs while still providing our teammates with compensation that we believe is highly competitive as compared to businesses in our industry. At Nucor, we believe in “Pay-for-Performance.” Nucor teammates typically earn a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production teammates work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly in most cases. Nucor has also historically contributed 10% of earnings before federal taxes to a profit sharing plan for the majority of teammates below the officer level. We believe such compensation practices incentivize our workforce and reinforce our culture.

While Nucor seeks to hire qualified and talented individuals as new teammates, we also believe in developing the skills of our existing team by providing educational and on-the-job training, in addition to safety training. Further, Nucor believes it is important for senior management to also be familiar with, and have had direct experience running, Nucor’s mills and other operational divisions. The vast majority of our teammates are not represented by labor unions and we believe our teammate turnover is low.

At Nucor, we believe that a diversity of perspectives and background helps to facilitate the “Nucor Way” as we work to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture.” We also believe that recruiting and hiring the best talent available will continue to provide us with the best opportunity for continued future success.

Policies

Nucor has a long history of conducting our businesses in a manner consistent with high standards of social responsibility. We have adopted a comprehensive Human Rights Policy, which operates in conjunction with many other Nucor policies related to ethical conduct and human rights, including our Standards of Business Conduct and Ethics, Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Professionals, Supplier Code of Conduct and Policy on Eliminating Forced Labor from our Supply Chain.

More information about our social strategies, including our most recent Equal Employment Opportunity EEO-1 report, can be found at www.nucor.com/esg.

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

We use the investor relations portion of our website, www.nucor.com/investors, to distribute information, including as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We routinely post and make accessible financial and other information regarding the Company on our website. Accordingly, investors should monitor the investor relations portion of our website, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and other public communications. Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not a part of this report and is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in its steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2022, we recycled approximately 17.8 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Segments, Principal Products Produced, and Markets and Marketing

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 58% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2022.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to nonresidential construction, durable goods and capital spending that are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling, cold finish bar steel, steel electrical conduit pipe and insulated metal panels), we are the leading supplier.

In recent years we have embarked on a strategy to advance Nucor’s growth and further its value creation, as summarized in our Mission Statement: Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live Our Culture.

We have examined and prioritized high return on investment growth opportunities across our core steelmaking, steel products and raw materials operations, and we have identified and executed on several acquisitions and investments to expand the products and services we offer beyond our traditional capabilities. We believe that the Expand Beyond growth opportunities we are pursuing leverage our core competency as a highly efficient, industrial manufacturer working primarily with steel and steel products, while positioning us to generate attractive profit margins and returns on our invested capital selling products into growing end markets.

Our business strategy shapes “what” we do, while the Nucor Way shapes “how” we go about doing it. We believe adherence to the key tenets of our culture as reflected in the Nucor Way is a powerful differentiator for Nucor and positions the Company favorably to deliver ongoing stockholder value to our investors.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality (“SBQ”)). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”) along with continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) and Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (“NJSM”) (see “Steel joint ventures”- below), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold approximately 18,200,000 tons to outside customers in 2022. In 2022, 78% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 22% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our steel products segment.

• Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills strategically located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of steel products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, furniture, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is estimated at approximately 9,560,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

In April 2022, Nucor announced that it will build its new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. The new micro mill is currently under construction.

• Sheet mills - Nucor operates six strategically located sheet mills that utilize thin slab casters to produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 13,800,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for further processing of hot-rolled sheet steel.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that greater than 85% of our sheet steel sales in 2022 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales were made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The number of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts are noncancellable agreements that generally incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months.

In January 2022, Nucor announced it had selected Mason County, West Virginia as the site for its new 3-million-ton state-of-the-art sheet mill. When operational, the new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines capable of producing advanced high-end automotive and construction grades.

• Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long-span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. The benefits of high-strength, low-alloy beams are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space, and overall environmental impact. Nucor sells its high-strength, low-alloy beams under the trade name AEOSTM.

Nucor also owns a steel beam mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,250,000 tons per year. Both mills use a special continuous casting method that produces a beam blank closer in shape to that of the finished beam than traditional methods.

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and

construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 2,925,000 tons per year.

Nucor completed construction on a state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky that rolled its first plate in December 2022. Final commissioning of the mill and the shipment of its first tons to customers are expected to occur in the first quarter of 2023.

Plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Steel joint ventures - Nucor owns 50% interests in a North American sheet steel processing joint venture and a galvanized sheet steel plant in Mexico.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 30 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet the exact specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NJSM, a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation (“JFE”) of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons, that is expected to supply the country’s automotive market.

Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating and expanded metal, wire and wire mesh, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors, and utility towers and structures for communications and energy transmission. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor.

Our capabilities in insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors and towers and structures have all been acquired over the past several years as part of our Expand Beyond strategy, which we believe can enhance our profit margins, return on invested capital and free cash flow generation and, over time, accelerate our overall growth while reducing the volatility of our earnings. We are confident that in each of these businesses we can readily leverage our core competencies as a highly efficient manufacturer of steel products, as well as our inclusive, safety-focused, performance-oriented culture.

Except for our overhead doors business, which at present is focused primarily on the garage door repair and replacement market, our steel products businesses primarily serve the nonresidential construction and infrastructure markets.

• Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s leading producer of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel decking, which are used primarily for nonresidential building construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada—one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada—that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist production capacity is approximately 745,000 tons and the annual deck production capacity is approximately 560,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in warehouses, data centers, manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to our customers’ specifications and typically deliver them directly to a construction site according to a prearranged schedule and sequence. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers.

Our grating business manufactures and fabricates steel bar grating products at facilities located in North America and serves the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 48,500 tons.

• Tubular products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has eight tubular facilities that are strategically located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills as they are a consumer of hot-rolled coil. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, galvanized solar torque tube, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Solar torque tube is an essential component for ground-mount solar systems.

• Rebar fabrication – Nucor Harris Rebar (“Harris”) fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities and airports) and various building projects, including manufacturing facilities, warehouses, data centers, hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office buildings and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect the concrete from cracking. In many markets, Harris sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Harris fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Harris operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,736,000 tons.

• Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily a steel foundation distributor serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, flood protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, and cold-formed sheet piling.

• Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities is approximately 1,069,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities are among the most modern in the world, producing cold finished bars for the most demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance,

automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

Nucor owns a fully integrated precision castings company, Corporacion POK, S.A. de C.V. (“POK”), with a facility in Guadalajara, Mexico. POK produces complex castings and precision machined products used by the oil and gas, mining and sugar processing industries. POK produces a wide array of precision castings using steel, bronze, iron and specialty alloys. POK complements NCF’s businesses and Nucor’s cold finish facility in Monterrey, Mexico.

• Steel mesh and fasteners – Nucor manufactures wire products and industrial fasteners.

Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah. Nucor also produces mesh in Canada at the Harris operations of Laurel Steel. The combined annual production capacity of the steel mesh facilities is approximately 128,000 tons.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications. The annual production capacity of this facility is approximately 75,000 tons.

• Buildings group – The Nucor Buildings group is the nation’s leading supplier of pre-engineered metal buildings. Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company, Kirby Building Systems and CBC Steel Buildings. In total, the Nucor Buildings group currently has an annual capacity of approximately 360,000 tons.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

• Insulated metal panels (“IMP”) – We established this business with the acquisition of Truecore, LLC (“TrueCore”) in 2019, and in August 2021, expanded significantly by purchasing the assets of the IMP business of Cornerstone Building Brands, Inc., which was comprised of two industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span. We believe these acquisitions will broaden the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group can provide to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years and that the use of IMP products within them will also increase. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations related greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions for owners and lessees.

• Nucor Warehouse Systems – In April 2022, Nucor purchased the steel racking manufacturer, Elite Storage Solutions. This acquisition combined with Nucor’s initial steel racking business, Hannibal Industries, Inc. (“Hannibal”), form the Nucor Warehouse Systems (“NWS”) group. NWS produces and installs custom designed steel racking systems for a variety of applications, including data centers and warehouses. NWS has three manufacturing locations and has an annual production capacity of approximately 168,000 tons.

• Overhead doors – In June 2022, Nucor acquired C.H.I. Overhead Doors, LLC (“CHI”), a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. We intend to grow CHI’s business by gaining further market share in both

residential and commercial markets, and believe that by leveraging Nucor’s existing sales channels into the broader nonresidential construction market we can facilitate CHI’s continuing growth. CHI has two manufacturing locations.

• Towers & Structures – In August 2022, Nucor acquired Summit Utility Structures LLC and a related company, Sovereign Steel Manufacturing LLC. These companies form Nucor Towers & Structures (“NTS”). NTS produces metal poles and other steel structures for utility infrastructure and highway signage. NTS has one manufacturing location and an annual production capacity of approximately 10,000 tons.

In December 2022, Nucor announced it will build two new manufacturing locations to expand NTS at to be determined locations in the Midwest and Southeast.

Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas production operations and our industrial gas business, Universal Industrial Gases. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to raw materials supply.

• Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 5,824,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use industry-leading expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and nonferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services. These activities have strategic value to Nucor as the leading and most diversified North American steel producer.

Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2022, approximately 8% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we brokered and processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

• Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants with a combined annual capacity of approximately 4,500,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content. Nucor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is located in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production and brokering capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust their metallic input mix to changing market conditions, enabling them to maintain cost competitiveness in the often-volatile ferrous scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap to become scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over metallics supply to its steel mills.

• Natural gas production programs - Nucor owns operating wells and leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is a component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s production operations is being sold to third parties to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

• Universal Industrial Gases (“UIG”) – Nucor acquired UIG in 2019 so that we would have the capability to build and operate our own air separation units (“ASU”) to serve our steel mills, providing us with an alternative to long term service contracts with outside providers. Where economies of scale and regional market conditions warrant, we can also sell excess output from these plants on a merchant basis. As of December 31, 2022, Nucor had five industrial gas plants operating, and five others at various stages of commissioning, construction, or planning.

Customers and Markets

We have a diverse customer base and are not dependent on any single customer. Our largest single customer in 2022 represented approximately 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment.

We believe that nonresidential construction is the largest end-use market that we serve. Products from our steel mills and steel products segments are used in a variety of nonresidential construction applications (e.g., commercial, industrial and infrastructure).

In recent years we have come to see our EAF-based steelmaking method, with its lower GHG intensity when compared with blast furnace technology reliant on mined or extracted virgin iron ore and coking coal, as a competitive advantage for reasons beyond its flexible, highly variable cost base. Customers are expressing greater concern for the GHG emissions in their supply chains and are prioritizing sourcing their steel requirements from EAF-based steelmakers for incorporation into their projects and products.

We have developed branded product lines to leverage this, and other advantages conferred by our specialized capabilities:

• Our AEOSTM line of high-strength, low-alloy steel beams is one such example. AEOSTM’s benefits are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space and overall environmental impact.

• Our ECONIQTM line of net zero carbon steel is another example. We launched ECONIQTM during 2021 and have found interest from customers in both the automotive and construction end-use markets. These are the two largest end-use markets for steel in the United States.

• Our ElcyonTM line of sustainable heavy gauge steel plate product will be made specifically for America’s offshore wind energy producers. We launched ElcyonTM in January 2023 and will manufacture this product at our new plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky.

We have also invested in people and processes to organize more of our commercial activities around large customers and end-use markets (e.g., automotive, construction, wind energy and solar energy). We have developed dedicated teams who are tasked with developing relationships and educating decision makers in these sectors. We believe this could result in earlier and more thoughtful consideration being given to steel-based solutions from Nucor, and a better appreciation for some of our unique products and capabilities, such as AEOSTM , ECONIQTM and ElcyonTM.

General Development of Our Business in Recent Years

Consistent with our strategy to Grow the Core, Expand Beyond and Live our Culture, Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products and capabilities, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and

increase our exposure to markets with attractive growth prospects, such as datacenters, warehouses and renewable energy. These investments totaled approximately $10.25 billion over the last three years, with approximately 50% going to capital expenditures and the remainder going to acquisitions. We believe that these investments will help us deliver higher returns on invested capital and long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products will make our overall business less volatile.

In our steel mills segment, Nucor has initiated several new capital projects and an acquisition of a majority ownership position of a steel mill to support our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies.

• Nucor has completed construction of a new $352 million third generation flexible galvanizing line with an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons at our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility. We believe this project, combined with Nucor Steel Arkansas’ specialty cold mill that has been in operation for more than three years, position Nucor among North American EAF steelmakers to provide the high-strength, light-weight steels that are increasingly in demand from the automotive and other sectors.

• Nucor has completed construction of its approximately $650 million investment to modernize and expand the production capability at its Gallatin flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. The project will increase the production capability of the mill from approximately 1,600,000 tons to approximately 3,000,000 tons annually once fully online, which we expect will be in the second quarter of 2023. This enables the Gallatin mill to cast new, thicker slabs and wider coils, expanding our product capabilities into other markets.

• Nucor has completed construction on our approximately $1.70 billion state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky on the Ohio river. The new plate mill rolled its first plate in December 2022 and we expect to complete final commissioning and begin shipping tons to customers in the first quarter of 2023. We expect the mill to be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products. With the capability to manufacture nearly all the different types of plate products consumed in the United States, we believe this mill will position Nucor as the supplier of choice in the domestic plate market. We expect domestic demand for steel plate to grow in the coming years as offshore wind farms are permitted and developed with increasing frequency. Steel plate is essential to constructing offshore wind towers, as is steel rebar.

• In January 2022, Nucor announced that its new state-of-the-art sheet mill will be located in Mason County, West Virginia. As of February 2023, Nucor had determined that constructing the mill would require a net cash outlay of approximately $3.1 billion for the West Virginia sheet mill, an increase from its original estimate of $2.7 billion when the project was first announced. The revised $3.1 billion estimate is net of $275 million in cash proceeds received from the State of West Virginia for costs related to the site location. Factors contributing to the increased capital cost include general inflation, the acquisition of additional property and equipment, and expanded port and rail infrastructure requirements. As of February 2023, Nucor had received all required state permits and was working to secure federal permits. Construction of the new sheet mill is expected to take two to three years following receipt of all necessary permits.

Nucor Steel West Virginia (“NSWV”) is expected to have an annual production capacity of approximately 3,000,000 tons. The new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines. Galvanizing capabilities will include an advanced high-end automotive line with full inspection capabilities as well as a construction-grade line. In addition to its advanced capabilities and strategic location, the new greenfield mill’s product mix is anticipated to have a significantly lower GHG intensity than competitors who have historically supplied the region.

• In February 2022, Nucor completed its acquisition of a majority ownership position in California Steel Industries, Inc. (“CSI”) by purchasing a 50% equity ownership interest from a subsidiary of Vale S.A. (Vale) for a cash purchase price of $400 million, adjusted for net debt and working capital at closing, as well as a 1% equity ownership stake from JFE. CSI is a flat-rolled steel converter based in Fontana, California.

Our acquisition of CSI expands the reach of Nucor’s sheet mill group to the west coast of the United States and increases our exposure to more value-added sheet steel. CSI’s product capabilities include hot rolled, pickled and oiled, cold rolled and galvanized sheet steels, as well as electric resistance welded (ERW) pipe. Its annual capacity is estimated at approximately 2,500,000 tons.

• In April 2022, Nucor announced that it will build its new rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, in Lexington, North Carolina. This will be Nucor's third rebar micro mill, joining its existing micro mills in Missouri and Florida. We expect this $350 million investment to have an annual capacity of approximately 430,000 tons and we expect it to be in operation in 2024.

These mills are referred to as micro mills because they have a smaller operational footprint than our older rebar mills, as well as less productive capacity – typically about 400,000 tons per year. This makes them suitable for regional markets and enables us to serve these markets with a logistics cost advantage relative to competitors operating from further away. Micro mills also have a lower environmental footprint due to their smaller size and the fact that their plant design does not typically include a natural gas fired reheat furnace that is common in many steel mills.

Nucor has made strategic acquisitions in the steel products segment over the last two years. These were largely to further the Expand Beyond component of our strategy.

• In August 2021, Nucor acquired the assets of the IMP business of Cornerstone for a cash purchase price of approximately $1.00 billion. The acquired IMP business is comprised of two industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span. The brands are now part of the Nucor Insulated Panel group, which also includes the Company's initial IMP business, TrueCore.We believe this acquisition will broaden the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group provides to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years and that the use of IMP products within them will also increase. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations-related GHG emissions for owners and lessees.

• In August 2021, Nucor acquired Hannibal for $370 million. Hannibal is a leading national provider of racking solutions to warehouses and serves the e-commerce, industrial, food storage and retail segments. Hannibal has manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles and Houston, as well as three distribution centers. It utilizes sheet and bar steel, as well as steel decking, wire deck and fasteners to produce its racking solutions, providing potential supply chain efficiencies with other Nucor businesses. In addition to manufacturing racking solutions, Hannibal works closely with customers during the construction and design phases of a warehouse build-out by offering turn-key services such as installation, procurement and facility integration. Hannibal also provides retrofit services to support customers’ efforts to modernize and/or repurpose existing facilities.

In April 2022, Nucor expanded its steel racking capabilities by acquiring Elite Storage Solutions for $75 million. This acquisition combined with Nucor’s initial steel racking business, Hannibal, form the NWS group.

• In June 2022, Nucor completed the largest acquisition in its history with the purchase of CHI for approximately $3 billion. CHI is a leading manufacturer of overhead doors for residential and commercial markets in the United States and Canada. Commercial overhead doors are used in warehousing and retail, areas that Nucor has focused its attention on recently through other value-added products such as insulated metal panels and steel racking solutions. It is expected that the CHI acquisition also will benefit from supply chain efficiencies due to Nucor’s recent paint line investments at its Hickman, Arkansas and Crawfordsville, Indiana sheet mills.

CHI has approximately 750 teammates across two manufacturing plants in Arthur, Illinois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, and regional warehouses located in California, Colorado, New Hampshire and New Jersey. With a highly diversified national customer network of professional garage door dealers, CHI is able to maintain minimal inventory levels and realize industry-leading fulfillment times, while providing direct delivery to customers.

Capital Allocation Strategy

Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

Our second priority is to return capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. Nucor has paid $1.51 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 8% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The Company repurchased $2.76 billion of its common stock in 2022 ($3.28 billion in 2021 and $39.5 million in 2020).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years, we have returned approximately 50% of our net income in this manner. At December 31, 2022, the Company had approximately $1.09 billion available for share repurchases under the currently authorized share repurchase program.

We intend to execute on our capital allocation strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet, with relatively low financial leverage, as measured in terms of debt to total capital, as well as ample liquidity. At year-end 2022, our debt to total capital was approximately 25% and we had cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash and cash equivalents on hand of $4.94 billion. At the end of 2022, Nucor had the strongest credit ratings in the North American steel sector (Baa1/A-) with stable outlooks at both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. In January 2023, Fitch Ratings initiated coverage of Nucor and established new long-term and short-term credit ratings of A- and F1, respectively.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF-based steel producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers. EAF-based steel producers also typically emit fewer GHGs per ton of steel produced than integrated steel producers.

Global steel production overcapacity continues to be an ongoing risk to Nucor and the entire steel industry. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) estimates that global steel production overcapacity is currently more than 500,000,000 tons, with additional global capacity coming online and economic uncertainty impacting steel demand. An OECD report states that in Asia and Latin America 75 percent of the new capacity coming online between 2023 and 2025 will be blast furnace steel mills. Other regions of the world are not expected to see new blast furnace projects in those years.

China continues to be the largest steel producing country. In 2022, despite Covid-19 lockdowns and the slowest economic growth in half a century, China still produced 1.11 billion tons of steel, down slightly from its all-time record.

Circumvention of trade duties also continues to pose a risk. Besides producing over a billion tons of steel in its own country, China is investing heavily in steel production in other countries which is one way it tries to avoid being subject to trade duties. According to OECD, state-owned Chinese steel companies are involved in 13 cross-border steel investments and are part of nine joint venture investments outside of the country. Most of these projects are in Asia and Africa.

The Section 232 steel tariffs and successful trade cases have been effective in keeping unfairly traded imports out of the U.S. market. The U.S. government has reached agreements with several allied countries to replace the Section 232 tariffs on steel with a quota system. The U.S. and European Union are also negotiating the world’s first carbon-based sectoral arrangement that will restrict access to their markets for higher-emitting steel imports and countries that dump cheap imports. Other countries will be able to join if they meet criteria for restoring market orientation and reducing trade in high-carbon steel and aluminum products.

During the year, sunset review hearings kept in place antidumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD) orders on corrosion-resistant, cold-rolled and hot-rolled steel products from several countries. These trade remedy orders play a key role in allowing the American steel industry to compete on a level playing field against unfairly traded imports, and the sunset reviews have left the orders almost entirely in place.

In December of 2022, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the Section 232 tariffs violated U.S. WTO commitments. The U.S. government strongly disagrees with the ruling and is appealing. Imports of finished steel in 2022 were up approximately 11% from 2021 levels and accounted for approximately 24% of U.S. market share.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are often other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $2.33 billion and $3.79 billion at December 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $6.65 billion and $8.12 billion at December 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not meaningful because the vast majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. Nucor’s raw materials segment safely produces, sources, trades and transports steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for our steelmaking operations, through a global information network and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment increased 5% from $469 per gross ton used in 2021 to $492 per gross ton used in 2022. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. Depending on the market conditions at the time, variable steel pricing mechanisms may be implemented to assist Nucor in maintaining operating margins and in meeting our customer commitments during periods of rapidly changing scrap and scrap substitute costs.

For more than a decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. We believe Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil, such as Ukraine, Russia and Brazil. We believe the continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us mitigate the risk of significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. In recent years, we have developed closed loop recycling programs with some of our larger manufacturing customers, through which we are able to reliably source more high purity prime scrap while reducing the waste inherent in our customers’ operations. During 2022, we sourced approximately 0.8 million tons of prime scrap from these programs.

We purchase pig iron as needed primarily from overseas sources. We received over 1,500,000 gross tons of pig iron in 2022. Our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana have respective annual production capacities of approximately 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is pelletized iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Steel manufacturing is considered an energy-intensive, trade exposed industry. As a result, we continuously strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. In addition, we proactively engage with suppliers, regulators and other energy industry participants to ensure the continued domestic availability of reliable, low-cost sources of energy in various forms.

Our steelmaking operations utilize EAFs for 100% of their production. The total energy consumed by Nucor includes electricity, natural gas, oxygen and carbon raw material inputs. For the scrap melting process, electricity is the primary energy source, with natural gas combustion serving as the fuel for reheat furnaces and other pre-heating operations. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas.

The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, the regulatory environment and pipeline/transmission infrastructure.

We use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges, as well as our owned natural gas drilling operations. In addition to the currently producing wells in the Piceance Basin, Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin, in the Western Slope of Colorado. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on these properties, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with third-party gathering and processing service providers. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is being sold to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana, and by our steel mills in the United States. Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments, however, in the fourth quarter of 2022 we decided that it is unlikely that we will develop the remaining portions of our unproved oil and natural gas properties.

We closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. We engage with policymakers to provide technical information that can inform policy decisions and avoid unintended adverse consequences of legislative and regulatory actions. We believe that a thoughtful approach to domestic energy policy can help ensure that steel and steel products manufactured in the United States remain competitive in the increasingly global marketplace.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

GHG emissions by the energy sector have received an increasing amount of attention in recent years, as more people become concerned that these emissions may be a significant contributor to climate change. This has led to increasing support for, and investment in, low or zero carbon energy generation technologies such as solar, wind and nuclear. As a result, the development of these technologies has accelerated, and in many cases, they are now cost competitive with traditional, fossil fuel-based power generation. We believe that this ongoing diversification of power generation technologies is fundamentally positive, but without careful planning and investment there is some risk to the reliability of the domestic power grid as this transition continues. In particular, legacy fossil fuel-based assets will remain essential for some time to come and the U.S. transmission grid is broadly in need of substantial upgrades to take full advantage of these newer, more intermittent power sources.

In July 2021, we announced a commitment to lower the GHG emissions intensity from our steel mill operations by 35% in 2030, measured against a 2015 baseline - the year the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted. As a result, Nucor’s GHG intensity in 2030 is expected to be 77% less than the global average when the target was set. We expect to achieve these goals with a multi-pronged approach that includes utilization of renewable energy, carbon substitutes, more efficient operations and carbon sequestration.

In 2020 and 2021, we entered into three Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (“VPPAs”). Under each VPPA, we agreed to purchase for a fixed price a portion of the output of both solar and wind renewable power projects being developed in the United States. The VPPAs will be settled financially on a monthly basis. We have undertaken these initiatives to support the ongoing transition of the U.S. power grid to a greater reliance on renewable power. As part of these arrangements, we will also receive Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) commensurate with the power we purchase. These RECs can be applied against a portion of our GHG emissions, enabling us to receive credit for reducing them. The pay fixed, received floating nature of this arrangement also offsets a portion of our exposure to higher prices for electricity over the life of the contract. One VPPA started delivering RECs to us in June 2021, one project was terminated and the other VPPA has been delayed as a result of supply chain disruptions, permitting delays and interconnection uncertainty. We continue to evaluate and consider similar additional transactions.

Government and Environmental Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations, the most significant of which are intended to protect our teammates and the environment. Due to the nature of the steel industry, we are subject to substantial regulations related to safety in the workplace. In addition to the requirements of the state and local governments of the communities in which we operate, we must comply with federal health and safety regulations, the most significant of which are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”). Because safety and safety compliance is one of our primary values, its effect on our capital expenditures, earnings and competitive position is not estimable.

Nucor operates a robust and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of each individual teammate, as well as management, being responsible for environmental performance. All steel mills that have been owned and operated by Nucor for over five years are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification requires Nucor’s steel mills to implement an environmental management system with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use.

The principal federal environmental laws that regulate our business include the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), which regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”), which regulates water withdrawals and discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”), which addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”), which governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of contaminated sites. Our operations are also subject to state and local environmental laws and regulations.

As it relates to air emission rates, EAFs are the most efficient and cleanest steel making process commercially available today. In comparison to blast furnaces, EAF emissions of sulfur oxides, particulate matter and GHGs per ton of steel are significantly less than integrated steelmaking operations utilizing blast furnaces. Operating EAFs instead of blast furnaces is a proven air quality improvement strategy. In addition, each of our steel mills operates air pollution control devices (baghouses) to collect and capture particulate emissions (“EAF dust”) from the steelmaking process. We strive to maintain compliance with all applicable CAA requirements.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal generates particulate matter emissions that includes contaminants such as paint, zinc, lead, chrome and other metals. Initially, the particulate matter captured and collected is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, the EAF dust is recycled to recover these metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it collects to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor believes it is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but it is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both the CERCLA and the RCRA.

In addition to recycling EAF dust, Nucor mills beneficially reuse steel slag in road materials as a granular base, embankments, engineered fill, highway shoulders, and hot mix asphalt pavement. The physical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties of steel slag provide a vital resource for construction companies and activities. We take considerable pride in our recycling efforts.

Not only does the RCRA establish standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes, the RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. Periodically, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are discovered. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determines these off-site properties are contaminated, Nucor quickly evaluates such claims and, if Nucor is determined to be responsible, we do our part to remediate our share of such issues. Nucor believes all identified liabilities under the RCRA are either currently being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor has historically implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves appropriate to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence provides reasonable assurance as to these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

To protect water resources, the CWA regulates water withdrawals and discharges. When applicable, Nucor maintains water withdrawal and discharge permits at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments if the facility discharges into publicly owned treatment works.

Capital expenditures at our existing facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2022 and 2023 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Human Capital Resources

Culture, Organization and Compensation

We consider our teammates the most important part of Nucor and believe that our culture—and the encouragement that we provide to our teammates to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture” —provides us with a competitive advantage. Our culture’s key principles are: Safety First, Trust, Open Communications, Teamwork, Community Stewardship and Results.

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure that allows our teammates to make quick decisions and innovate. Our organization is also highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their teams. With more than 31,000 teammates, fewer than 200 work in our principal executive offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. By empowering our teammates, our goal is to foster an entrepreneurial mindset, along with a strong sense of personal responsibility and a culture of accountability. This empowerment is reinforced by our compensation policies (see discussion on “Pay for Performance” in Our Teammates, Compensation, Training & Development section below) to drive results and contribute to our success.

Teammate input is essential for us to maintain our culture of empowering teammates to make operational decisions. Aside from our practice of everyday open communication, we periodically ask our teammates to formally provide feedback. Since 1986, we have asked our teammates to complete a comprehensive survey in order to gather feedback on a range of topics, including matters relating to the effectiveness of our culture. We view the survey as an important tool in continually improving our company and ensuring our teammates remain engaged and satisfied. This survey is conducted every three years, the last of which was conducted in 2022. In the most recent survey, 89% of the responses were favorable in the category of “Satisfaction & Commitment.” The overall percentage of negative responses in the most recent survey has dropped by 25 percentage points since the survey began in 1986. The next survey will be conducted in the summer of 2025. Teammates of certain previously acquired businesses – most notably Harris, which accounted for approximately 15% of our workforce as of December 31, 2022 – complete a comparable survey that has also shown an improving trend over time.

Safety, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

One of Nucor’s core values is our teammates’ well-being and safety, and it is our goal to become the safest steel company in the world. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. We will continue working to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement. Two key metrics Nucor uses to measure safety are: the Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (“DART”) Case Rate.

Nucor calculates the annual Injury/Illness Rate by dividing the number of work-related injuries and illnesses by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2022, we achieved an annual Injury/Illness Rate of 0.95, which marks the safest year in the Company’s history. This marks an improvement over our annual Injury/Illness Rate of 1.04 in 2021, which was the Company’s previous record.

Nucor uses the DART Case Rate to assess and manage the risk of serious injury in the workplace. Nucor calculates the annual DART Case Rate by dividing the number of cases resulting in days away from work, restricted work activity and/or job transfers by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2022, we achieved an annual DART Case Rate of 0.43 (0.50 in 2021).

Since 1998, Nucor has used the President’s Safety Award to recognize divisions that achieve strong records of safety performance based on objective metrics. The President’s Safety Award has the following three levels: Platinum, which is awarded to divisions with zero recordable illnesses or injuries; Gold, which is awarded to divisions that have an Illness/Injury Rate below 0.6 and a DART Case Rate below one-third of the national average for their NAICS code; and Silver, which is awarded to divisions that achieve one-third the national average on Illness/Injury Rate and DART Case Rate. In 2022, 20 divisions achieved the Platinum level award, 17 divisions achieved the Gold level award and 21 divisions achieved the Silver level award. Nucor also has 24 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program Sites, OSHA’s highest level of recognition.

In 2020, the Company introduced the Nucor President’s Safety Cup as a way to foster more safety benchmarking throughout the Company. The President’s Safety Cup is an additional annual award that is presented to the region that has the best safety record across all of Nucor. Not only does this reward a facility for exceeding their individual safety goals, but it encourages our teams to work with their regional teammates to share ideas and improve safety as a group. The President’s Safety Cup trophy travels among the mills and divisions that make up the winning region.

We believe, however, that Safety is about more than just avoiding injuries. At Nucor, safety means making sure our teammates feel safe, welcome and valued when they come to work each day. We are accelerating our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts with the objective of ensuring that each teammate feels a sense of belonging at Nucor. By creating an inclusive workplace, we believe we will attract top talent and achieve greater diversity in our workforce and leadership, which will make Nucor a stronger company. Over the past two years, approximately 35% of Nucor teammates hired or promoted to the Manager or General Manager level were diverse.

Some of the initiatives focused on inclusion, equity and diversity we have launched include:

• Conducting focused discussion groups to share experiences of the workplace and the effects of race and gender;

• Taking feedback onboard to enhance training and development;

• Webcasts by diverse senior leaders sharing their career progression and life experiences

• Increasing focus and intensity of engagement with supportive external partners, such as:

• National Society of Black Engineers;

• Society of Women Engineers;

• National Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers;

• INROADS (non-profit focused on addressing the lack of diversity in corporate America)

• Tuskegee University; and

• Purdue University’s Women in Engineering Program and Minorities in Engineering Program.

• More proactive senior executive support for career development opportunities for diverse employees.

Our Teammates - Compensation, Training & Development

Nucor had approximately 31,400 teammates as of December 31, 2022. The vast majority of our teammates are located in the United States, with only a small number of teammates located outside of North America. Our operations are highly automated, allowing us to take advantage of lower employment costs while still providing our teammates with compensation that we believe is highly competitive as compared to businesses in our industry. At Nucor, we believe in “Pay-for-Performance.” Nucor teammates typically earn a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production teammates work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly in most cases. Nucor has also historically contributed 10% of earnings before federal taxes to a profit sharing plan for the majority of teammates below the officer level. We believe such compensation practices incentivize our workforce and reinforce our culture. For 2022, this profit sharing contribution, was the largest in our history and amounted to approximately $862 million. We expect that the profit sharing contribution in 2023 will be the largest in our history, and expect to contribute approximately $959 million in March 2023.

While Nucor seeks to hire qualified and talented individuals as teammates, we also believe in developing the skills of our workforce by providing educational and on-the-job training, in addition to safety training. Further, Nucor believes it is important for senior management to also be familiar with, and have had direct experience running, Nucor’s mills and other operational divisions. The vast majority of our teammates are not represented by labor unions and we believe our teammate turnover is low.

At Nucor, we believe that a diversity of perspectives and background helps to facilitate the “Nucor Way” as we work to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture.” We also believe that recruiting and hiring the best talent available will continue to provide us with a more diverse and capable workforce.

Policies

Nucor has a long history of conducting our businesses in a manner consistent with high standards of social responsibility. We have adopted a comprehensive Human Rights Policy, which operates in conjunction with many other Nucor policies related to ethical conduct and human rights, including our Standards of Business Conduct and Ethics, Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Professionals, Supplier Code of Conduct and Policy on Eliminating Forced Labor from our Supply Chain.

More information about our social strategies, including our Equal Employment Opportunity EEO-1 report, can be found at www.nucor.com/esg.

Available Information

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

We use the investor relations portion of our website, www.nucor.com/investors, to distribute information, including as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We routinely post and make accessible financial and other information regarding the Company on our website. Accordingly, investors should monitor the investor relations portion of our website, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and other public communications. Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not a part of this report and is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in its steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2021, we recycled approximately 20.4 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Segments, Principal Products Produced, and Markets and Marketing

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 66% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2021.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling, cold finish bar steel, steel electrical conduit pipe and insulated metal panels), we are the leading supplier.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality (“SBQ”)). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”), continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) and Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (“Nucor-JFE”), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold approximately 20,296,000 tons to outside customers in 2021.

The following chart shows our outside steel shipments by end market:

In 2021, 79% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 21% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our steel products segment.

• Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills strategically located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of steel products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, furniture, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is estimated at approximately 9,560,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

In December 2021, Nucor announced that it expects to build a rebar micro mill at a to-be-determined location in the South Atlantic region.

• Sheet mills - Nucor operates five strategically located sheet mills that utilize thin slab casters to produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 11,300,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for the further processing of hot-rolled sheet steel.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that greater than 80% of our sheet steel sales in 2021 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales were made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The amount of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts are noncancellable agreements that generally incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months.

In January 2022, Nucor announced that it expects to build a new, state-of-the-art sheet mill in West Virginia. In February 2022, Nucor completed its acquisition of a majority ownership position in California Steel Industries, Inc. (“CSI”), a flat-rolled steel converter, based in Fontana, California, expanding the reach of Nucor’s sheet mill group to the west coast of the United States.

• Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long-span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. The benefits of high strength, low alloy beams are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space, and overall environmental impact. Nucor sells its high-strength, low alloy beams under the trade name AEOSTM.

Nucor also owns a steel beam mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,250,000 tons per year. Both mills use a special continuous casting method that produces a beam blank closer in shape to that of the finished beam than traditional methods.

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 2,925,000 tons per year. Nucor is currently constructing a state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky with an anticipated start-up date of late 2022.

Plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Steel joint ventures - Nucor owns 50% interests in a North American sheet steel processing joint venture and a galvanized sheet steel plant in Mexico.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 30 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet the exact specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in Nucor-JFE, a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation (“JFE”) of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico that is expected to supply the country’s automotive market with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons.

Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, steel racking, steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor. These products are sold primarily for use in nonresidential construction applications.

• Tubular Products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has eight tubular facilities that are strategically located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills as they are a consumer of hot-rolled coil. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, galvanized solar torque tube, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Solar torque tube is an essential component for ground-mount solar systems.

In August 2021, Nucor acquired Hannibal Industries, Inc. (Hannibal), a leading national provider of steel racking solutions. Total annual NTP capacity is approximately 1,500,000 tons. In March 2021, Nucor announced that it expects to build a new tube mill on the site of its Kentucky sheet mill.

• Rebar fabrication - Harris Steel (“Harris”) fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities and airports) and various building projects, including hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office buildings and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect the concrete from cracking. In many markets, Harris sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Harris fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Harris operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,686,000 tons.

• Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s largest producer and leading innovator of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel decking, which are used primarily for nonresidential building construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada, one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada, that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist production capacity is approximately 745,000 tons and the annual deck production capacity is approximately 560,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in warehouses, data centers, manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not sell these finished steel products out of inventory. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers.

• Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily a steel foundation distributor serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, storm protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, cold-formed sheet piling and threaded bar.

• Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities exceeds approximately 1,069,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities are among the most modern in the world, producing cold finished bars for the most demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance, automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

Nucor owns a fully integrated precision castings company, Corporacion POK, S.A. de C.V. (“POK”), with a facility in Guadalajara, Mexico. POK produces complex castings and precision machined products used by the oil and gas, mining and sugar processing industries. POK produces a wide array of precision castings using steel, bronze, iron and specialty exotic alloys. POK complements NCF’s businesses and Nucor’s cold finish facility in Monterrey.

• Buildings group – Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company, Kirby Building Systems and CBC Steel Buildings. In total, the Nucor Buildings group currently has an annual capacity of approximately 360,000 tons.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

• Insulated Metal Panels – In August 2021, Nucor purchased the assets of the insulated metal panels business (“IMP”) of Cornerstone Building Brands, Inc. (“Cornerstone”), which is comprised of two industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span. This acquisition, combined with Nucor’s existing IMP business, TrueCore, LLC (“TrueCore”), form the Nucor Insulated Panel Group. The Nucor Insulated Panel group has nine manufacturing locations and has an annual capacity of approximately 92,000 tons.

• Steel mesh, grating and fasteners – Nucor manufactures wire products, grating and industrial fasteners.

Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah. Nucor also produces mesh in Canada at the Harris operations of Laurel Steel. The combined annual production capacity of the steel mesh facilities is approximately 128,000 tons.

Our grating business manufactures and fabricates steel and aluminum bar grating products at facilities located in North America and serves the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 46,500 tons.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications. The annual production capacity of this facility is approximately 75,000 tons.

Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas drilling operations. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to metallics supply.

• Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 5,478,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use industry-leading expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste. DJJ also operates 12 self-serve used auto parts stores called U Pull-&-Pay that complement its recycling operations.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and nonferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services. These activities have strategic value to Nucor as the leading and most diversified North American steel producer.

Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2021, approximately 9% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we brokered and processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

• Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants with a combined annual capacity of approximately 4,500,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content. Nucor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production and brokering capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust their metallic input mix to changing market conditions, enabling them to maintain cost competitiveness in the often-volatile ferrous scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap to become scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over metallics supply to its steel mills.

• Natural gas drilling programs - Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is a component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is being sold to third parties to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

• Universal Industrial Gases (UIG) – Nucor acquired UIG in 2019 so that we would have the capability to build and operate our own air separation units (“ASU”) to serve our steel mills, providing us with an alternative to long term service contracts with outside providers. Where economies of scale and regional market conditions warrant, we can also sell excess output from these plants on a merchant basis. We have one ASU in operation at our plate mill in Hertford County, North Carolina and three additional stand-alone facilities that are currently operating. Three more facilities are currently under construction at Nucor facilities.

Customers and Markets

We have a diverse customer base and are not dependent on any single customer. Our largest single customer in 2021 represented approximately 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment.

We believe that nonresidential construction is the largest end-use market that we serve. Products from our steel mills and steel products segment are used in a variety of nonresidential construction applications (e.g., commercial, industrial, infrastructure).

In recent years we have come to see our EAF-based steelmaking method, with its lower greenhouse gas (“GHG”) intensity when compared with blast furnace technology, as a competitive advantage for reasons beyond its flexible, highly variable cost base. Many of our customers are expressing greater concern for the GHG emissions in their supply chains and are prioritizing sourcing their steel requirements from EAF-based steelmakers for incorporation into their projects and products.

We have developed branded product lines to leverage this, and other advantages conferred by our specialized capabilities.

• Our AEOSTM line of high strength, low alloy steel beams is one such example. AEOSTM’s benefits are increasingly recognized by Nucor’s customers in the construction sector. These include savings in terms of construction time, weight, space and overall environmental impact.

• Our ECONIQTM line of net zero carbon steel is another example. We launched ECONIQTM during 2021 and have found strong interest from customers in both the automotive and construction end-use markets. These are the two largest end-use markets for steel in the United States.

We have also invested in people and processes to organize more of our commercial activities around large customers and end-use markets (e.g., automotive, construction, wind energy and solar energy). We have developed dedicated teams who are tasked with developing relationships and educating decision makers in these sectors. We believe this has resulted in earlier and more thoughtful consideration being given to steel-based solutions from Nucor, and a better appreciation for some our unique products and capabilities, such as AEOSTM and ECONIQTM.

General Development of Our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products and capabilities, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and increase our exposure to markets with attractive growth prospects; such as datacenters, warehouses and renewable energy. These investments totaled approximately $6.34 billion over the last three years, with approximately 75% going to capital expenditures and the remainder going to acquisitions. We believe that these investments will help us deliver profitable long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products will make us less susceptible to being negatively impacted by imports.

Nucor has several new capital projects and an acquisition of majority ownership position a joint venture in the steel mills segment that support our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies.

• Nucor has completed construction of a new $325 million third generation flexible galvanizing line with an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons at our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility. We believe this project, combined with Nucor Steel Arkansas’ specialty cold mill that has been in operation for more than two years, uniquely positions Nucor among North American EAF steelmakers to provide the high-strength, light-weight steels that are increasingly in demand from the automotive and other sectors.

• Nucor has completed construction of its approximately $650 million investment to modernize and expand the production capability at its Gallatin flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. The project is expected to begin start-up in the first quarter of 2022 and will increase the production capability of the mill from approximately 1,400,000 tons to approximately 3,000,000 tons annually once fully online. This project gives the Gallatin mill new, thicker slab casting and wider coil capabilities, expanding our product portfolio into markets currently served by higher-cost competitors.

• Construction continues on our $1.70 billion state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky on the Ohio river. We expect that the new plate mill will begin production in the fourth quarter of 2022. The mill will be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products. With the capability to manufacture nearly all the different types of plate products consumed in the United States, we believe this mill will position Nucor as the supplier of choice in the domestic plate market. We expect domestic demand for steel plate to grow in the coming years as offshore wind farms are permitted and developed with increasing frequency. Steel plate is essential to constructing offshore wind towers, as is steel rebar.

• In January 2022, Nucor announced that its new state-of-the-art sheet mill will be located in Mason County, West Virginia. Nucor’s West Virginia mill will have an annual capacity of 3,000,000 tons, with related total expected capital expenditures of approximately $2.70 billion. Construction is expected to take two years pending permit and regulatory approvals.

The new mill will be equipped to produce 84-inch sheet products, and among other features, will include a 76-inch tandem cold mill and two galvanizing lines. Galvanizing capabilities will include an advanced high-end automotive line with full inspection capabilities as well as a construction-grade line. In addition to its advanced capabilities and strategic location, the new greenfield mill’s product mix is anticipated to have a significantly lower GHG intensity than competitors who have historically supplied the region.

• In December 2021, Nucor announced construction of a rebar micro mill, with spooling capabilities, which is expected to be located in the South Atlantic region. This would be Nucor's third rebar micro mill, joining its existing micro mills in Missouri and Florida, both of which began operations in 2020. This $350 million investment will have an annual capacity of approximately 430,000 tons and is expected to be in operation in 2023.

These mills are referred to as micro mills because they have a smaller operational footprint than our older rebar mills, as well as less productive capacity – typically about 400,000 tons per year. This makes them suitable for smaller regional markets and enables to us serve these markets with a logistics cost advantage relative to competitors operating from further away. Micro mills also have a lower environmental footprint due to their smaller size and the fact that their plant design does not typically include a natural gas fired reheat furnace that is common in many steel mills.

• In February 2022, Nucor completed its acquisition of a majority ownership position in CSI by purchasing a 50% equity ownership interest from a subsidiary of Vale S.A. (Vale) for a cash purchase price of $400 million, adjusted for net debt and working capital at closing, as well as a 1% equity ownership stake from JFE. CSI is a flat-rolled steel converter based in Fontana, California.

Our acquisition of CSI expands the reach of Nucor’s sheet mill group to the west coast of the United States and increases our exposure to more value-added sheet steel. CSI’s product capabilities include hot rolled, pickled & oiled, cold rolled and galvanized sheet steels, as well as electric resistance welded (ERW) pipe. Its annual capacity is estimated at more than 2,000,000 tons.

During 2021, Nucor made two strategic acquisitions in the steel products segment.

• In August 2021, Nucor acquired the assets of the IMP business of Cornerstone for a cash purchase price of approximately $1.00 billion. The acquired IMP business that we acquired is comprised of two industry leading brands, CENTRIA and Metl-Span. The brands are now part of the Nucor Insulated Panel group, which also includes the Company's initial IMP business, TrueCore.We believe this acquisition will broaden the value-added solutions that the Nucor Buildings group provides to targeted end markets such as warehousing, distribution and data centers. We expect these end-use markets to continue to grow in the coming years and that the use of IMP products within them will also increase. IMPs facilitate cost-effective climate control in the built environment and reduce energy usage and overall operations-related GHG emissions for owners and lessees.

• In August 2021, Nucor acquired Hannibal for $370 million. Hannibal is a leading national provider of racking solutions to warehouses and serves the e-commerce, industrial, food storage and retail segments. Hannibal has manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles and Houston, as well as three distribution centers. It utilizes sheet and bar steel, as well as steel decking, wire deck and fasteners to produce its racking solutions, providing potential supply chain efficiencies with other Nucor businesses. In addition to manufacturing racking solutions, Hannibal works closely with customers during the construction and design phases of a warehouse build-out by offering turn-key services such as installation, procurement and facility integration.

Capital Allocation Strategy

The significant developments in Nucor’s business in recent years have largely been driven by our capital allocation strategy. Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

Our second priority is to return capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. Nucor has paid $1.47 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 13% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The Company repurchased $3.28 billion of its common stock in 2021 ($39.5 million in 2020 and $298.5 million in 2019).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years, we have returned approximately 58% of our net income in this manner. At December 31, 2021, the Company had approximately $3.85 billion available for share repurchases under the currently authorized share repurchase program.

We intend to execute on our capital allocation strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet, with relatively low financial leverage, as measured in terms of net debt to total capital, as well as ample liquidity. At year-end 2021, our net debt to total capital was approximately 14% and we had cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash and cash equivalents on hand of $2.76 billion. At the end of 2021, Nucor had the strongest credit ratings in the North American steel sector (Baa1/A-) with stable outlooks at both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF-based steel producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers. EAF-based steel producers also typically emit fewer GHGs per ton of steel produced than integrated steel producers.

Global steel production overcapacity continues to be an ongoing risk to Nucor and the entire steel industry. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) estimates that global steel production overcapacity is currently approximately 500,000,000 tons, which is down slightly from previous years. However, additional capacity continues to come online and China’s steel production, the largest steel producing country, is still near record levels. In 2021, China’s steel production was 1.13 billion tons compared to the record amount of 1.16 billion tons the previous year.

Circumvention of trade duties also continues to pose a risk. Besides producing record amounts of steel in its own country, China is investing heavily in steel production in neighboring countries which is one way it tries to avoid being subject to trade duties. State-owned Chinese steel companies are involved in new steel capacity projects in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. The South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute (SEAISI) has estimated that by 2026 there will be significant production overcapacity in the region, noting it will take 20 years for demand to catch up with the projected capacity levels.

Strong trade enforcement has led to a structural change in the U.S. steel market. The Section 232 steel tariffs and successful trade cases have been effective in keeping unfairly traded imports out of the U.S. market. In November 2021, the U.S. government reached an agreement with Europe to end the Section 232 imports on steel from the European Union and replace them with a tariff rate quota. The U.S. government is also negotiating potential deals to end the tariffs with the United Kingdom and Japan. Imports of finished steel in 2021 were up approximately 48% from 2020 levels and accounted for approximately 22% of U.S. market share.

At the end of 2021, Congress passed a significant infrastructure spending bill. The bill will result in an estimated 4 million to 6 million tons of additional steel demand per year, and contains strong Buy America requirements to ensure domestically produced steel is used to rebuild U.S. infrastructure. Approximately 50% of Nucor products are shipped into the construction market, and Nucor’s lower carbon footprint is expected to provide an additional advantage as states and localities look to rebuild infrastructure in a sustainable manner.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are often other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $3.79 billion and $2.58 billion at December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $8.12 billion and $2.66 billion at December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. The increase in backlogs for the steel products segment is due to several businesses within the steel products segment having record backlog volume and pricing at December 31, 2021. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not meaningful because the vast majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. Nucor’s raw materials segment safely produces, sources, trades and transports steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for our steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment increased 62% from $290 per gross ton used in 2020 to $469 per gross ton used in 2021. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. Depending on the market conditions at the time, a raw material surcharge or variable steel pricing mechanism may be implemented to assist Nucor in maintaining operating margins and in meeting our customer commitments during periods of rapidly changing scrap and scrap substitute costs.

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. We believe Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil, such as Ukraine, Russia and Brazil. We believe the continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us mitigate the risk of significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed primarily from overseas sources including Russia, Ukraine and Brazil. We received over 2,800,000 gross tons of pig iron in 2021. Our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana have respective annual production capacities of approximately 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is pelletized iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Steel manufacturing is considered an energy-intensive, trade exposed industry. As a result, we continuously strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. In addition, we proactively engage with suppliers, regulators and other energy industry participants to ensure the continued availability of reliable, low-cost sources of energy in various forms.

Our steel mills utilize EAFs for 100% of their steel production, with approximately 50% of their total energy consumed as electricity. The total energy consumed by Nucor also includes natural gas, oxygen and carbon raw material inputs. For the scrap melting process, electricity is the primary energy source, with natural gas combustion serving as the fuel for reheat furnaces and other pre-heating operations. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas.

The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, the regulatory environment and pipeline/transmission infrastructure.

We use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges, as well as our owned natural gas drilling operations. In addition to the currently producing wells in the Piceance Basin, Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin, in the Western Slope of Colorado. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on these properties, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with third-party gathering and processing service providers. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is being sold to partially offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana, and by our steel mills in the United States. Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments.

We closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. We engage with policymakers to provide technical information that can inform policy decisions and avoid unintended adverse consequences of legislative and regulatory actions. We believe that a thoughtful approach to domestic energy policy can help ensure that steel and steel products manufactured in the United States remain competitive in the increasingly global marketplace.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

GHG emissions by the energy sector have received an increasing amount of attention in recent years, as more people become concerned that these emissions are a significant contributor to climate change. This has led to increasing support for, and investment in, low or zero carbon energy generation technologies such as solar, wind and nuclear. As a result, the development of these technologies has accelerated, and in many cases, they are now more cost competitive with traditional, fossil fuel-based power generation. We believe that this ongoing diversification of power generation technologies is fundamentally positive, but without careful planning and investment there is some risk to the reliability of the domestic power grid as this transition continues. In particular, legacy fossil fuel-based assets will remain essential for some time to come and the U.S. transmission grid is broadly in need of substantial upgrades to take full advantage of these newer, more intermittent power sources. We are also optimistic about the related demand for our products as transmission grid upgrades are executed and newer power generation assets are developed using steel.

In July 2021, we announced a commitment to lower the GHG emissions intensity from our steel mill operations by 35% in 2030, measured against a 2015 baseline - the year the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted. As a result, Nucor’s GHG intensity in 2030 is expected to be 77% less than today’s global average. We expect to achieve these goals with a multi-pronged approach that includes utilization of renewable energy, carbon substitutes, more efficient operations and carbon sequestration.

In 2020 and 2021, we entered into three Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (“VPPAs”). Under each VPPAs, we have agreed to purchase for a fixed price a portion of the output of both solar and wind renewable power projects being developed in the United States. The VPPAs will be settled financially on a monthly basis. We have undertaken these initiatives to support the ongoing transition of the U.S. power grid to a greater reliance on renewable power. As part of these arrangements, we will also receive Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) commensurate with the power we purchase. These RECs can be applied against a portion of our GHG emissions, enabling us to receive credit for reducing them. The pay fixed, received floating nature of this arrangement also offsets a portion of our exposure to higher prices for electricity over the life of the contract. We are evaluating and considering similar transactions. One VPPA started delivering RECs to us in June 2021 and the other two VPPAs may be delayed as a result of supply chain disruptions and permitting delays and interconnection delays.

Government and Environmental Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations, the most significant of which are intended to protect our teammates and the environment. Due to the nature of the steel industry, we are subject to substantial regulations related to safety in the workplace. In addition to the requirements of the state and local governments of the communities in which we operate, we must comply with federal health and safety regulations, the most significant of which are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”). Because safety and safety compliance is one of our primary values, its effect on our capital expenditures, earnings and competitive position is not estimable.

Nucor operates a robust and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of each individual teammate, as well as management, being responsible for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steel mills that have been in operation for over five years are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification requires Nucor’s steel mills to implement an environmental management system with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use.

The principal federal environmental laws that regulate our business include the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”), which regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”), which regulates water withdrawals and discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”), which addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”), which governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of contaminated sites. Our operations are also subject to state and local environmental laws and regulations.

As it relates to air emission rates, EAFs are the most efficient and cleanest steel making process commercially available today. In comparison to blast furnaces, emissions of sulfur oxides from EAFs are approximately 14% of the amount emitted from blast furnaces. EAFs emit less than 1% of the particulate emissions compared to blast furnace operations. Importantly, EAF emissions of GHGs per ton of steel average less than half of the rates typically generated by blast furnaces. Operating EAFs instead of blast furnaces is a proven air quality improvement strategy. In addition, each of our steel mills operates air pollution control devices (baghouses) to collect and capture particulate emissions (“EAF dust”) from the steel making process. We strive to maintain compliance with all applicable CAA requirements.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal generates particulate matter emissions that includes contaminants such as paint, zinc, lead, chrome and other metals. Initially, the particulate matter captured and collected is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, the EAF dust is recycled to recover these metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it collects to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor believes it is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but it is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both the CERCLA and the RCRA.

In addition to recycling EAF dust, Nucor mills beneficially reuse steel slag in road materials as a granular base, embankments, engineered fill, highway shoulders, and hot mix asphalt pavement. The physical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties of steel slag provide a vital resource for construction companies and activities. We take considerable pride in our recycling efforts.

Not only does the RCRA establish standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes, the RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. Periodically, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are discovered. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determines these off-site properties are contaminated, Nucor quickly evaluates such claims and, if Nucor is determined to be responsible, we do our part to remediate our share of such issues. Nucor believes all identified liabilities under the RCRA are either currently being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor has historically implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

To protect water resources, the CWA regulates water withdrawals and discharges. When applicable, Nucor maintains water withdrawal and discharge permits at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments if the facility discharges into publicly owned treatment works.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2021 and 2022 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Human Capital Resources

Culture, Organization and Compensation

We consider our teammates the most important part of Nucor and believe that our culture – and the encouragement that we provide to our teammates to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture” – provides us with a competitive advantage. Our culture’s key principles are: Safety First, Trust, Open Communications, Teamwork, Community Stewardship and Results.

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure that allows our teammates to make quick decisions and innovate. Our organization is also highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their teams. With nearly 29,000 teammates, fewer than 200 work in our principal executive offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. By empowering our teammates, our goal is to foster an entrepreneurial mindset, along with a strong sense of personal responsibility and a culture of accountability. This empowerment is reinforced by our compensation policies (see “Pay for Performance” discussion in Our Teammates, Compensation, Training & Development section below) to drive results and contribute to our success.

Teammate input is essential for us to maintain our culture of empowering teammates to make operational decisions. Aside from our practice of everyday open communication, we periodically ask our teammates to formally provide feedback. Beginning in 1986, we have asked our teammates to complete a comprehensive survey in order to gather feedback on a range of topics, including matters relating to the effectiveness of our culture. We view the survey as an important tool we use to continually improve our company and ensure our teammates remain engaged and satisfied. This survey is conducted every three years, the last of which was conducted in 2019. In the most recent survey, 90% of the responses were favorable in the category of “Satisfaction & Commitment.” The overall percentage of negative responses in the most recent survey has dropped by 25 percentage points since the survey began in 1986. The next survey will be conducted in the summer of 2022. Teammates of certain previously acquired businesses – most notably Harris, which accounted for approximately 15% of our workforce as of December 31, 2021 – complete a comparable survey that has also shown an improving trend over time.

Safety, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

One of Nucor’s core values is our teammates’ well-being and safety, and it is our goal to become the safest steel company in the world. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. We will continue working to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement. Two key metrics Nucor uses to measure safety are: the Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (“DART”) Case Rate.

Nucor calculates the annual Injury/Illness Rate by dividing the number of work-related injuries and illnesses by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2021, we achieved an annual Injury/Illness Rate of 1.04, which marks the safest year in the Company’s history. This marks an improvement over our annual Injury/Illness Rate of 1.10 in 2020, which was the Company’s previous record.

Nucor uses the DART Case Rate to assess and manage the risk of serious injury in the workplace. Nucor calculates the annual DART Case Rate by dividing the number of cases resulting in days away from work, restricted work activity and/or job transfers by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2021, we achieved an annual DART Case Rate of 0.50 (0.59 in 2020).

Beginning in 1998, Nucor has used the President’s Safety Award to recognize divisions that achieve strong records of safety performance based on objective metrics. The President’s Safety Award has the following three levels: Platinum, which is awarded to divisions with zero recordable illnesses or injuries; Gold, which is awarded to divisions that have an Illness/Injury Rate below 0.6 and a DART Case Rate below one-third of the national average for their NAICS code; and Silver, which is awarded to divisions that achieve one-third the national average on Illness/Injury Rate and DART Case Rate. In 2021, 16 divisions achieved the Platinum level award, 14 divisions achieved the Gold level award and 17 divisions achieved the Silver level award. Nucor also has 25 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program Sites, OSHA’s highest level of recognition.

In 2020, the Company introduced the Nucor President’s Safety Cup as a way to foster more safety benchmarking throughout the Company. The President’s Safety Cup is an additional annual award that is presented to the region that has the best safety record across all of Nucor. Not only does this reward a facility for exceeding their individual safety goals, but it encourages our teams to work with their regional teammates to share ideas and improve safety as a group. The President’s Safety Cup trophy travels among the mills and divisions that make up the winning region.

We believe however, that Safety is about more than just avoiding injuries. At Nucor, safety means making sure our teammates feel safe, welcome and valued when they come to work each day. We are accelerating our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts with the objective of ensuring that each teammate feels a sense of belonging at Nucor. By creating an inclusive workplace, we believe we will attract top talent and achieve greater diversity in our workforce and leadership, which will make Nucor a stronger company. Some of the initiatives focused on inclusion, equity and diversity we have launched include:

• Conducting focused discussion groups to share experiences of the workplace and the effects of race and gender

• Taking feedback onboard to enhance training and development

• Webcasts by diverse senior leaders sharing their career progression and life experiences

• Increasing tempo and intensity of engagement with supportive external partners, such as

• Society of Black Engineers

• Society of Women Engineers

• Tuskegee University

• INROADS (non-profit focused on addressing the lack of diversity in corporate America)

• More proactive senior executive support for career development opportunities for diverse employees

Our Teammates - Compensation, Training & Development

Nucor had approximately 28,800 teammates as of December 31, 2021. The vast majority of our teammates are located in the United States, with only a small number of teammates located outside of North America. Our operations are highly automated, allowing us to take advantage of lower employment costs while still providing our teammates with compensation that we believe is highly competitive as compared to businesses in our industry. At Nucor, we believe in “Pay-for-Performance.” Nucor teammates typically earn a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production teammates work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly in most cases. Nucor has also historically contributed 10% of earnings before federal taxes to a profit sharing plan for the majority of teammates below the officer level. We believe such compensation practices incentivize our workforce and reinforce our culture. For 2021, this profit sharing contribution, was the largest in our history and amounted to approximately $861 million.

While Nucor seeks to hire qualified and talented individuals as teammates, we also believe in developing the skills of our workforce by providing educational and on-the-job training, in addition to safety training. Further, Nucor believes it is important for senior management to also be familiar with, and have had direct experience running, Nucor’s mills and other operational divisions. The vast majority of our teammates are not represented by labor unions and we believe our teammate turnover is low.

At Nucor, we believe that a diversity of perspectives and background helps to facilitate the “Nucor Way” as we work to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture.” We also believe that recruiting and hiring the best talent available will continue to provide us with a more diverse and capable workforce.

Policies

Nucor has a long history of conducting our businesses in a manner consistent with high standards of social responsibility. We have adopted a comprehensive Human Rights Policy, which operates in conjunction with many other Nucor policies related to ethical conduct and human rights, including our Standards of Business Conduct and Ethics, Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Professionals, Supplier Code of Conduct and Policy on Eliminating Forced Labor from our Supply Chain.

Available Information

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

We use the investor relations portion of our website, www.nucor.com/investors, to distribute information, including as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We routinely post and make accessible financial and other information regarding the Company on our website. Accordingly, investors should monitor the investor relations portion of our website, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and other public communications. Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not a part of this report and is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in its steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2020, we recycled approximately 17.8 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Segments, Principle Products Produced, and Markets and Marketing

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 60% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2020.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling and cold finish bar steel), we are the leading supplier.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality (“SBQ”)). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”), continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) and Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (“Nucor-JFE”), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold approximately 18,049,000 tons to outside customers in 2020.

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The following chart shows our outside steel shipments by end market:

In 2020, 80% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 20% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our tubular products, piling distributor, joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

• Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills strategically located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of steel products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, furniture, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is estimated at approximately 9,560,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

• Sheet mills - Nucor operates five strategically located sheet mills that utilize thin slab casters to produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 11,300,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for the further processing of hot-rolled sheet steel.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that approximately 70% of our sheet steel sales in 2020 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales were made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The amount of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts are noncancellable agreements that generally incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months.

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• Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long-span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. Nucor also owns a steel beam mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,250,000 tons per year. Both mills use a special continuous casting method that produces a beam blank closer in shape to that of the finished beam than traditional methods.

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 2,925,000 tons per year. Nucor is currently constructing a state-of-the-art plate mill in Brandenburg, Kentucky with an anticipated start-up date of late 2022.

Plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Steel joint ventures - Nucor owns 50% interests in a North American sheet steel processing joint venture and a galvanized sheet steel plant in Mexico.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 26 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet the exact specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in Nucor-JFE, a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico that is expected to supply the country’s automotive market with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons.

Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor. These products are sold primarily for use in nonresidential construction applications.

• Tubular Products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has eight tubular facilities that are strategically located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills as they are a consumer of hot-rolled coil. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Total annual NTP capacity is approximately 1,365,000 tons.

• Rebar fabrication - Harris Steel (“Harris”) fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs,

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utilities and airports) and various building projects, including hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office buildings and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect the concrete from cracking. In many markets, Harris sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Harris fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Harris operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,650,000 tons.

• Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s largest producer and leading innovator of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel deck, which are used primarily for nonresidential building construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada, one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada, that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist production capacity is approximately 745,000 tons and the annual deck production capacity is approximately 560,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in warehouses, data centers, manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not sell these finished steel products out of inventory. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs.

• Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily a steel foundation distributor serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, storm protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, cold-formed sheet piling and threaded bar.

• Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities exceeds approximately 1,069,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities are among the most modern in the world, producing cold finished bars for the most demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance, automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

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Nucor owns a fully integrated precision castings company, Corporacion POK, S.A. de C.V. (“POK”), with a facility in Guadalajara, Mexico. POK produces complex castings and precision machined products used by the oil and gas, mining and sugar processing industries. POK produces a wide array of precision castings using steel, bronze, iron and specialty exotic alloys. POK complements NCF’s businesses and Nucor’s cold finish facility in Monterrey.

• Buildings group – Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company, Kirby Building Systems and CBC Steel Buildings. In total, the Nucor Buildings group currently has nine metal buildings plants with an annual capacity of approximately 360,000 tons, as well as an insulated metal panels company in Laurens, South Carolina whose products are utilized in metal buildings made by the Nucor Buildings group as well as other applications.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

• Steel mesh, grating and fasteners - Nucor manufactures wire products, grating and industrial fasteners.

Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah. Nucor also produces mesh in Canada at the Harris operations of Laurel Steel. The combined annual production capacity of the steel mesh facilities is approximately 128,000 tons.

Our grating business manufactures and fabricates steel and aluminum bar grating products at facilities located in North America and serves the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 80,000 tons.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications. The annual production capacity of this facility is approximately 75,000 tons.

Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas drilling operations. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to metallics supply.

• Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 5,000,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use industry-leading expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste. DJJ also operates 11 self-serve used auto parts stores called U Pull-&-Pay that complement its recycling operations.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and nonferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services. These activities have strategic value to Nucor as the leading and most diversified North American steel producer.

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Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2020, approximately 9% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we brokered and processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

• Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants with a combined annual capacity of approximately 4,500,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content. Nucor’s wholly owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana (“Nucor Steel Louisiana”) also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust the metallic mix to changing market conditions and to maintain competitiveness in the sometimes-volatile scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap becoming scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over its metallics supply.

• Natural gas drilling programs - Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is a component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is being sold to third parties to offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

Customers

A significant portion of our steel mills and steel products segments’ sales are into the commercial, industrial and municipal construction markets. We have a diverse customer base and are not dependent on any single customer. Our largest single customer in 2020 represented less than 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment.

General Development of Our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products and capabilities, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and provide additional channels to market for our products. These investments totaled approximately $4.24 billion over the last three years, with approximately 95% going to capital expenditures and the remainder going to acquisitions. We believe that our focus on lowering costs and diversifying our operations will enable us to deliver profitable long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products and increasing end-use market diversity will make us less susceptible to being negatively impacted by imports.

Several new capital projects that support our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies were completed in 2020. Nucor’s $245 million rebar micro mill near Kansas City in Sedalia, Missouri finished commissioning in the second quarter of 2020 and is capable of producing approximately 380,000 tons annually. We believe that positioning the micro mill near the Kansas City market will provide us with a freight cost advantage relative to more distant suppliers, and we will also benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by our existing DJJ operations. In December 2020, Nucor’s $249 million investment in a new rebar micro mill in Frostproof, Florida began production and commissioning. This mill is capable of producing approximately 350,000 tons annually. We believe this new micro mill will also benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by

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our existing DJJ operations as well as strong regional demand for its products. Also in December 2020, Nucor Steel Kankakee, Inc. finished commissioning its full-range merchant bar quality mill with approximately 500,000 tons of annual capacity at its existing mill in Bourbonnais, Illinois at a cost of $187 million. Like the new micro mills, we believe that the Kankakee mill will also benefit from logistical advantages serving its customers and low-cost scrap supply.

Nucor is constructing a new $325 million 3rd generation flexible galvanizing line with an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons at our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility. This project complements the new $245 million specialty cold mill at Nucor Steel Arkansas that completed its first full year of production in 2020. We believe these investments will accelerate our goal of increasing our automotive market share. The new galvanizing line is expected to be operational in the second half of 2021. In September 2018, Nucor announced an approximately $650 million investment to modernize and expand the production capability at its Gallatin flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. This investment will increase the production capability from approximately 1,400,000 tons to approximately 3,000,000 tons annually and will increase the maximum coil width to approximately 73 inches. This expansion is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021 and complements the mill’s new $200 million hot band galvanizing and pickling line that completed its first full year of production in 2020. In January 2019, Nucor announced plans to build a state-of-the-art plate mill, which will be based in Brandenburg, Kentucky on the Ohio river. With an expected investment of $1.70 billion, we anticipate the mill will be completed in late 2022 and will be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products.

In addition to growing through capital expansions at our existing operations and acquisitions, Nucor also uses joint ventures as a platform for growth. Nucor-JFE, our joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan, in which Nucor has 50% ownership, resumed production in late 2020 after lengthy government-mandated shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Located in central Mexico, Nucor-JFE will supply galvanized sheet steel to the growing Mexican automotive market. The investment totaled $360 million, with Nucor's share of these amounts being 50%. Nucor’s sheet mills are expected to provide a significant portion of the hot-rolled steel substrate that will be consumed by Nucor-JFE.

Capital Allocation Strategy

The significant developments in Nucor’s business in recent years have been driven by our capital allocation strategy. Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

Our second priority is to return capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. Nucor has paid $1.47 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 19% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The Company repurchased $39.5 million of its common stock in 2020 ($298.5 million in 2019 and $854.0 million in 2018).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years, we have returned approximately 61% of our net income in this manner. At December 31, 2020, the Company had approximately $1.16 billion available for share repurchases under the current share repurchase program.

We intend to execute on this strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet, with relatively low financial leverage, as measured in terms of net debt to total capital, as well as ample liquidity. At year-end 2020, our net debt to total capital was approximately 13% and we had cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash and cash equivalents on hand of $3.16 billion. At the end of 2020, Nucor had the strongest credit ratings in the North American steel sector (Baa1/A-) with stable outlooks at both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.

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Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF-based steel producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers. EAF-based steel producers also typically emit less carbon dioxide per ton of steel produced than integrated steel producers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the ongoing risks Nucor and the entire steel industry face from excess global steelmaking capacity, particularly in non-market economies. China set a record for steel production in 2020, despite the pandemic. Steel production in China rose from approximately 1.10 billion tons in 2019 to approximately 1.16 billion tons in 2020. As a result, China’s share of global crude steel production rose from 53.3% in 2019 to 56.6% in 2020. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the “OECD”) estimates that excess global steel production capacity will be approximately 776 million tons in 2020, up from 624 million tons in 2019, which was itself up significantly from the prior year. China’s largest steel companies are state-owned and receive significant financial support from the Chinese government.

The Section 232 steel tariffs implemented in 2018 continue to be effective in preventing the dumping of steel products in the U.S. market. Successful industry trade cases over the past several years have had an impact on import levels as well. For the full year 2020, imports of finished steel were down approximately 23% from the previous year and accounted for approximately 18% of U.S. market share. In 2020, finished steel import market share was at its lowest level since 2003.

The new United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement went into effect in July 2020. The agreement has several provisions that we believe will benefit the steel industry, including requiring that higher levels of a vehicle’s content, including steel, be produced in North America for a vehicle to qualify for zero tariffs, and that 70% of the steel used in vehicles be melted and poured in North America. There are also provisions addressing currency manipulation and state-owned enterprises.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are often other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $2.58 billion and $1.68 billion at December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $2.66 billion and $2.24 billion at December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not meaningful because the vast majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

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Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. Nucor’s raw materials segment safely produces, sources, trades and transports steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment decreased 8% from $314 per gross ton used in 2019 to $290 per gross ton used in 2020. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. Depending on the market conditions at the time, a raw material surcharge or variable steel pricing mechanism may be implemented to assist Nucor in maintaining operating margins and in meeting our customer commitments during periods of rapidly changing scrap and scrap substitute costs.

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. We believe Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil. We believe the continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us mitigate the risk of significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective annual production capacities of approximately 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is pelletized iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. Another major source of raw materials used in the production of steel is pig iron. We received over 2.6 million gross tons of pig iron in 2020. As with scrap and iron ore, we source pig iron from a number of international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Most of our operations are energy intensive. As a result, we continuously strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. In addition, we proactively engage with suppliers, regulators and other energy industry participants to ensure the continued availability of reliable, low cost sources of energy in various forms.

Our steel mills utilize EAFs for 100% of their steel production, with approximately 50% of their total energy consumed as electricity. The total energy consumed by Nucor also includes natural gas, oxygen, and carbon raw material inputs. For the scrap melting process, electricity is the primary energy source, with natural gas combustion serving as the fuel for reheat furnaces and other pre-heating operations. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas.

The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, the regulatory environment and pipeline/transmission infrastructure.

We closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. We work with policymakers to provide technical information that can inform policy making and avoid

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unintended adverse consequences of legislative and regulatory actions. We believe that a thoughtful approach to domestic energy policy can help ensure that steel and steel products manufactured in the United States remain competitive in an increasingly global marketplace.

Greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions by the energy sector have received an increasing amount of attention in recent years, as more people become concerned that these emissions are a significant contributor to climate change. This has led to increasing support for, and investment in, low or zero carbon energy generation technologies such as solar, wind and nuclear. As a result, the development of these technologies has accelerated, and in many cases they are now more cost competitive with traditional, fossil fuel-based power generation. We believe that this ongoing diversification of power generation technologies is fundamentally positive, but without careful planning and investment there is some risk to the reliability of the domestic power grid as this transition continues. In particular, legacy fossil fuel-based assets will remain essential for some time to come and the U.S. transmission grid is broadly in need of substantial upgrades to take full advantage of these newer, more intermittent power sources. We are also optimistic about the related demand for our products as transmission grid upgrades are executed and newer power generation assets are developed using steel.

In November of 2020, we executed a 15-year, 250-megawatt Virtual Power Purchase Agreement (“VPPA”) with a major North American renewable energy company. Under the VPPA, we have agreed to purchase for a fixed price a portion of the output of a solar array being developed in northwestern Texas. The VPPA will be settled financially on a monthly basis. We have undertaken this initiative to support the ongoing transition of the U.S. power grid to a greater reliance on renewable power. As part of this arrangement we will also receive Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) commensurate with the power we purchase. These RECs can be applied against a portion of our GHG emissions, enabling us to receive credit for reducing them. The pay fixed, received floating nature of this arrangement also offsets a portion of our exposure to higher prices for electricity over the life of the contract. We are evaluating and considering more transactions like this one.

We use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges, as well as our owned natural gas drilling operations. In addition to the currently producing wells in the Piceance Basin, Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the South Piceance Basin, in the Western Slope of Colorado. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on these properties, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with third-party gathering and processing service providers. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is being sold to offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana, and by our steel mills in the United States. Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments.

Government and Environmental Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations, the most significant of which are intended to protect our teammates and the environment. Due to the nature of the steel industry, we are subject to substantial regulations related to safety in the workplace. In addition to the requirements of the state and local governments of the communities in which we operate, we must comply with federal health and safety regulations, the most significant of which are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”). Because safety and safety compliance is one of our primary values, its effect on our capital expenditures, earnings and competitive position is not estimable.

Nucor operates a robust and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of each individual teammate, as well as management, being responsible for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification requires Nucor’s steel mills to implement an environmental management system with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use.

The principal federal environmental laws that regulate our business include the Clean Air Act (the “CAA”) that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”) that regulates water withdrawals and discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response,

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Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”) that governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of contaminated sites. Our operations are also subject to state and local environmental laws and regulations.

As it relates to air emission rates, EAFs are the most efficient and cleanest steel making process commercially available today. In comparison to blast furnaces, emissions of sulfur oxides from EAFs are approximately 14% of the amount emitted from blast furnaces. EAFs emit less than 1% of the particulate emissions compared to blast furnace operations. Importantly, EAF emissions of greenhouse gases per ton of steel average less than half of the rates typically generated by blast furnaces. Operating EAFs instead of blast furnaces is a proven air quality improvement strategy. In addition, each of our steel mills operate air pollution control devices (baghouses) to collect and capture particulate emissions (“EAF dust”) from the steel making process. We strive to maintain compliance with all applicable CAA requirements.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. As mentioned previously, the process of recycling scrap metal generates particulate matter emissions that includes contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals. Initially, the particulate matter captured and collected is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, the EAF dust is recycled to recover these metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it collects to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor believes it is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but it is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both the CERCLA and the RCRA.

In addition to recycling EAF dust, Nucor mills beneficially reuse steel slag in road materials as a granular base, embankments, engineered fill, highway shoulders, and hot mix asphalt pavement. The physical, chemical, mechanical and thermal properties of steel slag provide a vital resource for construction companies and activities. We take considerable pride in our recycling efforts.

Notably in both 2019 and 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”) identified Nucor as a Top 10 Parent Company in terms of pollution source reduction activities in its assessment publication, National Analysis of Toxics Release Inventory. To illustrate potential reduction strategies, the EPA used a Nucor facility as an example of pollution prevention. Nucor focuses on pollution prevention at all of our facilities.

Not only does the RCRA establish standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes, the RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. Periodically, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are discovered. When the EPA determines these off-site properties are contaminated, Nucor quickly evaluates such claims and, if Nucor is determined to be responsible, we do our part to remediate our share of such issues. Nucor believes all identified liabilities under the RCRA are either currently being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor has historically implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

To protect water resources, the CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. When applicable, Nucor maintains discharge and water withdrawal permits at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those

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permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments if the facility discharges into publicly owned treatment works.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2021 and 2022 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Human Capital Resources

Culture, Organization and Compensation

We consider our teammates the most important part of Nucor and believe that our culture – and the encouragement that we provide to our teammates to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture” – provides us with a competitive advantage. Our culture’s key principles are: Safety First, Trust, Open Communications, Teamwork, Community Stewardship and Results.

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure that allows our teammates to make quick decisions and innovate. Our organization is also highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their teams. With more than 26,000 teammates, only 150 work in our principal executive offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. By empowering our teammates, our goal is to foster an entrepreneurial mindset, along with a strong sense of personal responsibility and a culture of accountability. This empowerment is reinforced by our compensation policies, so as to drive results and contribute to our success.

Teammate input is essential for us to maintain our culture of empowering teammates to make operational decisions. Aside from our practice of everyday open communication, we periodically ask our teammates to formally provide feedback. Beginning in 1986, we have asked our teammates to complete a comprehensive survey in order to gather feedback on a range of topics, including matters relating to the effectiveness of our culture. We view the survey as an important tool we use to continually improve our company and ensure our teammates remain engaged and satisfied. This survey is conducted every three years, the last of which was conducted in 2019. In the most recent survey, 90% of the responses were favorable in the category of “Satisfaction & Commitment.” The overall percentage of negative responses in the most recent survey has dropped by 25 percentage points since the survey began in 1986. Teammates of certain previously acquired businesses – most notably DJJ and Harris, which together accounted for approximately 27% of our workforce as of December 31, 2020 – complete comparable surveys that have also shown an improving trend over time.

Safety

One of Nucor’s core values is our teammates’ well-being and safety, and it is our goal to become the safest steel company in the world. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. We will continue working to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement. Two key metrics Nucor uses to measure safety are: the Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (“DART”) Case Rate.

Nucor calculates the annual Injury/Illness Rate by dividing the number of work-related injuries and illnesses by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2020, we achieved an annual Injury/Illness Rate of 1.10.

Nucor uses the DART Case Rate to assess and manage the risk of serious injury in the workplace. Nucor calculates the annual DART Case Rate by dividing the number of cases resulting in days away from work, restricted work activity and/or job transfers by the total number of hours worked by all Nucor teammates in a given year, and then multiplying the resulting percentage by 200,000, the equivalent of

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100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. In 2020, we achieved an annual DART Case Rate of 0.59.

Beginning in 1998, Nucor has used the President’s Safety Award to recognize divisions that achieve strong records of safety performance based on objective metrics. Since 2004, the President’s Safety Award has gone to divisions and mills where the Injury/Illness Rate and DART Case Rate are less than one-third the national average for comparable facilities. In 2020, 40 of Nucor’s mills and divisions achieved the President’s Safety Award. Nucor also has 25 OSHA Voluntary Protection Program Sites, OSHA’s highest level of recognition.

Our Teammates

Nucor had approximately 26,400 teammates as of December 31, 2020. The vast majority of our teammates are located in the United States, with only a small number of teammates located outside of North America. Our operations are highly automated, allowing us to take advantage of lower employment costs while still providing our teammates with compensation that we believe is highly competitive as compared to comparable businesses in our industry. At Nucor, we believe in “Pay-for-Performance.” Nucor teammates typically earn a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production teammates work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly in most cases. Nucor has also historically contributed 10% of earnings before federal taxes to a profit sharing plan for the majority of teammates below the officer level. We believe such compensation practices incentivize our workforce and reinforce our culture.

While Nucor seeks to hire qualified and talented individuals as teammates, we also believe in developing the skills of our workforce by providing educational and on-the-job training, in addition to safety training. Further, Nucor believes it is important for senior management to also be familiar with, and have had direct experience running, Nucor’s mills and other operational divisions. The vast majority of our teammates are not represented by labor unions and we believe our teammate turnover is low.

At Nucor, we believe that a diversity of perspectives and background helps to facilitate the “Nucor Way” as we work to “grow the core; expand beyond; and live our culture.” We also believe that recruiting and hiring the best talent available will continue to provide us with a more diverse and capable workforce. In addition, Nucor has a long history of conducting our businesses in a manner consistent with high standards of social responsibility. We have adopted a comprehensive Human Rights Policy, which operates in conjunction with many other Nucor policies related to ethical conduct and human rights, including our Standards of Business Conduct and Ethics, Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Professionals, Supplier Code of Conduct and Policy on Eliminating Forced Labor from our Supply Chain. We will continue to evaluate our approach and look for opportunities to improve, so that Nucor and its stockholders benefit to the greatest extent possible from our teammates.

Available Information

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

We use the investor relations portion of our website, www.nucor.com/investors, to distribute information, including as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We routinely post and make accessible financial and other information regarding the Company on our website. Accordingly, investors should monitor the investor relations portion of our website, in addition to our press releases, SEC filings and other public communications. Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on

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our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not a part of this report and is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation, a Delaware corporation incorporated in 1958, and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in its steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2019, we recycled approximately 17.8 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Segments, Principle Products Produced, and Markets and Marketing

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing 62% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2019.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

We are a leading domestic provider for most of the products we supply, and, in many cases (e.g., structural steel, merchant bar steel, steel joist and deck, pre-engineered metal buildings, steel piling and cold finish bar steel), we are the leading supplier.

Steel mills segment

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and engineered special bar quality [“SBQ”]). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”), continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. (“Duferdofin Nucor”), NuMit LLC (“NuMit”) and Nucor-JFE Steel Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (“Nucor-JFE”), as well as international trading and distribution companies that buy and sell steel manufactured by the Company and other steel producers.

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. The steel mills segment sold approximately 18,585,000 tons to outside customers in 2019.

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The following chart shows our outside steel shipments by end market:

In 2019, 80% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 20% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our tubular products, piling distributor, joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

• Bar mills - Nucor has 15 bar mills strategically located across the United States that manufacture a broad range of steel products, including concrete reinforcing bars, hot-rolled bars, rounds, light shapes, structural angles, channels, wire rod and highway products in carbon and alloy steels. Four of the bar mills have a significant focus on manufacturing SBQ and wire rod products. The newest mills in the group are our rebar micro mills in Sedalia, Missouri and Frostproof, Florida. The mill in Missouri will come online in early 2020, while the Florida mill is expected to come online in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Steel produced by our bar mills has a wide usage serving end markets, including the agricultural, automotive, construction, energy, furniture, machinery, metal building, railroad, recreational equipment, shipbuilding, heavy truck and trailer market segments. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of bar products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the bar mills is currently estimated at approximately 8,830,000 tons per year.

Reinforcing and merchant bar steel are sold in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. Our SBQ products are hot-rolled to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors.

• Sheet mills - Nucor operates five strategically located sheet mills that utilize thin slab casters to produce flat-rolled steel for automotive, appliance, construction, pipe and tube and many other industrial and consumer applications. Nucor also has Castrip® sheet production facilities in Crawfordsville, Indiana and Blytheville, Arkansas. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of flat-rolled products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the sheet mills is estimated at approximately 12,100,000 tons per year. All of our sheet mills are equipped with galvanizing lines and four of them are equipped with cold rolling mills for the further processing of hot-rolled sheet.

Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications while maintaining some inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. Contract sales within the steel mills segment are most notable in our sheet operations, as it is common for contract sales to account for the majority of sheet sales in a given year. We estimate that approximately 75% of our sheet steel sales in 2019 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use

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customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts are generally noncancellable agreements that incorporate monthly or quarterly price adjustments reflecting changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material cost, and typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months.

• Structural mills - Nucor operates two structural mills that produce wide-flange steel beams, pilings and heavy structural steel products for fabricators, construction companies, manufacturers and steel service centers. Nucor owns a 51% interest in Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (Limited Partnership) (“Nucor-Yamato”) located in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor-Yamato is the only North American producer of high-strength, low-alloy beams. Common applications for the high-strength, low-alloy beams include gravity columns for high-rise buildings, long span trusses for stadiums and convention centers, and for all projects where seismic design is a critical factor. Nucor also owns a steel beam mill in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of structural products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the two structural mills is estimated at approximately 3,250,000 tons per year. Both mills use a special continuous casting method that produces a beam blank closer in shape to that of the finished beam than traditional methods.

Structural steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Plate mills - Nucor operates three plate mills that produce plate for manufacturers of barges, bridges, heavy equipment, rail cars, refinery tanks, ships, wind towers and other items. Our products are further used in the pipe and tube, pressure vessel, transportation and construction industries. Considering Nucor’s production capabilities and the mix of plate products generally produced and marketed, the capacity of the plate mills is estimated at approximately 2,925,000 tons per year.

In January 2019, Nucor announced that it will build a state-of-the-art plate mill, to be located in Brandenburg, Kentucky. Nucor Steel Brandenburg will be located on the Ohio River and well placed to serve the U.S. midwest, which is the largest plate-consuming area in the United States. The new plate mill will enhance our ability to serve our customers and will produce cut-to-length, coiled, heat-treated and discrete plate in widths and thicknesses that are not currently offered by Nucor. With an expected investment of $1.70 billion, the mill is expected to have an annual capacity of approximately 1,200,000 tons and is expected to be completed in 2022.

Plate steel products come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders.

• Steel joint ventures - Nucor owns 50% interests in a North American sheet steel processing joint venture, an Italian steel mill joint venture and a galvanized sheet steel plant in Mexico.

Nucor owns a 50% economic and voting interest in NuMit, a company that owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), an operator of 26 strategically located sheet processing facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies transforms flat-rolled steel into products that meet the exact specifications for customers in a wide range of industries, including the automotive, agricultural and consumer goods markets.

Nucor owns 50% of the stock of Duferdofin Nucor, which operates a melt shop and bloom/billet caster in Brescia, Italy, with an annual capacity of approximately 1,000,000 metric tons, including the capability to produce high-quality, value-added, semi-finished SBQ products. Duferdofin Nucor announced plans to construct a new rolling mill in Brescia, Italy, which will be supplied by its existing nearby EAF. The new mill will be designed to produce beams and other rolled products. The plant will consume energy from renewable sources through a long-term Power Purchase Agreement. With the new plant, the entire Duferdofin Nucor production system will produce over 1,000,000 tons of rolled products.

Nucor owns 50% of Nucor-JFE, a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan that operates a galvanized sheet steel plant in central Mexico that will supply the country’s automotive market with an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons.

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Steel products segment

In the steel products segment, Nucor produces hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, electrical conduit, steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor. These products are sold primarily for use in nonresidential construction applications.

• Tubular Products – The Nucor Tubular Products (“NTP”) group has eight tubular facilities that are strategically located in close proximity to Nucor’s sheet mills as they are a consumer of hot-rolled coil. The NTP group produces HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing, piling, sprinkler pipe, heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit. HSS steel tubing, mechanical steel tubing and sprinkler pipe are used in structural and mechanical applications, including nonresidential construction, infrastructure, agricultural, automotive and construction equipment end-use markets. Heat-treated tubing and electrical conduit are primarily used to protect and route electrical wiring in various nonresidential structures such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, hotels, stadiums and shopping malls. Total annual NTP capacity is approximately 1,365,000 tons.

• Rebar fabrication - Harris Steel (“Harris”) fabricates, installs and distributes rebar for a wide variety of construction work classified as infrastructure (e.g., highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities and airports) and various building projects, including hospitals, schools, stadiums, commercial office building and multi-tenant residential construction. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis.

Reinforcing products are essential to concrete construction. They supply tensile strength, as well as additional compressive strength, and protect the concrete from cracking. In many markets, Harris sells reinforcing products on an installed basis (i.e., Harris fabricates the reinforcing products for a specific application and performs the installation). Harris operates nearly 70 fabrication facilities across the United States and Canada, with each facility serving a local market. Total annual rebar fabrication capacity is approximately 1,650,000 tons.

• Vulcraft/Verco – The Vulcraft/Verco group is the nation’s largest producer and leading innovator of open-web steel joists, joist girders and steel deck, which are used primarily for nonresidential building construction. Steel joists and joist girders are produced and marketed throughout the United States by seven domestic Vulcraft facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group’s steel decking is produced and marketed throughout the United States by nine domestic plants. Six of these plants are adjacent to Vulcraft joist facilities. The Vulcraft/Verco group also has two plants in Canada, one in Eastern Canada and one in Western Canada, that produce both joist and deck. The annual joist production capacity is approximately 745,000 tons and the annual deck production capacity is approximately 560,000 tons.

Sales of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are dependent on the nonresidential building construction market. The majority of steel joists, joist girders and steel decking are used extensively as part of the roof and floor structural support systems in manufacturing buildings, retail stores, shopping centers, warehouses, schools, hospitals and, to a lesser extent, in multi-story buildings and apartments. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not sell these finished steel products out of inventory. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are, in most cases, competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs.

• Piling products - Skyline Steel LLC and its subsidiaries (“Skyline”) are primarily a steel foundation distributor serving the North American market. Skyline distributes products to service marine construction, bridge and highway construction, heavy civil construction, storm protection, underground commercial parking and environmental containment projects in the infrastructure and construction industries. Skyline also manufactures a complete line of geostructural foundation solutions, including threaded bar, micropile, strand anchors and hollow bar. It also

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processes and fabricates spiral weld pipe piling, rolled and welded pipe piling, cold-formed sheet piling and threaded bar.

• Cold finish - Nucor Cold Finish (“NCF”) is the largest and most diversified producer of cold finished bar products for a wide range of industrial markets in North America, with assets in Canada, Mexico and throughout the United States. The total capacity of the Nucor cold finished bar and wire facilities now exceeds approximately 1,065,000 tons per year.

Nucor’s cold finished facilities are among the most modern in the world, producing cold finished bars for the most demanding applications. NCF obtains most of its steel from the Nucor bar mills, ensuring consistent quality and supply through all market conditions. These facilities produce cold-drawn, turned, ground and polished steel bars that are used extensively for shafting and other precision machined applications. NCF produces rounds, hexagons, flats and squares in carbon, alloy and leaded steels. These bars are purchased by the appliance, automotive, construction equipment, electric motor, farm machinery and fluid power industries, as well as by service centers. NCF bars are used in tens of thousands of products. A few examples include anchor bolts, hydraulic cylinders and shafting for air conditioner compressors, ceiling fan motors, garage door openers, electric motors and lawn mowers.

In late 2018, Nucor acquired a fully integrated precision castings company, Corporacion POK, S.A. de C.V. (“POK”), with a facility in Guadalajara, Mexico. POK produces complex castings and precision machined products used by the oil and gas, mining and sugar processing industries. POK produces a wide array of precision castings using steel, bronze, iron and specialty exotic alloys. POK complements NCF’s businesses and Nucor’s cold finish facility in Monterrey.

• Buildings group – Nucor produces metal buildings and components throughout the United States under the following brands: Nucor Building Systems, American Buildings Company, Kirby Building Systems and CBC Steel Buildings. In total, the Nucor Buildings Group currently has nine metal buildings plants with an annual capacity of approximately 360,000 tons, as well as an insulated metal panels company in Laurens, South Carolina which are utilized in metal buildings made by the Nucor Buildings Group as well as other applications.

The sizes of the buildings that can be produced range from less than 1,000 square feet to more than 1,000,000 square feet. Complete metal building packages can be customized and combined with other materials such as glass, wood and masonry to produce cost-effective, energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing buildings designed to the customers’ special requirements. The buildings are sold primarily through independent builder distribution networks in order to provide fast-track, customized solutions for building owners. The primary markets served are commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, including distribution centers, data centers, automobile dealerships, retail centers, schools and manufacturing facilities.

• Steel mesh, grating and fasteners - Nucor manufactures wire products, grating and industrial fasteners.

Nucor produces mesh at Nucor Steel Connecticut, Inc. and Nucor Wire Products Utah. Nucor also produces mesh in Canada at the Harris operations of Laurel and Laurel-LEC. The combined annual production capacity of the steel mesh facilities is approximately 128,000 tons.

Our grating business, which operates under the brand names Nucor Grating in the United States and Fisher & Ludlow in Canada, manufactures and fabricates steel and aluminum bar grating products at facilities located in North America. Nucor Grating and Fisher & Ludlow serve the new construction and maintenance-related markets. The annual production capacity for our grating business is approximately 120,000 tons.

Nucor Fastener’s bolt-making facility in Indiana produces carbon and alloy steel hex head cap screws, hex bolts, structural bolts, nuts and washers, finished hex nuts and custom-engineered fasteners. Nucor fasteners are used in a broad range of markets, including demanding automotive, machine tool, farm implement, construction and military applications. The annual production capacity of this facility is approximately 75,000 tons.

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Raw materials segment

In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas drilling operations. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to metallics supply.

• Scrap recycling and brokerage operations - DJJ operates six regional scrap recycling companies across the United States that together have shredders capable of processing approximately 5,000,000 tons of ferrous scrap annually. DJJ’s scrap recycling operations use industry-leading expertise and technology to maximize metal recovery and minimize waste. DJJ also operates 11 self-serve used auto parts stores called U Pull-&-Pay that complement its recycling operations.

DJJ is the leading broker of ferrous scrap in North America and is a global trader of scrap metal, pig iron and other metallics. In addition to sourcing steel scrap for Nucor’s mills, DJJ is a global trader of ferro-alloys and nonferrous metals. DJJ’s logistics team owns and operates one of the largest independent fleets of railcars in the United States dedicated to the movement of scrap and steel and also offers railcar leasing and railcar fleet management services. These activities have strategic value to Nucor as the leading and most diversified North American steel producer.

Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills, and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2019, approximately 10% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitute tons we processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

• Direct reduced iron operations - DRI is a substitute material for high-quality grades of scrap and pig iron. Nucor operates two DRI plants with a combined annual capacity of approximately 4,500,000 metric tons of material with world-class metallization rates and carbon content. Nucor’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Nu-Iron Unlimited, is in Trinidad and benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for inbound iron ore and shipment of DRI to the United States. Nucor’s second DRI plant in Louisiana (“Nucor Steel Louisiana”) also benefits from favorable logistics and proximity to its steel mill customers.

Nucor’s DRI production capabilities provide our steel mills flexibility to quickly adjust the metallic mix to changing market conditions and to maintain competitiveness in the sometimes-volatile scrap market. With the potential for high-quality scrap becoming scarcer, coupled with the risk of third-party supplier disruptions, Nucor’s DRI facilities provide a greater degree of certainty over its metallics supply.

In early 2018, teammates at our Nucor Steel Louisiana facility began implementation of a three-pronged strategy to increase the plant's reliability and uptime called Project 8000. The plan focuses on achieving improvements in people, process and equipment. The Louisiana DRI facility established new annual records for plant uptime, production and shipments in 2018 as improvements related to people and processes were implemented. In 2019, the critical work of replacing the convection section of our process gas heater as well as relining the reactor refractory was completed during a planned 70-day outage that began in early-September and ended in mid-November. Despite this outage, 2019 was the second-best year for uptime and output at Nucor Steel Louisiana, since its startup in 2013. We expect these projects will further improve the plant’s reliability.

• Natural gas drilling programs - Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties in the Piceance Basin in the Western Slope of Colorado.

Nucor’s access to a long-term, low-cost supply of natural gas is an important component in the execution of Nucor’s raw material strategy. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations

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is being sold to third parties to offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana and our steel mills in the United States.

Customers

A significant portion of our steel mills and steel products segments’ sales are into the commercial, industrial and municipal construction markets. Our largest single customer in 2019 represented approximately 5% of sales and consistently pays within terms. Our steel mills use a significant portion of the products of the raw materials segment.

General Development of Our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and provide additional channels to market for our products. These investments totaled approximately $3.68 billion over the last three years, with approximately 80% going to capital expenditures and the remaining going to acquisitions. We believe that our focus on lowering costs and diversifying our operations will enable us to execute on our strategy of delivering profitable long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater proportion of value-added products and increasing end-use market diversity will make us less susceptible to imports.

New capital projects that align with our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies were completed in 2019. At our sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky, Nucor’s approximately $200 million investment in a new hot band galvanizing and pickling line ramped up production in late 2019 and is shipping products to customers. We believe the new galvanizing line is the widest hot-rolled galvanizing line in North America with its 72-inch product, creating synergies with Nucor’s other sheet mills and allowing us to enter new automotive market segments. Our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility built an additional specialty cold mill for approximately $245 million that began start up in 2019. That cold mill facility expands our ability to produce advanced, high-strength low-alloy steel and motor lamination steel products.

We have several growth initiatives underway in our bar mill group that will enhance our position as a low-cost producer of bar. Nucor’s rebar micro mill near Kansas City in Sedalia, Missouri is capable of producing approximately 380,000 tons annually and was completed at a cost of approximately $245 million. We believe that positioning the micro mill near the Kansas City market will provide us with a freight cost advantage relative to more distant suppliers, and we will also benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by our existing DJJ operations. The new mill went into startup in early 2020. Nucor Steel Kankakee, Inc. is building a full-range merchant bar quality mill with approximately 500,000 tons of annual capacity at our existing mill in Bourbonnais, Illinois at an estimated cost of $185 million. Like the new micro mill, we believe that the Kankakee mill will also benefit from logistical advantages and low-cost scrap supply. We expect this project to begin startup in the second quarter of 2020. In March 2018, Nucor announced that it would build a second rebar micro mill capable of producing approximately 380,000 tons annually in Frostproof, Florida. Similar to the mill in Sedalia, Missouri, we believe this new micro mill will benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by our existing DJJ operations as well as strong regional demand for its products. This approximately $240 million investment is expected to be operational in the second half of 2020.

In May 2018, Nucor announced an approximately $275 million investment to construct a new 3rd generation flexible galvanizing line with an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons at our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility. This project complements the previously mentioned specialty cold mill recently started up at the facility and we believe it will accelerate our goal of increasing our automotive market share. The new galvanizing line is expected to be operational in mid-2021. In September 2018, Nucor announced an approximately $650 million investment to modernize and expand the production capability at its Gallatin flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. This investment will increase the production capability from approximately 1,600,000 tons to approximately 3,000,000 tons annually and will increase the maximum coil width to approximately 73 inches. This expansion is expected to be completed in mid-2021 and complements the previously mentioned hot band galvanizing and pickling line that recently

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started up at Gallatin. In January 2019, Nucor announced plans to build a state-of-the-art plate mill, which will be based in Brandenburg, Kentucky on the Ohio river. With an expected investment of $1.70 billion, we expect the mill to be completed in late 2022 and to be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products.

Nucor’s steel products segment has also grown significantly in recent years through the acquisitions of the companies that make up our NTP group. NTP consists of the former Independence Tube Corporation (acquired in October 2016), Southland Tube, Inc. (acquired in January 2017), Republic Conduit (acquired in January 2017), and the assets of Century Tube, LLC (acquired in December 2018). The combined purchase price of these acquisitions was approximately $898 million. NTP is optimizing the teams and assets of the eight strategically located facilities to create leadership positions in the following markets: HSS steel tubing, piling, sprinkler pipe, steel electrical conduit, and mechanical tube for the automotive market. The NTP group provides Nucor with a line of value-added products to offer our customers and a significant channel to market as the businesses are consumers of Nucor’s hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel.

In addition to growing through capital expansions at our existing operations and acquisitions, Nucor also uses joint ventures as a platform for growth. Nucor-JFE, our joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan, in which Nucor has 50% ownership, is expected to start up in the first quarter of 2020. Located in central Mexico, Nucor-JFE will supply galvanized sheet steel to the growing Mexican automotive market. The facility's construction has faced some unanticipated challenges, including: more difficult soil conditions requiring incremental piling and insufficient electrical system infrastructure. These events increased the total capital budget from our initial estimate of $270 million to approximately $360 million, with Nucor's share of these amounts being 50%. Nucor’s sheet mills are expected to provide approximately half of the hot-rolled steel substrate that will be consumed by the joint venture.

Capital Allocation Strategy

The significant developments in Nucor’s business in recent years have been driven by our capital allocation strategy. Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, greenfield expansions and acquisitions.

Our second priority is to return capital to our stockholders through cash dividends and share repurchases. Nucor has paid $1.46 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 23% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period. The Company repurchased $298.5 million of its common stock in 2019 ($854.0 million in 2018 and $90.3 million in 2017).

We intend to return at least 40% of our net income to stockholders over time via a combination of both cash dividends and share repurchases. Over the past three years we have returned approximately 55% of our net income in this manner.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

In our steel mills segment, our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including domestic integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other domestic EAF steel mills, steel imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating

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costs. EAF based steel producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers.

Excess global steelmaking capacity, particularly in non-market economies, continues to be a significant challenge for Nucor and the entire U.S. steel industry. Steel production in China rose from approximately 1.02 billion tons in 2018 to approximately 1.10 billion tons in 2019 – an increase of 8%. As a result, China’s share of global crude steel production rose from 51.3% in 2018 to 53.3% in 2019. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the “OECD”) estimates that excess global steel production capacity was approximately 485 million tons through the first half of 2019, up from 455 million tons at the end of 2018. Nearly a quarter of that excess capacity is located in China, where the largest steel companies are state-owned and receive significant financial support from the Chinese government.

The Section 232 steel tariffs implemented by the current administration in 2018 are having their intended impact by preventing the dumping of steel products in the U.S. market. In addition, successful industry trade cases over the past several years have had an impact on import levels. For the full year 2019, imports of finished steel were down approximately 18% from the previous year and accounted for approximately 19% of U.S. market share. The last time steel import levels were this low was in 2010. Approximately six million fewer tons of imports entered the United States in 2019 than in 2018. The comprehensive nature of the Section 232 tariffs is also preventing the transshipment of artificially low-priced steel through third party countries.

The new United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement was passed by the U.S. House and Senate and signed by President Trump in January 2020. The agreement has several provisions that will benefit the steel industry, including requiring that higher levels of a vehicle’s content, including steel, be produced in North America for a vehicle to qualify for zero tariffs, and that 70% of the steel used in vehicles be melted and poured in North America. There are also provisions addressing currency manipulation and state-owned enterprises.

The United States also reached a phase-one trade agreement with China in January 2020, which includes enforceable commitments from China to refrain from currency devaluation for competitive purposes. Negotiations with China continue in order to address China’s use of subsidies and state-owned enterprises which contribute to its persistent steel production overcapacity.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives can become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.68 billion and $2.08 billion at December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $2.24 billion and $2.26 billion at December 31, 2019 and 2018, respectively. The majority of these orders are expected to be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

An ample supply of high-quality scrap and scrap substitutes is critical to support Nucor’s ability to produce high-quality steel. Nucor’s raw materials segment safely produces, sources, trades and

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transports steelmaking raw materials. Nucor’s raw materials investments are focused on creating an advantage for its steelmaking operations, through a global information network and a multi-pronged and flexible approach to metallics supply.

Scrap and scrap substitutes are the most significant element in the total cost of steel production. The average cost of scrap and scrap substitutes used in our steel mills segment decreased 13% from $361 per gross ton used in 2018 to $314 per gross ton used in 2019. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce one ton of steel. Depending on the market conditions at the time, a raw material surcharge or variable steel pricing mechanism may be implemented to assist Nucor in maintaining operating margins and in meeting our customer commitments during periods of rapidly changing scrap and scrap substitute costs.

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil. Continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, as well as in the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, gives us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus helps us mitigate the risk of significant fluctuations in the availability and costs of critical inputs.

DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective annual production capacities of approximately 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. Another major source of raw materials used in the production of steel is pig iron. We received over 2.5 million gross tons of pig iron in 2019. As with scrap and iron ore, we source pig iron from a large number of international suppliers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas, which are significant costs to Nucor. Access to long-term, low cost sources of energy in various forms is critically important to our continued success. Because of the efficiency of Nucor steel mills, we believe we are able to reduce our energy costs relative to other steel producers.

Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges, as well as our natural gas drilling operations. In addition to the currently producing wells in the Piceance Basin, Nucor owns leasehold interests in natural gas properties totaling approximately 54,000 acres in the South Piceance Basin, in the Western Slope of Colorado. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on these properties, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with existing third-party gathering and processing service providers. Natural gas produced by Nucor’s drilling operations is being sold to third parties to offset our exposure to changes in the price of natural gas consumed by our DRI plant in Louisiana, and by our steel mills in the United States. The determination of whether or not to participate in all future drilling capital investments by one working interest owner is independent of the other working interest owner. As such, Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments.

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Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefited from relatively stable and competitive energy costs. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today by many factors, including fuel switching (coal to natural gas by public utilities), changes in supply and demand, and pipeline and export infrastructure expansion. Because energy is such a significant cost for Nucor, we strive to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee, as well as management, responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. Many of our facilities have incorporated energy efficiency targets to reduce both cost and environmental impacts into their environmental management systems. These environmental management systems help facilitate compliance with our environmental commitment, which is every Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of ongoing training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”) that regulates water discharges and withdrawals; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”) that governs releases of hazardous substances, and remediation of sites contaminated thereby. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

As the leading recycler in North America and often one of the largest employers in the communities where we operate, we take considerable interest and pride in our environmental track record. We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

The RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. The RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These activities and off-site properties that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”) has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under the RCRA, we believe these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor regularly evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the

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operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor believes that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (“EAF dust”) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both the CERCLA and the RCRA.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2020 and 2021 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and to innovate. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have slightly more than 100 employees in our principal executive offices. The vast majority of Nucor’s approximately 26,800 employees as of December 31, 2019 are not represented by labor unions.

Nucor places the highest value on our teammates’ well-being and safety. Our foremost responsibility is to work safely, which requires our teammates to identify unsafe conditions and activities and mitigate these hazards. In 2019, we achieved our best safety performance in the key metrics we measure, including Injury/Illness Rate and Days Away, Restricted and Transfer (DART) Case Rate. We will continue to eliminate exposures that can lead to injury and encourage our teammates to share their ideas for safety improvement.

The operations in our mills are highly automated, resulting in lower employment costs. Employee turnover in Nucor mills is extremely low. Nucor employees have a significant part of their compensation based on their productivity. Production employees work under group incentives that provide increased earnings for increased production. This additional incentive compensation is paid weekly. Additionally, because we use EAFs to produce our steel, we can easily vary our production levels to match short-term changes in demand, unlike our integrated competitors. Taking advantage of this highly variable, low-cost structure has enabled Nucor to better control our costs during weaker market conditions.

Available Information

Nucor’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, as well as proxy statements and other information, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these documents electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Except as otherwise expressly stated in these documents, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in its steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2018, we recycled approximately 19.9 million gross tons of scrap steel.

Capital Allocation Strategy

The significant developments in Nucor’s business in recent years have aligned with our capital allocation strategy. Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, acquisitions and greenfield expansions.

Our second priority is to provide our stockholders with cash dividends that are consistent with our success in delivering long-term earnings growth. Nucor has paid $1.45 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 28% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period.

Our third priority is to opportunistically repurchase shares of our common stock when our cash position is strong compared to growth investment opportunities. In September 2018, Nucor’s Board of Directors approved a share repurchase program under which the Company is authorized to repurchase up to $2.0 billion of its common stock. The Board of Directors also terminated any previously authorized repurchase programs. The Company repurchased $854.0 million of its common stock in 2018 ($90.3 million in 2017 and $5.2 million in 2016). As of December 31, 2018, approximately $1.5 billion remained available for share repurchases under the program.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and provide additional channels to market for our products. These investments total approximately $3.17 billion over the last three years, with approximately two-thirds going to capital expenditures and approximately one-third going to acquisitions. We believe that our focus on lowering costs will enable us to execute on our strategy of delivering profitable long-term growth. Further, we believe shifting our product mix to a greater portion of value-added products and increasing end-user market diversity will make us less susceptible to imports.

Several new capital projects that align with our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies are expected to be completed in 2019. At our sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky, Nucor’s approximately $176 million investment in a new hot band galvanizing and pickling line is expected to be operational in the first half of 2019. We believe the new galvanizing line will be the widest hot-rolled galvanizing line in North America with its 72-inch product, creating synergies with Nucor’s other sheet mills and allowing us to enter new automotive market segments. Our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility is building an additional specialty cold mill at an estimated cost of $230 million that is expected to be operational in the first half of 2019. That cold mill facility will expand our ability to produce advanced, high-strength low-alloy and motor lamination steel products.

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We have several growth initiatives underway in our bar mill group with expected completion dates in 2019 that will capitalize on our position as a low-cost producer of bar. Nucor is building a rebar micro mill capable of producing approximately 350,000 tons annually near Kansas City in Sedalia, Missouri at an estimated cost of $250 million. We believe that positioning the micro mill near the Kansas City market will provide us with a freight cost advantage relative to more distant suppliers, and we will also benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by our existing DJJ operations. We expect startup of the new mill in late 2019. Nucor Steel Kankakee, Inc. is building a full-range merchant bar quality mill with approximately 500,000 tons of annual capacity at our existing mill in Bourbonnais, Illinois at an estimated cost of $180 million. Like the new micro mill, we believe that the Kankakee mill will also benefit from logistical advantages and low-cost scrap supply. We expect this project to be completed in late 2019. Nucor is also updating the rolling mill at Nucor Steel Marion, Inc. The approximately $85 million modernization project is expected to be completed in mid-2019 and will allow us to reduce the mill’s operating costs and better serve customers in Ohio and the surrounding states.

Additionally, Nucor has recently announced several major investments that are also in the steel mills segment. In March 2018, Nucor announced that it will build a second rebar micro mill capable of producing approximately 350,000 tons annually in Frostproof, Florida. Similar to the mill under construction in Sedalia, Missouri, we believe this new micro mill will benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by our existing DJJ operations. This approximately $240 million investment is expected to be operational in the first half of 2020. In May 2018, Nucor announced an approximately $240 million investment to construct a new galvanizing line with an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons at our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility. This project complements the previously mentioned specialty cold mill project currently underway at the facility and we believe it will accelerate our goal of increasing our automotive market share. The new galvanizing line is expected to be operational in the first half of 2021. In September 2018, Nucor announced an approximately $650 million investment to expand the production capability at its flat-rolled sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky. This investment will increase the production capability from approximately 1,600,000 tons to approximately 3,000,000 tons annually and will increase the maximum coil width to approximately 73 inches. This expansion is expected to be completed in mid-2021 and complements the previously mentioned hot band galvanizing and pickling line that is currently under construction as part of our initiative to further grow our sheet business. Most recently, in January 2019, Nucor announced plans to build a state-of-the-art plate mill in the U.S. Midwest with an expected investment of $1.35 billion. We expect the mill to be completed in 2022 and to be capable of producing approximately 1,200,000 tons per year of steel plate products.

Nucor’s steel products segment has also grown significantly in recent years through the acquisitions of the companies that make up our Nucor Tubular Products group. Nucor Tubular Products consists of the Independence Tube Corporation (acquired in October 2016), Southland Tube, Inc. (acquired in January 2017), Republic Conduit (acquired in January 2017), and the assets of Century Tube, LLC (acquired in December 2018). The combined purchase price of these acquisitions was approximately $898 million. Nucor Tubular Products is optimizing the teams and assets of the eight strategically located facilities to create leadership positions in the following markets: hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing, piling, sprinkler pipe, steel electrical conduit, and mechanical tube for the automotive market. The group has been well received in all markets as demonstrated by growth in revenue and volume shipped. The Nucor Tubular Products group provides Nucor with a new line of value-added products to offer our customers and a value-added channel to market as the businesses are consumers of Nucor’s hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel.

The steel products segment has also experienced recent growth as well through the September 2017 acquisition of St. Louis Cold Drawn, Inc. (“St. Louis”) for approximately $60 million. With a manufacturing location in St. Louis, Missouri and another location in Monterrey, Mexico, St. Louis is able to manufacture approximately 200,000 tons annually of cold drawn rounds, hexagons, squares and special sections to serve the U.S. and Mexican automotive and industrial markets. The St. Louis acquisition also provides an additional channel to market for the special bar quality (“SBQ”) products that we produce at some of our bar mills. Also within our steel products segment, we have recently acquired the assets of several businesses that will expand our

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bar grating presence in the United States and provide us with joist and deck production capabilities in Eastern and Western Canada to better serve our customers in the Canadian markets.

In addition to growing through capital expansions at our existing operations and acquisitions, Nucor also uses joint ventures as a platform for growth. In 2016, we announced the formation of a joint venture (Nucor-JFE) with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan in which Nucor will have 50% ownership in a plant that is being built in central Mexico to supply galvanized sheet steel to the growing Mexican automotive market. The plant, which is expected to be operational in the second half of 2019, will have a total cost of approximately $300 million (50% of which provided by Nucor) and will have an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons. Nucor’s sheet mills are expected to provide approximately half of the hot-rolled steel substrate that will be consumed by the joint venture.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing approximately 65% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2018.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”), continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l., NuMit LLC and Nucor-JFE, as well as Nucor’s steel trading businesses and rebar distribution businesses. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces HSS steel tubing, electrical conduit, steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. The steel products segment also includes our piling distributor. In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas drilling operations.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico. Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that approximately 75% of our sheet steel sales in 2018 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material costs at or near the time of shipment. These sheet sales contracts typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. The significant majority of our plate, structural, rebar, merchant bar and SBQ steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

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In 2018, approximately 80% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 20% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our tubular products, piling distributor, joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

One of Nucor’s strategies for growth is expanding the channels by which our steel mills’ products can reach end-use customers. The percentage of shipments consumed internally increased from 16% in 2016 to 20% in 2018 due to some of the recent investments in our downstream business, such as the tubular products plants and St. Louis that consume steel produced by our steel mills.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys and provide transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are EAF steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2018, approximately 10% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment are our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana that produce high quality iron inputs able to be used in our steel mills’ melting process and our natural gas production operations. All natural gas produced by the drilling operations is and will be sold to outside parties.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our EAF steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other EAF steel mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. EAF steel mill producers, such as Nucor, are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers.

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Excess global steelmaking capacity, particularly in non-market economies, continues to be a significant challenge for Nucor and the entire U.S. steel industry. Steel production in China rose in 2018, going from approximately 960 million tons in 2017 to approximately 1.02 billion tons in 2018 – an increase of 6.6%. China’s share of global crude steel production rose from 50.3% in 2017 to 51.3% in 2018. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that global excess steel production capacity was approximately 600 million tons at the end of 2017, a drop from its peak levels in 2015 and 2016. Nearly half of that excess capacity is located in China, where the largest steel companies are state-owned and receive significant financial support from the Chinese government.

The Section 232 steel tariffs are having their intended impact by preventing the dumping of steel products in the U.S. market. For the full year 2018, steel imports were down more than 10% from the previous year and imports accounted for approximately 23% of U.S. market share. About 4.1 million fewer tons of imports entered the United States in 2018. Ninety percent of the decrease in imports took place after the tariffs were fully implemented on June 1, 2018. The strong economy and lower imports generated 5 to 6 million tons in increased production for the U.S. steel industry this year. The comprehensive nature of the Section 232 tariffs are also preventing the transshipment of artificially low-cost steel through third party countries.

The U.S. government is negotiating with several other countries to change the terms of our trading relationship with them. Agreements have been reached with Brazil, Argentina and South Korea which exempted these countries from the steel tariffs in exchange for quotas limiting their exports of steel to the United States. The United States also reached a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico – the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement – though the steel tariffs still apply to those two countries. Trade negotiations are ongoing with China, the E.U. and Japan. These negotiations, particularly with China, provide an opportunity to address the structural issues that encourage excess steel capacity, which we believe would create a sustainable level playing field. International efforts to address overcapacity, namely the G-20 Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity, also continue. Failure to curb production overcapacity, particularly if the Section 232 tariffs are lifted in the future, would risk the resumption of steel dumping in the U.S. market by foreign competitors.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $2.08 billion and $1.62 billion at December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $2.26 billion and $1.83 billion at December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international

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raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw material costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil. Continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, coupled with the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, give us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus help us mitigate the risk of significant price fluctuations in input costs.

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes, such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. DJJ operates six regional scrap companies within the United States that have a combined annual scrap processing capability of approximately 5,000,000 tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective capacities of approximately 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

In October 2016, Nucor concluded several transactions to improve its access to a long-term supply of natural gas. Nucor purchased 49% of Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc.’s (“Encana”) leasehold interest covering approximately 54,000 acres in the South Piceance Basin. The determination of whether or not to participate and invest in all future drilling capital investment by one working interest owner is independent of the other working interest owners. As such, Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments. Nucor retains all existing producing wells it currently owns. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on the approximately 54,000 acres, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with existing third-party gathering and processing service providers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap and other metallic inputs such as iron ore are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas drilling operations.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefited from relatively stable and competitive energy costs. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today by many factors, including fuel switching (coal to natural gas by public utilities), changes in supply and demand, and pipeline and export infrastructure expansion. Because energy is such a significant cost for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act that regulates air

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emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”) that regulates water discharges and withdrawals; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of, sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations.

Nucor uses EAFs to recycle scrap metal and scrap substitutes into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the Trump administration revisits any number of recently implemented environmental regulations, such as greenhouse gas (“GHG”) regulations, air toxics rules and emissions standards imposed on coal-fired electric utilities, it is reasonable to assume that any cost implications would be delayed until those reviews are complete.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

The RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. The RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These activities and off-site properties that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”) has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under the RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both the CERCLA and the RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee, as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as

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reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. Many of our facilities have incorporated energy efficiency targets to reduce both cost and environmental impacts into their environmental management systems. These environmental management systems help facilitate compliance with our environmental commitment, which is every Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of ongoing training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2019 and 2020 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and to innovate. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have slightly more than 100 employees in our principal executive offices. The vast majority of Nucor’s approximately 26,300 employees as of December 31, 2018 are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this report or any other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in its steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America. The Company’s operations include international trading and sales companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2017, we recycled approximately 18.8 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

The significant developments in Nucor’s business in recent years have aligned with our capital allocation strategy. Our highest capital allocation priority is to invest in our business for profitable long-term growth through our multi-pronged strategy of optimizing existing operations, acquisitions and greenfield expansions. Our second priority is to provide our stockholders with cash dividends that are consistent with our success in delivering long-term earnings growth. Our third priority is to opportunistically repurchase shares of our common stock when our cash position is strong and attractively priced growth opportunities are limited.

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and provide additional channels to market for our products. These investments total $2.53 billion over the last three years, with approximately two-thirds going to capital expenditures and approximately one-third going to acquisitions. We believe that our focus on lowering cost will enable us to execute on our strategy of delivering profitable long-term growth. Shifting our product mix to a greater portion of value-added products and increasing end-user market diversity will make us less susceptible to imports.

The following recently completed projects to optimize operations at existing facilities within our steel mills segment illustrate Nucor’s execution on the value-added product expansion and cost improvement aspects of our strategy. The final components of Nucor’s $290 million project at our South Carolina, Nebraska and Tennessee bar mills were completed in 2015 to expand our special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod production capabilities by approximately 1,000,000 tons. These SBQ projects allow us to produce engineered bar for more demanding applications that are less exposed to imports while maintaining our position as a low-cost commodity bar producer by shifting production of rebar to our other bar mills. Additionally, our Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (“Nucor-Yamato”) joint venture recently completed two major capital projects to broaden its product offerings. Nucor-Yamato completed a $115 million project in late 2014 to add several additional sheet piling sections which are wider, lighter and stronger, covering more area at a lower installed cost. The joint venture also began shipping structural steel from its $75 million quench and self-tempering line in late 2016, which makes that mill the sole North American producer of certain high-strength, low-alloy structural sections.

Nucor also recently announced several new capital projects with 2019 targeted completion dates which align with our expansion of value-added product offerings and cost-reduction strategies. Our Nucor Steel Arkansas facility is building an additional cold mill at an estimated cost of $230 million. That cold mill facility will expand our ability to produce advanced, high-strength low-alloy and motor lamination steel products. At our sheet mill located in Ghent, Kentucky, which we acquired in 2014, Nucor recently announced plans to expand the 1,600,000 tons-per-year mill by building a hot band galvanizing line for approximately $176 million. We believe

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the new galvanizing line will be the widest hot-rolled galvanizing line in North America with its 72-inch product, allowing us to enter new automotive market segments. Nucor has also recently announced several major investments within our bar mill group which will capitalize on our position as a low-cost producer of bar. Nucor will build a 350,000 tons-per-year rebar micro mill near Kansas City in Sedalia, Missouri at an estimated cost of $250 million. We believe that positioning the micro mill near the Kansas City market will provide us with a freight cost advantage relative to more distant suppliers, and we will also benefit from the scrap supply in the immediate area provided by our existing DJJ operations. The second bar mill growth initiative is Nucor Steel Kankakee, Inc.’s plan to build a $180 million full range merchant bar mill with 500,000 tons of annual capacity at our existing mill in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Like the new micro mill, we believe that the Kankakee mill will also benefit from logistical advantages and low-cost scrap supply. Finally, Nucor has begun construction on an $85 million modernization project at our Marion, Ohio bar mill which will allow us to reduce our operating costs.

Nucor’s steel mills segment has also grown significantly in recent years through the acquisitions of a plate mill in Longview, Texas (“Longview”), Independence Tube Corporation (“Independence Tube”), Southland Tube, Inc. (“Southland”) and Republic Conduit (“Republic”). Acquired during the third quarter of 2016 for approximately $29 million, Longview is able to produce approximately 125,000 tons annually of higher value-added carbon and alloy plate products that can range from 1 to 12 inches thick and up to 138 inches wide. We completed the acquisition of Independence Tube during the fourth quarter of 2016 for approximately $430 million, and we completed the acquisition of Southland in January 2017 for approximately $130 million. From their five facilities in Alabama and Illinois, Independence Tube and Southland are able to produce over 800,000 tons annually of hollow structural section (“HSS”) steel tubing used primarily in nonresidential construction markets. In January 2017, Nucor also completed the acquisition of Republic, a steel electrical conduit manufacturer with plants in Georgia and Kentucky, for approximately $332 million. These three pipe and tube businesses provide Nucor with a new line of value-added products to offer our customers, and they provide a value-added channel to market as the businesses are consumers of Nucor’s hot-rolled sheet steel.

The steel products segment has experienced recent growth as well through the September 2017 acquisition of St. Louis Cold Drawn, Inc. (“St. Louis”) for approximately $60 million. With a manufacturing location in St. Louis, Missouri and another location in Monterrey, Mexico, St. Louis is able to manufacture approximately 200,000 tons annually of cold drawn rounds, hexagons, squares and special sections to serve the U.S. and Mexican automotive and industrial markets. The St. Louis acquisition also provides an additional channel to market for the SBQ products that we produce at some of our bar mills. Also within our steel products segment, we have recently acquired the assets of several businesses that will expand our bar grating presence in the United States and provide us with joist and deck production capabilities in Eastern and Western Canada to better serve our customers in Canadian markets.

In addition to growing through capital expansions at existing operations and acquisitions, Nucor also uses joint ventures as a platform for growth. In 2016, we announced the formation of a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan in which Nucor will have 50% ownership in a plant that is being built in central Mexico to supply galvanized sheet steel to the growing Mexican automotive market. The plant, which is expected to be operational in the second half of 2019, will cost approximately $270 million and will have an annual capacity of approximately 400,000 tons. Nucor’s sheet mills are expected to provide approximately half of the hot-rolled steel substrate that will be consumed by the joint venture.

Nucor’s second capital allocation priority is to provide our stockholders with cash dividends that are consistent with our success in delivering long-term earnings growth. Nucor has paid $1.45 billion in dividends to its stockholders during the past three years. That dividend payout represents 29% of cash flows from operations during that three-year period.

Our third priority is to opportunistically repurchase shares of our common stock. In 2015, Nucor’s Board of Directors approved a share repurchase program under which the Company is authorized to repurchase up to $900.0 million of shares of its common stock. The Company repurchased $90.3 million shares of its common

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stock in 2017, $5.2 million in 2016 and $66.5 million in 2015. As of December 31, 2017, approximately $738.0 million remained available for repurchase under the program.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings (loss) before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2017 are set forth in Note 22 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2017 Annual Report to Stockholders, which is incorporated by reference. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing approximately 72% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the year ended December 31, 2017.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), HSS steel tubing, electrical conduit, plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and special bar quality). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. (“Duferdofin Nucor”) and NuMit LLC (“NuMit”), as well as Nucor’s steel trading businesses and rebar distribution businesses. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, Nucor produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas drilling operations.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that approximately 65% of our sheet steel sales in 2017 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material costs near the time of shipment. These sheet sales contracts typically have terms ranging from six to 12 months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our tubular, plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our tubular, plate, structural, rebar, merchant bar and SBQ steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2017, approximately 83% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 17% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our tubular products mills, our piling distributor and our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

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One of Nucor’s strategies for growth is expanding the channels by which our steel mills’ products can reach end-user customers. The percentage of shipments consumed internally has increased from 14% in 2016 due to some of the recent investments in our business, such as the tubular products plants and St. Louis that consume steel produced by our steel mills.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys and provide transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2017, approximately 10% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We consumed the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment are our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana that produce high quality iron inputs able to be used in our steel mills’ melting process, as well as our natural gas production operations. All natural gas produced by the drilling operations is and will be sold to outside parties.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric arc furnace steel mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large domestic integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric arc furnace steel mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with large integrated steel producers.

Excess global steelmaking capacity, particularly in non-market economies, continues to be a significant challenge for Nucor and the entire U.S. steel industry. With the U.S. economy performing better than most other

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economies around the world and a strong U.S. dollar, the U.S. steel market is the destination of choice for global steel producers. In 2017, total steel imports increased by more than 15% compared to 2016. Finished imports last year captured an estimated 27% market share. As a result, the domestic steel industry has continued to aggressively pursue trade cases to curb unfairly traded imports.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. China, which accounts for almost half of the steel produced annually in the world, is the prime example of how some foreign governments impact the global steel market. Nucor believes that Chinese producers, many of which are government-owned in whole or in part, benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allow them to sell their products below cost. Other foreign governments utilize similar tactics to artificially lower their steel production costs. These distorting trade practices are widely recognized as being unfair and have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Commerce made favorable rulings in trade cases involving steel plate, rebar and wire rod.

Efforts by foreign companies to evade duties by routing products through third-party countries is also a challenge. Artificially-priced imports and duty evasion schemes make it very difficult for Nucor to maintain sales prices and profit levels. As a result, Nucor joined three other steelmakers in filing a petition alleging China is circumventing coated steel sheet duties by shipping product through Vietnam. At the end of the year, U.S. steel producers also received a favorable ruling in this case when the U.S. Department of Commerce made a preliminary determination that corrosion-resistant and cold-rolled steel from Vietnam that originated in China evaded U.S. anti-dumping and anti-subsidy orders. A final determination is expected to be announced in the first quarter of 2018.

The U.S. government continues to treat China as a non-market economy, despite China’s insistence that it should be recognized as a market economy under its Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization (the “Protocol”). China was a government-run, non-market economy in 2001 when it entered the Protocol, and China remains a government-run, non-market economy today. The main objective of the Protocol was to encourage, and in some cases to require, China to make market-based economic reforms. However, over the past 16 years, China has failed to take the required steps to establish that it is a market economy under U.S. law. Therefore, the United States had no reason to change its treatment of China as a non-market economy when one of the relevant provisions of the Protocol expired in December 2016. By treating China as a non-market economy in antidumping cases, the U.S. Department of Commerce can assume that Chinese prices and costs are distorted, and may use other methodologies to calculate antidumping duties. This often results in appropriately higher duties against Chinese products in order to offset its unfair trade practices. China has filed a challenge to the U.S. decision with the World Trade Organization.

Aggressive trade practices, left unchallenged, seriously undermine the ability of Nucor and other domestic producers to compete on price. Competition from countries with subsidized production costs has significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such an exodus occurs, the U.S. economy is weakened and Nucor’s customer base is diminished. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

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Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.87 billion and $1.52 billion at December 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from other Nucor businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.58 billion and $1.40 billion at December 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallic inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw materials costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil. Continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, coupled with the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, give us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus help us mitigate the risk of significant price fluctuations in input costs.

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. DJJ operates six regional scrap companies within the United States that have a combined annual scrap processing capability of approximately 5,000,000 tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources, including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective capacities of approximately 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

In October 2016, Nucor concluded several transactions to improve its access to a long-term supply of natural gas. Nucor purchased 49% of Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc.’s (“Encana”) leasehold interest covering approximately 54,000 acres in the South Piceance Basin. Further, Nucor and Encana also terminated the two Carry and Earning (“C&E”) drilling agreements entered into in 2010 and 2012, and Nucor sold its 50% equity interest in Hunter Ridge Energy Services LLC (“Hunter Ridge”) to Encana. Hunter Ridge is a gas gathering and water service provider formed by Nucor and Encana in 2012 to support the joint well development in the North Piceance Basin. In the new arrangement, the determination of whether or not to participate and invest in all future drilling capital investment by one working interest owner is independent of the other working interest owners. As such, Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments. By canceling the C&E drilling agreements, Nucor has eliminated all future carry capital and all contingent liabilities associated with those contracts, which should result in lower unit cost for any future drilling. Nucor retains all existing producing wells it currently owns. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on the approximately 54,000 acres, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with existing third-party gathering and processing service providers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap and other metallic inputs such as iron ore are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products.

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Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas drilling operations.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefited from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors, including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and, increasingly, changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (the “CWA”) that regulates water discharges and withdrawals; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the “RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the “CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of, sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations.

Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAFs”) to recycle scrap metal and scrap substitutes into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the Trump administration revisits any number of recently implemented environmental regulations, such as greenhouse gas (“GHG”) regulations, air toxics rules and emissions standards imposed on coal-fired electric utilities, it is reasonable to assume that any cost implications would be delayed until those reviews are complete.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

The RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. The RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These activities and off-site properties that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the “EPA”) has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under the RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under the CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these

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types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under the RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both the CERCLA and the RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. Many of our facilities have incorporated energy efficiency targets to reduce both cost and environmental impacts into their environmental management systems. These environmental management systems help facilitate compliance with our environmental commitment, which is every Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of ongoing training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2018 and 2019 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and to innovate. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have slightly more than 100 employees in our principal executive offices. The vast majority of Nucor’s approximately 25,100 employees as of December 31, 2017 are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this report or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company” or “we”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but Nucor does business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2016, we recycled approximately 17.6 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to expand our product portfolio to include more value-added steel mill products, improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and provide additional channels to market for our products. Our investments total almost $6 billion over the last five years, with approximately two-thirds going to capital expenditures and one-third going to acquisitions. We believe that our focus on lowering cost will enable us to execute on our strategy of delivering profitable growth. Shifting our product mix to a greater portion of value-added products and increasing end-user market diversity will make us less susceptible to imports.

The following projects at facilities within our steel mills segment illustrate Nucor’s execution on the value-added product expansion and cost improvement aspects of our strategy. At our Hertford County, North Carolina plate mill, a series of expansions, including a heat treat line, a normalizing line and a vacuum tank degasser, were completed in 2013. Those projects have positioned the mill to increase its diversity of product offerings to be less exposed to imports and have allowed us to improve the product mix allocation between our plate mills and sheet mills to improve margins at those facilities. The final components of Nucor’s $290 million project at our South Carolina, Nebraska and Tennessee bar mills to expand our special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod production capabilities by approximately one million tons were completed in 2015. These SBQ projects are an important component of our strategy because they allow us to produce engineered bar for more demanding applications that are less exposed to imports while maintaining our position as a low-cost commodity bar producer by shifting production to our other bar mills. In 2014, our Berkeley County, South Carolina mill successfully started up its nearly $100 million capital project that allows us to produce wider and thinner high-strength steel grades that can be used in a wide range of end use markets, including metal buildings, rail cars, water heaters, automotive, heavy equipment and motor lamination. Additionally, our Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (“Nucor-Yamato”) joint venture has recently completed two major capital projects to broaden its product offerings. Nucor-Yamato completed a $115 million project in late 2014 to add several additional sheet piling sections, which expanded our product offerings to include wider piling sections that are lighter and stronger, covering more area at a lower installed cost. The joint venture also recently began shipping structural steel from its $75 million quench and self-tempering line, which will make that mill the sole North American producer of certain high-strength, low-alloy structural sections. In September 2016, Nucor announced that it will add an additional cold mill at its Nucor Steel Arkansas facility for an estimated $230 million that will expand our ability to produce advanced high-strength, high-strength low-alloy and motor lamination steel products. We expect that the new cold mill complex will be operational in approximately two years.

Nucor’s steel mills segment has also grown significantly in recent years through the acquisitions of Gallatin Steel Company (“Gallatin”), a plate mill in Longview, Texas (“Longview”) and Independence Tube Corporation

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(“Independence Tube”), as well as Southland Tube (“Southland”) and Republic Conduit (“Republic”) in early 2017. Nucor acquired Gallatin in 2014 for a cash purchase price of $779 million. Located on the Ohio River in Ghent, Kentucky, Gallatin has an annual sheet steel production capacity of approximately 1,600,000 tons and provides us with expanded access to the important midwestern United States steel market. Acquired during the third quarter of 2016 for approximately $29 million, Longview is able to produce 125,000 tons annually of higher value-added carbon and alloy plate products that can range from 1 to 12 inches thick and up to 138 inches wide. Nucor completed the acquisition of Independence Tube during the fourth quarter of 2016 for approximately $430 million, and we completed the acquisition of Southland for approximately $130 million in January 2017. From their five facilities in Alabama and Illinois, Independence Tube and Southland are able to produce over 800,000 tons annually of hollow structural section (HSS) tubing used primarily in nonresidential construction markets. Nucor also completed the acquisition of Republic, a steel electrical conduit manufacturer with plants in Georgia and Kentucky, in January 2017 for approximately $335 million. These three pipe and tube businesses provide Nucor with a new line of value-added products to offer our customers, and they provide a value-added channel to market as the businesses are consumers of Nucor’s hot-rolled sheet steel.

In addition to growing through capital expansions at existing operations and acquisitions, Nucor also uses joint ventures as a platform for growth. We recently announced the formation of a joint venture with JFE Steel Corporation of Japan in which Nucor would have 50% ownership in a plant that will be built in central Mexico to supply galvanized sheet steel to the growing Mexican automotive market. The plant, which is expected to be operational in 2019, will cost approximately $270 million and will have an annual capacity of 400,000 tons. Nucor’s sheet mills will provide approximately half of the hot-rolled steel substrate that will be consumed by the joint venture.

A major emphasis of our cost improvement and operational flexibility plan relates to having more control over both the cost and reliable sourcing of our raw materials. Our 2,500,000 metric tons-per-year DRI facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana began production in December 2013. The combination of our Louisiana facility and our DRI plant in Trinidad with an annual capacity of 2,000,000 metric tons gives us the flexibility to optimize Nucor’s overall iron units mix based on current market pricing for scrap and scrap substitutes to provide us with a low cost feedstock for our steel mills.

The DRI production process requires significant volumes of natural gas. On October 1, 2016, Nucor concluded several transactions to preserve its access to a long-term supply of low cost natural gas resources while maintaining capital flexibility. Nucor purchased 49% of Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc.’s (“Encana”) leasehold interest covering approximately 54,000 acres in the South Piceance Basin, terminated two Carry & Earning (“C&E”) drilling agreements, and sold its 50% interest in Hunter Ridge Energy Services LLC (“Hunter Ridge”). In the new arrangement, the determination of whether or not to participate and invest in all future drilling capital investment by one working interest owner is independent of other working interest owners. Nucor retains its interest in all existing producing wells that it currently owns.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2016 are set forth in Note 22 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2016 Annual Report, which is incorporated by reference. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing approximately 70% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces and distributes sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), tubular products, plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet

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piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar, wire rod and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. and NuMit LLC are included in the steel mills segment. Also included in the steel mills segment are our distribution and international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas drilling operations.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that approximately 60% of our sheet steel sales in 2016 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material costs near the time of shipment. These sheet sales contracts typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our tubular, plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our tubular, plate, structural, rebar, merchant bar and SBQ steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2016, approximately 86% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The remaining 14% of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our tubular product maker, our piling distributor and our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations. One of Nucor’s strategies for growth is expanding the channels by which our steel mills’ products can reach end-user customers. We have a goal of increasing our volume sold to internal customers to 20%.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

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In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys, and provide transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2016, approximately 10% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We used the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment are our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana that produce iron inputs exclusively for use in the Nucor mills, as well as our natural gas production operations. All natural gas produced by the drilling operations is and will be sold to outside parties.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric arc furnace steel mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric arc furnace steel mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Excess global steelmaking capacity, particularly in non-market economies, continues to be a significant challenge for Nucor and the entire U.S. steel industry. With the U.S. economy performing better than most other economies around the world and a strong U.S. dollar, the U.S. steel market is the destination of choice for global steel producers. Steel imports were down 15% in 2016 compared to 2015. Finished imports last year captured 26% market share. The effects of successful trade cases involving flat-rolled products were an important step in returning fair trade to the U.S. flat-rolled steel market, but challenges still remain in several product areas.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. China, which accounts for almost half of the steel produced annually in the world, is the prime example of how some foreign governments impact the global steel market. Nucor believes that Chinese producers, many of which are government-owned in whole or in part, benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allow them to sell their products below cost. Other foreign governments utilize similar tactics to artificially lower their steel production costs. These distorting trade practices are widely recognized as being unfair and have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules. In 2016, the U.S. steel industry received positive determinations in trade cases involving three flat-rolled products—corrosion-resistant, cold-rolled and hot-rolled steel. The U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced preliminary duty determinations in investigations addressing cut-to-length plate from twelve countries. The U.S. Department of Commerce also announced the initiation of antidumping duty investigations of imports of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Japan, Taiwan, and Turkey, and a countervailing duty (CVD) investigation of steel concrete reinforcing bar imports from Turkey. We expect the plate and rebar cases to conclude in 2017.

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Efforts by foreign companies to evade duties by routing products through third-party countries is also a challenge. Artificially-priced imports and duty evasion schemes make it very difficult for Nucor to maintain sales prices and profit levels. As a result, Nucor joined three other steelmakers in filing a petition alleging China is circumventing coated steel sheet duties by shipping product through Vietnam.

The U.S. government announced it will continue to treat China as a non-market economy, despite China’s insistence that it should be recognized as a market economy under its Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization (“Protocol”). China was a government-run, non-market economy in 2001 when it entered its Protocol, and China remains a government-run, non-market economy today. The main objective of the Protocol was to encourage, and in some cases to require, China to make market-based economic reforms. However, over the past 15 years, China has failed to take the required steps to establish that it is a market economy under U.S. law. Therefore, the United States had no reason to change its treatment of China as a non-market economy when one of the relevant provisions of the Protocol expired in December 2016. By treating China as a non-market economy in antidumping cases, the U.S. Department of Commerce can assume that Chinese prices and costs are distorted, and may use other methodologies to calculate antidumping duties. This often results in appropriately higher duties against Chinese products in order to offset its unfair trade practices. China has filed a challenge to the U.S. decision with the World Trade Organization.

Aggressive trade practices, left unchallenged, seriously undermine the ability of Nucor and other domestic producers to compete on price. Competition from countries with subsidized production costs has significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such an exodus occurs, the U.S. economy is weakened and Nucor’s customer base is diminished. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.52 billion and $1.17 billion at December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from our downstream businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.40 billion and $1.35 billion at December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallics inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw materials costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes

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from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil. Continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, coupled with the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, give us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus help us mitigate the risk of significant price fluctuations in input costs.

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. DJJ operates six regional scrap companies within the United States that have the combined annual scrap processing capability of over five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective capacities of 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

In October 2016, Nucor concluded several transactions to improve its access to a long-term supply of natural gas. Nucor purchased 49% of Encana’s leasehold interest covering approximately 54,000 acres in the South Piceance Basin. Further, Nucor and Encana also terminated the two C&E drilling agreements entered into in 2010 and 2012, and Nucor sold its 50% equity interest in Hunter Ridge to Encana. Hunter Ridge is a gas gathering and water service provider formed by Nucor and Encana in 2012 to support the joint well development in the North Piceance Basin. In the new arrangement, the determination of whether or not to participate and invest in all future drilling capital investment by one working interest owner is independent of the other working interest owners. As such, Nucor has full discretion on its participation in all future drilling capital investments. By canceling the C&E drilling agreements, Nucor has eliminated all future carry capital and all contingent liabilities associated with those contracts, which should result in lower unit cost for any future drilling. Nucor retains all existing producing wells it currently owns. To support Nucor’s operating wells and potential future well developments on the 54,000 acres, Nucor has entered into long-term agreements directly with existing third party gathering and processing service providers.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap and other metallic inputs such as iron ore are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas drilling operations.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefited from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and, increasingly, changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

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Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) that regulates water discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of, sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) issued a final rule regarding the Clean Power Plan (“CPP”). While the CPP is directed at electric generating units, as opposed to steelmaking operations, Nucor expects indirect impact through increased electric costs. There are ongoing legal challenges to the CPP which will likely delay any potential adverse impacts to Nucor. Additionally, the current administration has given strong signals that their intention is to repeal this regulation. If this regulation moves forward, we expect the impacts will be spread over a significant timeframe, mitigating these impacts on Nucor’s operations.

Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAF”) to recycle scrap metal into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the new administration revisits any number of recently implemented environmental regulations, such as greenhouse gas (“GHG”) regulations, air toxics rules, and emissions standards imposed on coal-fired electric utilities, it is reasonable to assume that any cost implications would be delayed until those reviews are complete.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling of and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These activities and off-site properties that USEPA has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions

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which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both CERCLA and RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. Many of our facilities have incorporated energy efficiency targets to reduce both cost and environmental impacts into their environmental management systems. These environmental management systems help facilitate compliance with our environmental commitment, which is every Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of ongoing training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2017 and 2018 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and to innovate. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have slightly more than 100 employees in our executive office. The vast majority of Nucor’s approximately 23,900 employees as of December 31, 2016 are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this report or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company” or “we”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but Nucor does business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2015, we recycled approximately 16.9 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to improve our cost structure, enhance our operational flexibility and expand our product portfolios to include more value-added, higher-margin offerings. Our investments total more than $6 billion since the economic downturn began in 2009, with approximately two-thirds going to capital expenditures and one-third going to acquisitions. The Company believes that this focus on lowering cost will enable us to execute on our strategy of delivering profitable growth. Expanding our product mix and market diversity will make us less susceptible to imports.

A major emphasis of our cost improvement and operational flexibility plan relates to controlling our raw materials cost. We have a goal of being able to produce in house between six and seven million tons of annual capacity in high-quality scrap substitutes so that we can better control both the cost and reliable sourcing of these raw materials. Our 2,500,000 metric tons-per-year DRI facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana began production in December 2013. Between our DRI plant in Trinidad with an annual capacity of 2,000,000 metric tons and our new facility in Louisiana, we are approximately two-thirds of the way towards that goal. Our DRI production capability gives us the flexibility to optimize Nucor’s overall iron units mix based on current market pricing for scrap and scrap substitutes to provide us with a low cost feedstock for our steel mills.

The DRI production process requires significant volumes of natural gas. To ensure our DRI plant in Louisiana has a sustained advantage from lower natural gas costs, Nucor entered into two long-term, onshore natural gas working interest drilling programs in U.S.-based proven reserves with Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. (“Encana”). The natural gas produced by these two programs is sold to third parties to offset our exposure to spot prices of natural gas consumed by the Louisiana DRI facility and our other operations. Beginning in January 2014, Nucor and Encana temporarily suspended drilling of new natural gas wells as a result of current low natural gas prices. This joint decision demonstrates the flexibility of our partnership with Encana to react to short-term market conditions while preserving our ability to manage Nucor’s long-term exposure to higher natural gas prices at our operating divisions that consume natural gas. Nucor retains its contractual rights to resume drilling in a higher natural gas pricing environment.

Of the approximately $4 billion that we have spent since 2009 on capital expenditures, the main focus of that spending has been on projects that further our raw materials and value-added product diversification strategies. Within the steel mills segment, Nucor has deployed significant amounts of capital to expand our product offerings, enhance productivity and improve costs at our existing operations. Many of those steel mill capital projects came out of start-up during the last few years and are beginning to provide returns to Nucor’s stockholders. At our Hertford County, North Carolina plate mill, several expansions made between 2011 and 2013 have positioned the mill to increase its diversity of product offerings that are less exposed to imports. A heat treat line was added at that plate mill to facilitate Nucor’s growth in higher-margin plate products where

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greater strength and abrasion resistance is required. The heat treat line allows us to improve the product mix allocation between our two plate mills and five sheet mills to improve margins at those facilities. Also at the Hertford County mill, we commissioned a vacuum tank degasser and began operating a normalizing line. The final components of Nucor’s $290 million project at our South Carolina, Nebraska and Tennessee bar mills to expand our special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod production capabilities by approximately one million tons were completed in 2015. Our South Carolina bar mill is producing wire rod on its new mill, and our Nebraska mill is now using the fifth strand at its melt shop caster and its upgraded rolling mill. Our Tennessee mill added a second ladle metallurgy furnace, a fourth strand at its melt shop caster and a new quality assurance line. These SBQ projects are an important component of our strategy because they allow us to produce engineered bar for more demanding applications that are less exposed to imports while maintaining our position as a low-cost commodity bar producer by shifting production to our other bar mills. In 2014, our Berkeley County, South Carolina mill successfully started up its nearly $100 million capital project that allows us to produce wider and thinner high-strength steel grades that can be used in a wide range of end use markets, including metal buildings, rail cars, water heaters, automotive, heavy equipment and motor lamination.

Nucor’s steel mills segment has also grown significantly in recent years through the acquisitions of Gallatin Steel Company (“Gallatin”) and Skyline Steel LLC (“Skyline”). Nucor acquired Gallatin in 2014 for a cash purchase price of $779 million. Located on the Ohio River in Ghent, Kentucky, Gallatin has an annual sheet steel production capacity of approximately 1,800,000 tons. This acquisition is strategically important as it expands Nucor’s footprint in the midwestern United States market. The acquisition of Skyline in 2012 for $675 million was an important strategic investment as it paired Skyline’s leadership position in the steel piling distribution market with our Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (“Nucor-Yamato”) joint venture’s position as the market leader in steel piling manufacturing. To build upon the synergies in the piling market serviced by Skyline, Nucor-Yamato invested $115 million in a project to broaden its range of hot-rolled piling products. Completed in late 2014, this project added several new sheet piling sections, which expanded our product offerings to include wider piling sections that are lighter and stronger, covering more area at a lower installed cost. We recently announced a $75 million quench and self-tempering project at Nucor-Yamato, which is expected to be commissioned during the second half of 2016. Upon completion, the mill will be the sole North American producer of certain high-strength, low-alloy structural sections.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2015 are set forth in Note 23 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2015 Annual Report, which is incorporated by reference. The steel mills segment is Nucor’s largest segment, representing approximately 67% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces and distributes sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar, wire rod and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. and NuMit LLC are included in the steel mills segment. Also included in the steel mills segment are our distribution and international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI;

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supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas working interest drilling programs with Encana and Nucor’s equity method investment in Hunter Ridge Energy Services LLC.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel in standard grades and to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that approximately 60% of our sheet steel sales in 2015 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons in a manner to meet our customers’ requirements while considering the expected profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material costs near the time of shipment. These sheet sales contracts typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our plate, structural, rebar, merchant bar and SBQ steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2015, approximately 86% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The balance of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our piling distributor and our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products primarily on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys, and provide transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to

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our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2015, approximately 11% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We used the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment are our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana that produce iron inputs exclusively for use in the Nucor mills, as well as our natural gas working interest drilling programs. All natural gas produced by the working interest drilling programs is and will be sold to outside parties.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric arc steel furnace mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric arc furnace steel mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Excess global steelmaking capacity, particularly in non-market economies, continues to be a significant challenge for Nucor and the entire U.S. steel industry. With the U.S. economy performing better than most other economies around the world, the U.S. steel market is the destination of choice for global steel producers. Finished imports last year captured 29% market share, the second consecutive year that figure was at a historically high level. While imports were down slightly from 2014, they were still 27% higher than they were in 2013. These imports, which are often artificially-priced, make it very difficult for Nucor to maintain sales prices and profit levels.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. China, which accounts for almost half of the steel produced annually in the world, is the prime example of how some foreign governments impact the global steel market. Nucor believes that Chinese producers, many of which are government-owned in whole or in part, benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allow them to sell their products below cost. Other foreign governments utilize similar tactics to artificially lower their steel production costs. These distorting trade practices are widely recognized as being unfair and have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules. In 2015, the U.S. government made preliminary determinations of injury in three flat-rolled steel trade cases involving corrosion resistant, cold-rolled and hot-rolled steel products. All three cases are expected to be finalized in 2016. China’s continued treatment as a non-market economy in trade disputes in 2016 and beyond is vital for the continued assertive enforcement of world trade rules. China was a government-run, non-market economy in 2001 when it entered its Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization (“Protocol”), and China remains a government-run, non-market economy today. The main objective of the Protocol was to encourage, and in some cases to require, China to make market-based economic reforms. However, over the past 15 years, China has failed to take the required steps to establish that it is a market economy under U.S. law. Therefore, the United States has no reason to change its treatment of China as a non-market economy when only one of the relevant provisions of the Protocol expires in December 2016. By treating China as a non-market economy in antidumping cases, the Commerce Department can assume that Chinese prices and costs are distorted, and uses other methodologies to calculate antidumping duties. This often results in appropriately higher duties against Chinese products in order to offset its unfair trade practices.

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Aggressive trade practices, left unchallenged, seriously undermine the ability of Nucor and other domestic producers to compete on price. Competition from countries with subsidized production costs has significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such an exodus occurs, the U.S. economy is weakened and Nucor’s customer base is diminished. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.17 billion and $1.56 billion at December 31, 2015 and 2014, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from our downstream businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.35 billion and $1.49 billion at December 31, 2015 and 2014, respectively. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

For the past decade, Nucor has focused on securing access to low-cost raw material inputs as they are the Company’s largest expense. Nucor’s broad, balanced supply chain is an important strength which allows us to reduce the cost of our steelmaking operations, create a shorter supply chain and have greater optionality over our metallics inputs. Our investment in DRI production facilities and scrap yards, as well as our access to international raw materials markets, provides Nucor with significant flexibility in optimizing our raw materials costs. Additionally, having a significant portion of our raw materials supply under our control minimizes risk associated with the global sourcing of raw materials, particularly since a good deal of scrap substitutes comes from regions of the world that have historically experienced greater political turmoil. Continued successful implementation of our raw material strategy, including key investments in DRI production, coupled with the scrap brokerage and processing services performed by our team at DJJ, give us greater control over our metallic inputs and thus help us mitigate the risk of significant price fluctuations in input costs.

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. As of December 31, 2015, DJJ operated approximately 70 scrap recycling facilities, and our annual scrap processing capability exceeded five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective capacities of 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers.

In June 2010, Nucor entered into an agreement with Encana that involves drilling and completing onshore natural gas wells in the United States. Nucor entered into a second and more extensive drilling agreement with Encana in late 2012 that is projected to span more than 20 years. Natural gas produced by these working interest drilling programs is sold to offset our exposure to spot prices of natural gas consumed by our Louisiana DRI

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facility and our other operations. Starting in January 2014, Nucor and Encana temporarily suspended drilling new natural gas wells as a result of current low natural gas prices. Under its agreements with Encana, Nucor retains its contractual rights to resume drilling in a higher natural gas pricing environment.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap and other metallic inputs such as iron ore are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas working interest drilling programs.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefited from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and, increasingly, changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) that regulates water discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of, sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations. However, both federal and state laws and regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, making compliance with them increasingly expensive and burdensome. In many instances the total costs of compliance are not readily quantifiable because compliance is so engrained in our operating philosophy that these costs are simply considered part of our standard operating procedures.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) recently issued a final rule for the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (“NAAQS”). The impact of the new Ozone NAAQS on Nucor is expected to be minimal and will create no adverse impacts. USEPA also issued a final rule regarding the Clean Power Plan (“CPP”). While the CPP is directed at electric generating units Nucor expects indirect impact through increased electric costs. There are ongoing legal challenges to the CPP which will likely delay any potential adverse impacts to us. Even after resolution of these legal challenges, we expect the impacts will be spread over a significant timeframe, further mitigating these impacts on Nucor’s operations. Despite this atmosphere of constant regulatory change, at this time we do not believe that compliance with these new environmental regulations will have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows, or financial condition.

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The USEPA has recently revised the rules and definitions with respect to recycling and disposal of solid wastes. The new rules require states to develop new programs and certification processes that will be forthcoming during the next year. We do not expect these rules to have any adverse impact on Nucor’s ability to recycle steel or to continue recycling wastes that are routinely handled at our facilities.

Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAF”) to recycle scrap metal into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the new greenhouse gas (“GHG”) regulations, air toxics rules and new emissions standards recently imposed on electric utilities are fully implemented it is reasonable to expect that the cost of electricity produced by these utilities will increase. See Item 1A. “Risk Factors” for more information about the potential impact of GHG regulations on Nucor’s business.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling of and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These activities and off-site properties that USEPA has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both CERCLA and RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. These environmental management systems make environmental commitment each Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of ongoing training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

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Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2016 and 2017 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and to innovate. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have slightly more than 100 employees in our executive office. The vast majority of Nucor’s approximately 23,700 employees are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor,” the “Company” or “we”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but Nucor is doing business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2014, we recycled approximately 19.0 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has invested significant capital in recent years to improve our cost structure and expand our product portfolios to include more value-added, higher margined offerings. Our investments total nearly $6 billion during the last six years, with approximately two-thirds going to capital expenditures and one-third going to acquisitions. The Company believes that this focus on lowering cost will enable us to execute on our strategy of delivering profitable growth and expanding our product mix and market diversity will make us less susceptible to imports.

A major emphasis of our cost improvement plan is on reducing our raw materials cost. We have a goal of controlling between six and seven million tons of annual capacity in high-quality scrap substitutes so that we can better control both the cost and reliable sourcing of these raw materials. Our 2,500,000 metric tons-per-year DRI facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana began production in December 2013. Between the DRI plant in Trinidad with an annual capacity of 2,000,000 metric tons and our new facility in Louisiana, we will be approximately two-thirds of the way towards that goal when the Louisiana facility is fully operational. Our DRI plant in St. James Parish, Louisiana produced excellent quality DRI through the first ten months of 2014. However, the plant experienced operational challenges in 2014 as it went through several outages to make changes intended to improve consistency in the production process and yield performance. In November, the plant’s process gas heater experienced a failure, leading to the immediate suspension of production operations. Due to the lead times on the specialty steel pipes that must be replaced, we estimate that the Louisiana DRI plant will be operational again late in the first quarter of 2015.

The DRI production process requires significant volumes of natural gas. To ensure the DRI plant in Louisiana has a sustained advantage from lower natural gas costs, Nucor entered into two long-term, onshore natural gas working interest drilling programs in U.S.-based proven reserves with Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. (“Encana”) that allow us to better manage our exposure to natural gas pricing volatility and our overall energy demand for our operations. The natural gas produced by these two programs is sold to third parties to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of natural gas consumed by the Louisiana DRI facility and our other operations. In December 2013, Nucor made a joint decision with Encana to temporarily suspend drilling new natural gas wells. The joint decision was made due to the then-current expectation that the natural gas pricing environment would be weak in 2014. In the fourth quarter of 2014, Nucor and Encana agreed to further suspend drilling through calendar year 2015, except for a de minimis number of wells that are necessary in order to retain leasehold rights. We believe this joint decision demonstrates the flexibility of our partnership with Encana to react to market conditions to the mutual benefit of both parties while still allowing us to better manage our exposure to natural gas pricing volatility at our operating divisions that consume natural gas.

Of the approximately $4 billion that has been spent since 2009 on capital expenditures, the main focus of that spending has been on projects that further our raw materials and value-added product diversification

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strategies. Within the steel mills segment, Nucor has deployed significant amounts of capital to expand our product offerings, enhance productivity and improve costs at our existing operations. At our Hertford County, North Carolina plate mill, the heat treat line became operational in 2011, which has allowed Nucor to grow its presence in higher-margin products where greater strength and abrasion resistance is required. The heat treat line allows us to improve the product mix allocation between our two plate mills and five sheet mills to improve margins at those facilities. Also at the Hertford County mill, we commissioned a vacuum tank degasser in 2012, and we began operating a normalizing line in 2013. Collectively, these investments have positioned the Hertford County mill to increase the diversity of our product offerings that are less exposed to imports. Nucor’s $290 million project at our Tennessee, Nebraska and South Carolina bar mills to expand our special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod production capabilities by approximately one million tons is nearing completion. Production has begun on the new wire rod mill located in South Carolina, and our Nebraska mill successfully started up the fifth strand at its melt shop caster and its upgraded rolling mill. Our Tennessee mill added a second ladle metallurgy furnace, a fourth strand at its melt shop caster and a new quality assurance line. The SBQ projects, which we expect to be completed in 2015, will allow us to produce engineered bar for more demanding applications that are less exposed to imports while maintaining our position as a low-cost commodity bar producer by shifting production to our other bar mills. In 2014, our Berkeley County, South Carolina mill successfully started up its nearly $100 million capital project that allows us to produce wider and thinner high-strength steel grades that can be used in lightweight automotive applications.

Nucor’s steel mills segment has also grown significantly in recent years through the acquisitions of Gallatin Steel Company (“Gallatin”) and Skyline Steel LLC (“Skyline”). Nucor acquired Gallatin in 2014 for a cash purchase price of $779 million. Located on the Ohio River in Ghent, Kentucky, Gallatin has an annual sheet steel production capacity of approximately 1,800,000 tons. This acquisition is strategically important as it expands Nucor’s footprint in the Midwestern United States market, and it broadens Nucor’s product offerings in the pipe and tube market. The acquisition of Skyline in 2012 for $675 million was an important strategic investment as it paired Skyline’s leadership position in the steel piling distribution market with our Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (“Nucor-Yamato”) joint venture’s position as the market leader in steel piling manufacturing. To build upon the synergies in the piling market serviced by Skyline, Nucor-Yamato has invested $115 million in a project to broaden its range of hot-rolled piling products. Completed in the second half of 2014, this project added several new sheet piling sections, which expanded our product offerings to include wider piling sections that are lighter and stronger, covering more area at a lower installed cost.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2014 are set forth in Note 23 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2014 Annual Report, which is incorporated by reference. The steel mills are Nucor’s largest segment, representing approximately 70% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2014.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces and distributes sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar, wire rod and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. and NuMit LLC are included in the steel mills segment. Also included in the steel mills segment are our distribution and international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel,

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cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas working interest drilling programs with Encana and Nucor’s equity method investment in Hunter Ridge Energy Services LLC.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel in standard grades and to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that approximately 50% of our sheet steel sales in 2014 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons to maximize profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in the current market-based indices and/or raw material costs near the time of shipment. These sheet sales contracts typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our plate, structural, rebar, merchant bar and SBQ steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2014, approximately 85% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The balance of the steel mills segment’s shipments went to our piling distributor and our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may or may not permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell and install fabricated reinforcing products only on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal distribution and trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys, and provide transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other

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processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2014, approximately 14% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We used the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment are our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana that produce iron inputs exclusively for use in the Nucor mills, as well as our natural gas working interest drilling programs. All natural gas produced by the working interest drilling programs is and will be sold to outside parties, and as a result the revenues from these sales are a small but increasing amount of our revenues.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.56 billion and $1.77 billion at December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from our downstream businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.49 billion and $1.27 billion at December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. As of December 31, 2014, DJJ operated over 70 scrap recycling facilities, and our annual scrap processing capability exceeded five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective capacities of 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. Our newly constructed Louisiana DRI facility is the first phase of a multi-phase site development plan opportunity in Louisiana.

In 2010, Nucor entered into an agreement with Encana that involves drilling and completing onshore natural gas wells in U.S.-based proven reserves over an approximate seven-year period that began in June 2010. Nucor entered into a second and more extensive drilling agreement with Encana in late 2012 that is projected to span more than 20 years. Natural gas produced by these working interest drilling programs is being sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of natural gas consumed by our Louisiana DRI facility and our other operations. In December 2013, Nucor and Encana announced an agreement to temporarily suspend drilling new natural gas wells due to the then-current expectations that the natural gas pricing environment would be weak in 2014. In the fourth quarter of 2014, Nucor and Encana agreed to extend our drilling suspension through the end of 2015. The 2015 capital expenditures for drilling will consist of drilling a de minimis number of wells required to maintain leasehold rights. Under the agreement with Encana, Nucor maintains the right to resume drilling at any point should natural gas prices change. In addition to our natural gas needs at the Louisiana DRI facility, Nucor is also a substantial consumer of natural gas at our steel mill operations. The drilling of natural gas wells under the two agreements is expected to be sufficient in the future to cover Nucor’s demand at all of its steel mills in the United States plus the demand of two DRI plants or, alternatively, at three DRI plants, if additional capacity were to be added.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The

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availability and price of ferrous scrap are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products. Ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes are our single largest cost of products sold. A key part of our business strategy is to control a significant portion of the supply of high quality metallics needed to operate our steel mills.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are also large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas working interest drilling programs.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefited from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and, increasingly, changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost of products sold for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric arc furnace mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric arc furnace mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Overproduction in global steelmaking capacity continues to be a significant challenge for Nucor and the entire U.S. steel industry. With the U.S. economy performing better than most other economies around the world, the U.S. steel market is the destination of choice for global steel producers. In 2014, total steel imports increased 38% compared with 2013, and imports of finished and semi-finished steel products accounted for 34% of U.S. market share last year. Imports increased from nearly every steel-producing country and in virtually every category of steel products. These imports, which are sometimes artificially-priced, make it very difficult for Nucor to maintain sales prices and profit levels.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. China, which accounts for almost half of the steel produced annually in the world, is the prime example of how foreign governments impact the global steel market. Nucor believes that Chinese producers, many of which are government-owned in whole or in part, benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allow them to sell their products below cost. Other foreign governments utilize similar tactics to artificially lower their steel production costs. These distorting trade practices are widely

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recognized as being unfair and have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules. The U.S. government recently completed several successful trade enforcement actions, including terminating its suspension agreement with Russia for hot-rolled steel imports; assessing duties on oil country tubular goods from South Korea and five other countries; and ruling that the domestic rebar industry has been materially injured as a result of dumped and subsidized rebar imports from Turkey and Mexico.

Aggressive trade practices, left unchallenged, seriously undermine the ability of Nucor and other domestic producers to compete on price. Competition from countries with subsidized production costs has significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such an exodus occurs, the U.S. economy is weakened and Nucor’s customer base is diminished. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) that regulates water discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of, sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations. However, both federal and state laws and regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, making compliance with them increasingly expensive and burdensome. In many instances the total costs of compliance are not readily quantifiable because compliance is so engrained in our operating philosophy that these costs are simply considered part of our standard operating procedures.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) has proposed or promulgated many new national ambient air quality standards and toxic air emissions rules for which it has recently or not yet issued guidance or compliance deadlines. While we begin immediately to plan for compliance with such standards and rules, we cannot fully assess their impact on our operations until the guidance has been fully developed or issued and compliance deadlines have been established. In other cases where environmental regulations are proposed or promulgated that may regulate previously unregulated aspects of our operations, it is impossible for us to fully determine the impact of these regulations until protracted legal challenges have been concluded and USEPA or other regulatory agencies have developed and issued technical guidance. Despite this atmosphere of regulatory uncertainty, at this time we do not believe that compliance with these new environmental regulations will have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

The CAA imposes stringent limits on air emissions with a federally mandated operating permit program administered by the states with civil and criminal enforcement sanctions. Each of our steel mills is required to operate in compliance with its permit or potentially incur sanctions for failing to do so. Because of the size of our steelmaking operations, they are subject to new “Greenhouse Gasses” (“GHGs”) regulations and are required to

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do GHG Best Available Control Technology (“BACT”) evaluations when their permits are modified. There is still uncertainty and very little guidance from USEPA as to what is or may be considered GHG BACT for steelmaking operations. Our operations are currently properly permitted, and we will not need to make these determinations unless and until these permits are modified. Based on current guidance, we do not expect these requirements to have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAF”) to recycle scrap metal into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the new GHG regulations, air toxics rules and new emissions standards recently imposed on electric utilities are fully implemented it is reasonable to expect that the cost of electricity produced by these utilities will increase. See Item 1A “Risk Factors” for more information about the potential impact of GHG regulations on Nucor’s business.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling of and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These and off-site properties that USEPA has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both CERCLA and RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. These environmental management systems make environmental commitment each Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

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Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2015 and 2016 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and to innovate. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have slightly more than 100 employees in our executive office. The vast majority of Nucor’s 23,600 employees are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor” or the “Company”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), which the Company acquired in 2008, the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but increasingly, Nucor is doing business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2013, we recycled approximately 19.2 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has employed a multi-pronged growth strategy in recent years that allows for the ability to capitalize on a variety of growth opportunities as they arise. The five prongs of that growth strategy are: (1) optimizing and continually improving our existing operations, (2) executing on our raw materials strategy, (3) growing through developing greenfield projects that capitalize on new technologies and unique marketplace opportunities, (4) acquiring other companies that will strengthen Nucor’s position as North America’s most diversified producer of steel and steel products and (5) growing internationally with an emphasis on leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies.

In order to optimize our existing operations, we commit a significant portion of our capital expenditures each year to projects that enhance productivity and improve costs, as well as allow us to produce more value-added and typically higher-margin products at our existing facilities. The heat treat line at our Hertford County, North Carolina mill became operational in 2010, which has allowed Nucor to grow its presence in higher-margin products where greater strength and abrasion resistance is required. The heat treat line allows us to improve the product mix allocation between our two plate mills and four sheet mills to improve margins at those facilities. Also at the Hertford County mill, we commissioned a vacuum tank degasser in 2012, and we began operating a normalizing line in 2013. During 2012, Nucor began work on a $290 million strategic investment to expand our special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod production capabilities at our Tennessee, Nebraska and South Carolina bar mills by approximately one million tons. The following achievements illustrate the significant progress that was made on these projects during 2013: production began on the new wire rod mill located in South Carolina, our Nebraska mill successfully started up its upgraded rolling mill and our Tennessee mill completed the installation and commissioning of a new quality assurance line. The SBQ projects, which we expect to be completed over the course of 2014 and 2015, will allow us to produce engineered bar for the most demanding applications while maintaining our market share in commodity bar products by shifting production to our other bar mills. Other planned value-added projects at existing operations include the vacuum tank degasser that began operating at our Hickman, Arkansas mill in late 2012 and the modernization of casting, hot rolling and downstream operations that will allow us to produce wider and lighter gauge hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel products at our Berkeley, South Carolina mill beginning in early 2014.

As part of the execution of our raw materials strategy, we have a goal of controlling between six and seven million tons of annual capacity in high-quality scrap substitutes. Our 2,500,000 metric tons-per-year DRI facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana began production in December 2013. Between our existing DRI plant in Trinidad, which we expanded in recent years to increase the annual capacity from 1,800,000 to 2,000,000 metric tons, and our new facility in Louisiana, we will be approximately two-thirds of the way towards that goal.

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The DRI-making process requires significant volumes of natural gas. To ensure the new DRI plant in Louisiana has a sustained advantage from lower natural gas costs, Nucor entered into two long-term, onshore natural gas working interest drilling programs in U.S.-based proven reserves with Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. (“Encana”) that allow us to better manage our exposure to natural gas pricing volatility and our overall energy demand for our operations. The natural gas produced by these two programs will be sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of natural gas consumed by the Louisiana DRI facility and our other operations. In December 2013, Nucor announced that we and Encana made a joint decision to temporarily suspend drilling new natural gas wells. The joint decision was made due to the current weak natural gas pricing environment. This joint decision demonstrates the flexibility of our partnership with Encana to react to market conditions to the mutual benefit of both parties while still allowing us to better manage our exposure to natural gas pricing volatility at our operating divisions that consume natural gas.

Growth through greenfield projects has included the construction of our SBQ steel mill in Memphis, Tennessee, which we completed in 2009. We also began commercial production in 2009 at a new facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, which uses breakthrough Castrip® technology to strip cast molten steel into near final shape and thickness with minimal hot or cold rolling. This allows for lower investment and operating costs and reduces the environmental impact of producing steel.

Although the pace at which we have been acquiring other companies has slowed in the past few years, the acquisition of Skyline Steel LLC (“Skyline”) in 2012 was a notable exception. The Skyline acquisition is an important strategic investment as it pairs Skyline’s leadership position in the steel piling distribution market with our Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (“Nucor-Yamato”) joint venture’s position as the market leader in steel piling manufacturing. To build upon the synergies in the piling market serviced by Skyline, Nucor announced that Nucor-Yamato will be expanding to broaden its range of hot-rolled piling products. Upon completion in mid-2014, this project will add several new sheet piling sections, increasing the single sheet widths by 22% and providing a lighter, stronger sheet covering more area at a lower installed cost.

In 2010, we entered into an agreement with Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) to form NuMit LLC (“NuMit”), in which we own a 50% economic and voting interest. NuMit owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), which operates 24 sheet processing facilities located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. Since our investment in NuMit began, Steel Technologies constructed a flat-rolled steel processing operation in Celaya, Mexico, that became operational in late 2012. The 125,000-square-foot facility is equipped with two slitting lines. Additionally, Steel Technologies’ new flat-rolled steel processing facility in the Bajio region of Mexico became fully operational in November 2013. These new investments will allow us to capitalize on the rapid growth in the Mexican automotive industry.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2013 are set forth in Note 23 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2013 Annual Report, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The steel mills are Nucor’s largest segment, representing approximately 70% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces and distributes sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills.

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Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. and NuMit are included in the steel mills segment. Also included in the steel mills segment are our international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas working interest drilling programs with Encana and Nucor’s equity method investment in Hunter Ridge Energy Services LLC.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and, increasingly, elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized sheet steel in standard grades and to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that approximately 65% of our sheet steel sales in 2013 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons to maximize profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs and market conditions. These sheet sales contracts typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our plate, structural, and bar steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2013, approximately 86% of the shipments made by our steel mills segment were to external customers. The balance of the steel mill segment’s shipments went to our piling distributor and our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell fabricated reinforcing products only on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. We also utilize our internal trading companies to market our products abroad. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys, and provide transportation, material handling and other services to

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users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2013, approximately 13% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We used the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment are our DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana that produce iron inputs exclusively for use in the Nucor mills, as well as our working interest drilling programs. All natural gas produced by the working interest drilling programs is and will be sold to outside parties, and as a result the revenues from these sales are a small but increasing amount of our revenues.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.77 billion and $1.46 billion at December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. Order backlog for the steel mills segment includes only orders from external customers and excludes orders from our downstream businesses. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.27 billion and $1.17 billion at December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. As of December 31, 2013, DJJ operated over 70 scrap recycling facilities, and our annual scrap processing capability exceeded five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate DRI plants in Trinidad and Louisiana with respective capacities of 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facilities is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. Our newly constructed Louisiana DRI facility is the first phase of a multi-phase plan that is expected to include additional operations in Louisiana.

In 2010, Nucor entered into an agreement with Encana that involves drilling and completing onshore natural gas wells in U.S.-based proven reserves over an approximate seven-year period that began in June 2010. Nucor entered into a second and more extensive drilling agreement with Encana in late 2012 that is projected to span more than 20 years. Natural gas produced by these working interest drilling programs is being sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of gas consumed by our Louisiana DRI facility. In the fourth quarter of 2013, Nucor and Encana announced an agreement to temporarily suspend drilling new natural gas wells given current expectations that the natural gas pricing environment will be weak in 2014. By the middle of 2014, all in-process wells will be completed. At that point, there will be over 300 producing wells providing enough natural gas to cover our Louisiana DRI plant’s expected consumption into 2015. In addition to our natural gas needs at the new DRI facility, Nucor is also a substantial consumer of natural gas at our steel mill operations. Once drilling resumes, the drilling of natural gas wells under the two agreements is expected to be sufficient to cover Nucor’s demand at all of its steel mills in the United States plus the demand of two DRI plants or, alternatively, at three DRI plants.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The

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availability and price of ferrous scrap are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products. Ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes are our single largest cost of products sold. A key part of our business strategy is to control a significant portion of the supply of high quality metallics needed to operate our steel mills.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facilities in Trinidad and Louisiana are large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas working interest drilling programs.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefitted from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and, increasingly, changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost of products sold for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric arc furnace mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric arc furnace mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Over the last few years, Nucor has experienced increased competition stemming from significant excess capacity, both domestic and foreign. Although there were no noteworthy additions to domestic capacity in 2013, oversupply is still a significant issue. While steel imports decreased slightly from 2012, the overall level of finished and semi-finished steel imports is still extremely high at 30% of the U.S. steel market. These artificially-priced imports make it very difficult for Nucor to maintain sales prices and profit levels.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. In particular, competition from steel imported from China, which accounts for more than 45% of the steel produced annually in the world, is a major challenge. We believe that Chinese producers, many of whom are government-owned in whole or in part, benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allow them to sell their products below cost. These distorting trade practices are widely recognized as being unfair and have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules. Examples of successful challenges include the imposition of antidumping duty orders on imports of line pipe, oil country tubular goods, rebar, cut-to-length plate and hot-rolled sheet from China.

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China’s aggressive trade practices, left unchallenged, seriously undermine the ability of Nucor and other domestic producers to compete on price. China’s artificially lowered production costs have significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such an exodus occurs, the U.S. economy is weakened and Nucor’s customer base is diminished. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements and address the jobs crisis in the United States.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) that regulates water discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of, sites contaminated by hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations. However, both federal and state laws and regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, making compliance with them increasingly expensive and burdensome. In many instances the total costs of compliance are not readily quantifiable because compliance is so engrained in our operating philosophy that these costs are simply considered part of our standard operating procedures.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) has proposed or promulgated many new national ambient air quality standards and toxic air emissions rules for which it has recently or not yet issued guidance or compliance deadlines. While we begin immediately to plan for compliance with such standards and rules, we cannot fully assess their impact on our operations until the guidance has been fully developed or issued and compliance deadlines have been established. In other cases where environmental regulations are proposed or promulgated that may regulate previously unregulated aspects of our operations, it is impossible for us to fully determine the impact of these regulations until protracted legal challenges have been concluded and USEPA or other regulatory agencies have developed and issued technical guidance. Despite this atmosphere of regulatory uncertainty, at this time we do not believe that compliance with these new environmental regulations will have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

The CAA imposes stringent limits on air emissions with a federally mandated operating permit program administered by the states with civil and criminal enforcement sanctions. Each of our steel mills is required to operate in compliance with its permit or potentially incur sanctions for failing to do so. Because of the size of our steelmaking operations, they are subject to new “Greenhouse Gasses” (“GHGs”) regulations and are required to do GHG Best Available Control Technology (“BACT”) evaluations when their permits are modified. There is still uncertainty and very little guidance from USEPA as to what is or may be considered GHG BACT for steelmaking operations. Our operations are currently properly permitted, and we will not need to make these determinations unless and until these permits are modified. Based on current guidance, we do not expect these requirements to have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

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Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAF”) to recycle scrap metal into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the new GHG regulations, air toxics rules and other new environmental regulations are imposed on electric utilities, it is reasonable to expect that the cost of electricity produced by these utilities will increase. See Item 1A “Risk Factors” for more information about the potential impact of GHG regulations on Nucor’s business.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling of and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These and off-site properties that USEPA has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both CERCLA and RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. These environmental management systems make environmental commitment each Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2014 and 2015 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and be innovative. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have fewer than 100 employees in our executive office. The majority of Nucor’s 22,300 employees are not represented by labor unions.

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Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor” or the “Company”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), which the Company acquired in 2008, the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but increasingly, Nucor is doing business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2012, we recycled approximately 19.2 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has employed a multi-pronged growth strategy in recent years that allows for the ability to capitalize on a variety of growth opportunities as they arise. The five prongs of that growth strategy are: (1) optimizing and continually improving our existing operations, (2) executing on our raw materials strategy, (3) growing through developing greenfield projects that capitalize on new technologies and unique marketplace opportunities, (4) acquiring other companies that will strengthen Nucor’s position as North America’s most diversified producer of steel and steel products and (5) growing internationally with an emphasis on leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies.

Optimizing our existing operations primarily has involved spending a significant portion of our capital expenditures each year on projects that enhance productivity and improve costs as well as allow us to produce more value-added and typically higher margin products at our existing facilities. The heat treat line at our Hertford County, North Carolina mill became operational in 2010, which has allowed Nucor to grow its presence in higher margin products where greater strength and abrasion resistance is required. The heat treat line allows us to improve the product mix allocation between our two plate mills and four sheet mills to improve margins at those facilities. Also at the Hertford County mill, we commissioned a vacuum tank degasser in 2012, and we expect to begin operating a new normalizing line in 2013. Early in 2012, Nucor announced plans to spend approximately $290 million for projects at our Tennessee, Nebraska and South Carolina bar mills that should expand Nucor’s special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod capacity by one million tons. The projects, which we expect to be completed between the end of 2013 and the first half of 2014, will allow us to produce engineered bar for the most demanding applications while maintaining our market share in commodity bar products by shifting production to our other bar mills. Other planned value-added projects at existing operations include the vacuum tank degasser that began operating at our Hickman, Arkansas mill in late 2012 and the modernization of casting, hot rolling and downstream operations that will allow us to produce wider and lighter gauge hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel products at our Berkeley, South Carolina mill beginning in early 2014.

Executing on our raw materials strategy involves putting the pieces into place to meet our goal of controlling between six and seven million tons of annual capacity in high quality scrap substitutes. Our 2,500,000 metric tons-per-year DRI facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana is scheduled to start-up in mid-2013. Between our existing DRI plant in Trinidad, which we expanded in 2011 to increase the annual capacity from 1,800,000 to 2,000,000 metric tons, and our new facility in Louisiana, we will be approximately two-thirds of the way towards that goal.

The DRI-making process requires significant volumes of natural gas. To provide the new DRI plant in Louisiana with a sustainable advantage from lower natural gas costs, Nucor entered into a long-term, onshore natural gas working interest drilling program in U.S.-based proven reserves with Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc.

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(“Encana”) in 2010. Nucor entered into a second and more significant drilling program with Encana in late 2012. The natural gas produced by these two programs will be sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of natural gas consumed by the Louisiana DRI facility and our other operations. We believe these drilling programs will allow us to better manage our exposure to natural gas pricing volatility and our overall energy demand for our operations.

Growth through greenfield projects has included the construction of our SBQ steel mill in Memphis, Tennessee, which we completed in 2009. We also began commercial production in 2009 at a new facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, which uses breakthrough Castrip® technology to strip cast molten steel into near final shape and thickness with minimal hot or cold rolling. This allows for lower investment and operating costs and reduces the environmental impact of producing steel.

Although the pace at which we have been acquiring other companies has slowed in the past few years, the acquisition of Skyline Steel LLC (“Skyline”) in 2012 was a notable exception. The Skyline acquisition is an important strategic investment as it pairs Skyline’s leadership position in the steel piling distribution market with our Nucor-Yamato Steel Company (“Nucor-Yamato”) joint venture’s position as the market leader in steel piling manufacturing. To build upon the synergies in the piling market serviced by Skyline, Nucor announced that Nucor-Yamato will be expanding to broaden its range of hot-rolled piling products. Upon completion in 2014, this project will add several new sheet piling sections, increasing the single sheet widths by 22% and providing a lighter, stronger sheet covering more area at a lower installed cost.

In 2010, we entered into an agreement with Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) to form NuMit LLC (“NuMit”), in which we own a 50% economic and voting interest. NuMit owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC (“Steel Technologies”), which operates 25 sheet processing facilities located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. Steel Technologies recently finished construction on a flat-rolled steel processing operation in Celaya, Mexico, that became operational in late 2012. The new 125,000-square-foot facility is equipped with two slitting lines. Additionally, construction is well underway on a new flat-rolled steel processing facility that is expected to open in mid-2013 in the Bajio region of Mexico. These new investments should allow us to capitalize on the rapid growth in the Mexican automotive industry.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2012 are set forth in Note 22 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2012 Annual Report, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The steel mills are Nucor’s dominant segment representing approximately 69% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces and distributes sheet steel (hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks, H-piling and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. The steel mills segment also includes Nucor’s equity method investments in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. and NuMit. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal. The raw materials segment also includes our natural gas working interest drilling programs with Encana and certain equity method investments.

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Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and, increasingly, elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel in standard grades and to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. We estimate that slightly more than 55% of our sheet steel sales in 2012 were to contract customers. The balance of our sheet steel sales was made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers at any given time depends on a variety of factors, including our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons to maximize profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs and typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. Steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, which allows us to maintain inventory levels of these products to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our plate, structural, and bar steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2012, we sold approximately 85% of the production by our steel mills segment to external customers. The balance of the steel mill segment’s production went to our piling distributor and our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States and Canada. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer-term supply contracts may permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell fabricated reinforcing products only on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. The markets for these products are largely tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, we process ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in our steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. We also broker ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supply ferro-alloys, and provide transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. Our primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2012, approximately 11% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons we processed were sold to external customers. We used the balance in our steel mills.

Also within the raw materials segment is our existing DRI plant in Trinidad that produces iron inputs exclusively for use in the Nucor mills, our DRI facility that we are constructing in Louisiana, and our working interest drilling programs. All natural gas produced by the working interest drilling programs is and will be sold to outside parties, and as a result the revenues from these sales are a small but increasing amount of our revenues.

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The Company’s other operations include international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.64 billion and $1.80 billion at December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.18 billion and $1.11 billion at December 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively. Order backlogs for the steel mills segment include orders attributable to Nucor’s downstream businesses in addition to orders from outside customers. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used internally.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. As of December 31, 2012, DJJ operated nearly 70 scrap recycling facilities, and our annual scrap processing capability exceeded five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources and operate a DRI plant in Trinidad with a capacity of 2,000,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facility in Trinidad is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. We are constructing a second DRI facility in Louisiana with an annual capacity of 2,500,000 metric tons. This Louisiana DRI facility is the first phase of a multi-phase plan that is expected to include additional operations in Louisiana.

In 2010, Nucor entered into an agreement with Encana that involves drilling and completing onshore natural gas wells in U.S.-based proven reserves over an approximate seven-year period that began in June 2010. Nucor entered into a second and more extensive drilling agreement with Encana in late 2012 that is projected to span more than 20 years. Natural gas produced by these working interest drilling programs is being sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of gas consumed by our Louisiana DRI facility. In addition to our natural gas needs at the new DRI facility, Nucor is also a substantial consumer of natural gas at our steel mill operations. The drilling of natural gas wells under the two agreements is expected to provide enough natural gas to equal Nucor’s demand at all of its steel mills in the United States plus the demand of two DRI plants or, alternatively, at three DRI plants.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products. Ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes are our single largest cost of products sold. A key part of our business strategy is to control a significant portion of the supply of high quality metallics needed to operate our steel mills.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facility in Trinidad is, and our Louisiana DRI facility will be, large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and our natural gas working interest drilling programs.

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Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefitted from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and, increasingly, changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost of products sold for Nucor, we strive continually to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global market place.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products, and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric-arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric-arc furnace mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric-arc furnace mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Recently we have experienced increased competition in the U.S. sheet steel market stemming from significant domestic capacity increases. Despite the closure of some sheet mill assets in 2012, oversupply is still a significant issue. Also contributing to the excess capacity is the high level of imports that came into our country in 2012. These artificially-priced imports make it very difficult for us to maintain sales prices and profit levels. Our average sales price per ton for sheet products dropped by 12% from the first quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2012 in response to the increased competition.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. Foreign imports accounted for approximately 24% of the U.S. steel market in 2012. In particular, competition from steel imported from China, which accounts for more than 45% of the steel produced annually in the world, is a major challenge. Chinese producers, many of whom are government-owned in whole or in part, continue to benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allow them to sell their products below cost. These distorting trade practices are widely recognized as being unfair and have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules. Examples of successful challenges include the imposition of antidumping duty orders on imports of line pipe, oil country tubular goods, rebar, cut-to-length plate and hot-rolled sheet from China.

China’s aggresive trade practices seriously undermine the ability of the Company and other domestic producers to compete on price when left unchallenged. That country’s artificially lowered production costs have significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such a flight occurs, the U.S. economy is weakened and Nucor’s customer base is diminished, thereby providing us with fewer opportunities to supply steel to those shuttered businesses. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements and address the jobs crisis in the United States.

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We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) that regulates water discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of sites contaminated by, hazardous substances. Our operations are also subject to state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations. However, both federal and state laws and regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, making compliance with them increasingly expensive and burdensome. In many instances the total costs of compliance are not readily quantifiable because compliance is so engrained in our operating philosophy that these costs are simply considered part of our standard operating procedures.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) has proposed or promulgated many new national ambient air quality standards and toxic air emissions rules for which it has recently or not yet issued guidance or compliance deadlines. While we begin immediately to plan for compliance with such standards and rules, we cannot fully assess their impact on our operations until the guidance has been fully developed or issued and compliance deadlines have been established. In other cases where environmental regulations are proposed or promulgated that may regulate previously unregulated aspects of our operations, it is impossible for us to fully determine the impact of these regulations until protracted legal challenges have been concluded and USEPA or other regulatory agencies have developed and issued technical guidance. Despite this atmosphere of regulatory uncertainty, at this time we do not believe that compliance with these new environmental regulations will have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

The CAA imposes stringent limits on air emissions with a federally mandated operating permit program administered by the states with civil and criminal enforcement sanctions. Each of our steel mills is required to operate in compliance with its permit or potentially incur sanctions for failing to do so. Our Louisiana DRI facility under construction was permitted under the CAA in January 2011. This permit included an evaluation and determination of Best Available Control Technology (“BACT”) for USEPA’s new “Greenhouse Gasses” (“GHGs”) rule. Because of the size of our steelmaking operations, they are also subject to these new GHG regulations and will be required to do GHG BACT evaluations if their permits are modified in the future. There is still uncertainty and very little guidance from USEPA as to what is or may be considered GHG BACT for steelmaking operations. Our operations are currently properly permitted, and we will not need to make these determinations unless and until these permits are modified. Based on current guidance, we do not expect these requirements to have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAF”) to recycle scrap metal into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the new GHG regulations, air toxics rules and other new environmental regulations are imposed on electric utilities, it is reasonable to expect that the cost of electricity produced by these utilities will increase. See Item 1A “Risk Factors” for more information about the potential impact of GHG regulations on Nucor’s business.

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The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling of and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These and off-site properties that USEPA has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under RCRA, these liabilities either are identified already and being resolved or have been fully resolved.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in specialized emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both CERCLA and RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. These environmental management systems make environmental commitment each Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2013 and 2014 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and be innovative. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. We have fewer than 100 employees in our executive office. The majority of Nucor’s 22,200 employees are not represented by labor unions.

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Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor” or the “Company”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), which the Company acquired in 2008, the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but increasingly, Nucor is doing business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2011, we recycled approximately 19.7 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has employed a multi-pronged growth strategy in recent years that allows for flexibility and the ability to capitalize on growth opportunities as they arise. The five prongs of that growth strategy are: (1) optimizing existing operations, (2) executing on our raw materials strategy, (3) growing through developing greenfield projects that capitalize on new technologies and unique marketplace opportunities, (4) acquiring other companies that will strengthen Nucor’s position as North America’s most diversified producer of steel and steel products and (5) growing internationally with an emphasis on leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies.

Optimizing our existing operations has primarily involved targeting a significant portion of our capital expenditures each year on projects that enhance productivity and efficiency as well as allow us to produce products that move us up the value chain at our existing facilities. The heat treat line at our Hertford County, North Carolina mill became operational in 2010, which has allowed Nucor to grow its presence in higher margin products where higher strength and abrasion resistance is required. The heat treat line has also allowed us to improve the product mix allocation between our two plate mills and four sheet mills to improve margins at those facilities. Nucor has announced plans to spend approximately $290 million for projects at our Tennessee, Nebraska, and South Carolina bar mills that will expand Nucor’s special bar quality (“SBQ”) and wire rod capacity by one million tons. The projects, which we project will be completed by the end of 2013, will allow us to meet the needs of our engineered bar customers in the attractive automotive, energy, heavy truck and heavy equipment markets. Other planned value-added projects at existing operations include a vacuum degasser at our Hickman, Arkansas mill and a new mill stand and other modifications that will allow us to produce wider and lighter gauge hot-rolled steel at our Berkeley, South Carolina mill.

Executing on our raw materials strategy involves putting the pieces into place to meet our goal of controlling between six and seven million tons of annual capacity in high quality scrap substitutes. We have begun construction on our 2,500,000 tons-per-year DRI facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana. The majority of the equipment for this $750 million project will begin arriving in 2012, and start-up is currently projected to be in mid-2013. Between our existing DRI plant in Trinidad, which we have expanded to increase the annual capacity from 1,800,000 to 2,000,000 metric tons, and our facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana, we will be approximately two-thirds of the way towards that goal.

Growing through greenfield projects has included the construction of our SBQ steel mill in Memphis, Tennessee, which we completed in 2009. We also began commercial production in 2009 at a new facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, which uses breakthrough Castrip® technology to strip cast molten steel into near final shape and thickness with minimal hot or cold rolling. This allows for lower investment and operating costs and reduces the environmental impact of producing steel.

The pace at which we have been acquiring other companies slowed dramatically in late 2008, but in the preceding four years we completed numerous acquisitions. Since late 2006 our annual capacity to produce downstream value-added products has more than doubled to over 4.6 million tons through acquisitions of a steel decking producer, fabricators of rebar, cold finished bars and steel grating, a manufacturer of metal buildings and a wire mesh fabricator. The acquisition of DJJ in the spring of 2008 was a key part of our strategy to better manage the supply of ferrous scrap metal, the primary raw material used by our electric arc furnace steel mills.

In 2010, we entered into an agreement with Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) to form NuMit LLC, in which we own a 50% economic and voting interest. NuMit LLC owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC, which operates 25 sheet processing facilities located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

In 2008 we grew internationally by entering into a joint investment with Duferco S.A., Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l., which operates a one million tons-per-year steel melt shop with a bloom billet caster in Brescia, Italy and three rolling mills located throughout Italy. The customers for the products produced by Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. are primarily steel service centers and distributors located both in Italy and throughout Europe.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings (loss) before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2011 are set forth in Note 22 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2011 Annual Report, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The steel mills are Nucor’s dominant segment representing approximately 70% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot and cold-rolled), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and SBQ). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, light gauge steel framing, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and, increasingly, elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel in standard grades and to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. In 2011, approximately 50% of our sheet steel sales were to contract customers, while steel contract sales outside of our sheet operations are not significant. The proportion of tons sold to contract customers depends on a variety of factors. These factors include our consideration of current and future market conditions, our strategy to appropriately balance spot and contract tons to maximize profitability, our desire to sustain a diversified customer base, and our end-use customers’ perceptions about future market conditions. These sheet sales contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs and typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. The balance of our sheet steel sales was in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, whereby we maintain inventory levels to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled SBQ products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our plate, structural, and bar steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2011, approximately 86% of the production by our steel mills segment was sold to external customers. The balance of the steel mill segment’s production went to our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States. We make these products to the customers’ specifications and do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer term supply contracts may permit us to adjust our prices to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell fabricated reinforcing products only on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. The markets for these products are tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, the Company processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in Nucor’s steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. The Company also brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supplies ferro-alloys, and provides transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. The primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2011, approximately 12% of the ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes tons processed and sold by the raw materials segment were sold to external customers.

The Company’s other operations include international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.80 billion and $1.64 billion at December 31, 2011 and 2010, respectively. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.11 billion and $1.02 billion at December 31, 2011 and 2010, respectively. Order backlogs for the steel mills segment include orders attributable to Nucor’s downstream businesses. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used by internal divisions.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. On average, it takes approximately 1.1 tons of scrap and scrap substitutes to produce a ton of steel. As of December 31, 2011, DJJ operated over 60 scrap yards, and the Company’s annual scrap processing capability was approaching five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources. Nucor operates a DRI plant in Trinidad with a capacity of 1,800,000 metric tons of DRI annually. An expansion project has now increased the capacity to 2,000,000 metric tons annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facility in Trinidad is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. A second DRI facility in Louisiana with an annual capacity of 2,500,000 tons is under construction. This Louisiana DRI facility is the first phase of a multi-phase plan that may include an additional DRI facility, a coke plant, a blast furnace, a pellet plant and a steel mill.

In 2010, Nucor entered into an agreement with a natural gas exploration and production firm that involves drilling and completing onshore natural gas wells in U.S.-based proven reserves over a seven-year period that began in June 2010. Natural gas generated by this working interest drilling program is being sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of gas consumed by our Louisiana DRI facility. Revenues from natural gas generated by this working interest drilling program are a small but increasing amount, and all natural gas is being sold to outside parties.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products. Ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes are our single largest cost of products sold. A key part of our business strategy is to control a significant portion of the supply of high quality metallics needed to operate our steel mills.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facility in Trinidad is, and the DRI facility we are currently constructing in Louisiana will be, large consumers of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and a working interest agreement with a leading natural gas production firm to drill on-shore natural gas wells in the United States.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefitted from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and increasingly, by changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost of products sold for Nucor, we are continually striving to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also closely monitor developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global market place.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products, and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many domestic and foreign firms participating, and, as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric-arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric-arc furnace mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Our unfinished and finished steel products face domestic competition from both integrated steel producers and other electric-arc furnace mills. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products but face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric-arc furnace mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Recently we have experienced increased competition in the U.S. sheet steel market stemming from significant capacity increases. Since the beginning of 2010, domestic sheet capacity has increased by approximately 5,000,000 tons as a result of the opening of a new sheet facility in Alabama, capacity additions at existing sheet mills, and the reopening of a previously shuttered sheet mill in Maryland.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel and steel products often benefit from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. Foreign imports accounted for approximately 22% of the U.S. steel market in 2011. In particular, competition from steel imported from China, which accounts for more than 40% of the steel produced annually in the world, is a major challenge. Chinese producers, many of which are government-owned in whole or in part, continue to benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allows them to sell their products below cost. These distorting trade practices are not only widely recognized as being unfair but also have been challenged

successfully in some recent instances as violating world trade rules. Examples of successful challenges include the imposition of antidumping duty orders on imports of line pipe, oil country tubular goods, rebar, cut-to-length plate and hot rolled sheet from China.

China’s unfair trade practices seriously undermine the ability of the Company and other domestic producers to compete on price when left unchallenged. That country’s artificially lowered production costs have significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such a flight occurs, Nucor’s customer base is diminished, thereby providing us with fewer opportunities to supply steel to those shuttered businesses. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements and address the jobs crisis in the United States. Numerous downstream consumers of steel are also taking action against unfairly traded Chinese imports, as demonstrated by recently filed cases on steel wheels and wind towers from China.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Environmental Laws and Regulations

Our business operations are subject to numerous federal, state and local laws and regulations intended to protect the environment. The principal federal environmental laws include the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) that regulates air emissions; the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) that regulates water discharges; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) that addresses solid and hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal; and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”) that governs releases of, and remediation of sites contaminated by, hazardous substances. The states in which our operations are located also have state laws and regulations that are patterned on these and other federal laws.

We believe that we are in substantial compliance with the provisions of all federal and state environmental laws and regulations applicable to our business operations. Both federal and state laws and regulations are becoming increasingly stringent however, making compliance with them increasingly expensive and burdensome. In many instances the total costs of compliance are not readily quantifiable because compliance is so engrained in our operating philosophy that these costs are simply considered part of our standard operating procedures.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) has proposed or promulgated many new national ambient air quality standards and toxic air emissions rules for which it has not yet issued guidance or compliance deadlines. While we begin immediately to plan for compliance with such standards and rules, we cannot fully assess their impact on our operations until the guidance has been fully developed and issued and compliance deadlines have been established. In other cases where environmental regulations are proposed or promulgated that may regulate previously unregulated aspects of our operations, it is impossible for us to fully determine the impact of these regulations until protracted legal challenges have been concluded and USEPA or other regulatory agencies have developed and issued

technical guidance. Despite this atmosphere of regulatory uncertainty, at this time we do not believe that compliance with these new environmental regulations will have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

The CAA imposes stringent limits on air emissions with a federally mandated operating permit program administered by the states with civil and criminal enforcement sanctions. Each of our steel mills is required to operate in compliance with its permit or potentially incur sanctions for failing to do so. The DRI facility we are constructing in Louisiana was permitted under the CAA in January 2011. This permit included an evaluation and determination of Best Available Control Technology (“BACT”) for USEPA’s new “Greenhouse Gasses” (“GHGs”) rule. Because of the size of our steelmaking operations, they are also subject to these new GHG regulations and will be required to do GHG BACT evaluations if their permits are modified in the future. There is still a great deal of uncertainty and very little guidance from USEPA as to what is or may be considered GHG BACT for steelmaking operations. Our operations are properly permitted, and we will not need to make these determinations unless and until their permits are modified. Based on current guidance, we do not expect these requirements to have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition.

Nucor uses electric arc furnaces (“EAF”) to recycle scrap metal into new steel products. These EAFs use electricity as their primary source of energy. As the new GHG regulations, air toxics rules and other new environmental regulations are imposed on electric utilities, it is reasonable to expect that the cost of electricity produced by these utilities will increase. See Item 1A “Risk Factors” for more information about the potential impact of GHG regulations on Nucor’s business.

The CWA regulates water discharges and withdrawals. Nucor maintains discharge and withdrawal permits as appropriate at its facilities under the national pollutant discharge elimination system program of the CWA and conducts its operations in compliance with those permits. Nucor also maintains permits from local governments for the discharge of water into publicly owned treatment works where available.

RCRA establishes standards for the management of solid and hazardous wastes. RCRA also addresses the environmental impact of contamination from waste disposal activities and from recycling of and storage of most wastes. While Nucor believes it is in substantial compliance with these regulations, past waste disposal activities that were legal when conducted but now may pose a contamination threat are periodically discovered. These and off-site properties that USEPA has determined are contaminated, for which Nucor may be potentially responsible at some level, are quickly evaluated and corrected. While Nucor has conducted and is in the final stages of completing some cleanups under RCRA, these liabilities are either already identified and being resolved or have been fully resolved and Nucor is in receipt of no further action letters from the appropriate regulatory agency.

Because Nucor long ago implemented environmental practices that have resulted in the responsible disposal of waste materials, Nucor is also not presently considered a major contributor to any major cleanups under CERCLA for which Nucor has been named a potentially responsible party. Nucor continually evaluates these types of potential liabilities and, if appropriate, maintains reserves sufficient to remediate the identified liabilities. Under RCRA, private citizens may also bring an action against the operator of a regulated facility for potential damages and payment of cleanup costs. Nucor is confident that its system of internal evaluation and due diligence has sufficiently identified these types of potential liabilities so that compliance with these regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows or financial condition beyond that already reflected in the reserves established for them.

The primary raw material of Nucor’s steelmaking operations is scrap metal. The process of recycling scrap metal brings with it many contaminants such as paint, zinc, chrome and other metals that produce air emissions which are captured in Nucor emission control equipment. This filtrant (EAF dust) is classified as a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. Because these contaminants contain valuable metals, this filtrant is recycled to recover those metals. Nucor sends all but a small fraction of the EAF dust it produces to recycling facilities that recover the zinc, lead, chrome and other valuable metals from this dust. By recycling this material, Nucor is not only acting in a sustainable, responsible manner but is also substantially limiting its potential for future liability under both CERCLA and RCRA.

Nucor operates an aggressive and sustainable environmental program that incorporates the concept of individual employee as well as management responsibility for environmental performance. All of Nucor’s steelmaking operations are ISO 14001 certified. Achieving ISO 14001 certification means that each of Nucor’s steel mills has put an environmental management system in place with measurable targets and objectives, such as reducing the use of oil and grease and minimizing electricity use, and has implemented site-wide recycling programs. These environmental management systems make environmental commitment each Nucor teammate’s responsibility. Nucor’s environmental program maintains a high level of training, commitment, outreach and visibility.

Capital expenditures at our facilities that are associated with environmental regulation compliance for 2012 and 2013 are estimated to be less than $100 million per year.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and be innovative. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. Less than 100 employees are located in our executive office. The majority of Nucor’s 20,800 employees are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation and its affiliates (“Nucor” or the “Company”) manufacture steel and steel products. The Company also produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) for use in the Company’s steel mills. Through The David J. Joseph Company and its affiliates (“DJJ”), which the Company acquired in 2008, the Company also processes ferrous and nonferrous metals and brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and DRI. Most of the Company’s operating facilities and customers are located in North America, but increasingly, Nucor is doing business outside of North America as well. The Company’s operations include several international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by the Company and others.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary raw material in producing steel and steel products. In 2010, we recycled approximately 17 million tons of scrap steel.

General Development of our Business in Recent Years

Nucor has employed a multi-pronged growth strategy in recent years that allows for flexibility and the ability to capitalize on growth opportunities as they arise. The four prongs of that growth strategy have been: (1) optimizing existing operations, (2) growing through developing greenfield projects that capitalize on new technologies and unique marketplace opportunities, (3) acquiring other companies that will strengthen Nucor’s position as North America’s most diversified producer of steel and steel products and (4) growing internationally with an emphasis on leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies.

Optimizing our existing operations has primarily involved targeting a significant portion of our capital expenditures each year on projects that will enhance the productivity and efficiency of our existing facilities. We have also capitalized upon any production downtime during the economic downturn of the past few years to develop new product offerings at our existing operations. Growing through greenfield projects has included the construction of our special bar quality steel mill in Memphis, Tennessee, which we completed in 2009. We also began commercial production in 2009 at a new facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, which uses breakthrough Castrip® technology to strip cast molten steel into near final shape and thickness with minimal hot or cold rolling, allowing lower investment and operating costs. The Castrip technology also reduces the overall environmental impact of producing steel by generating significantly lower emissions than traditional steel producing technologies. In late 2010, we announced that we have selected St. James Parish, Louisiana as the site where we plan to construct a new DRI facility with a capacity of 2,500,000 tons of DRI per year.

The pace at which we have been acquiring other companies slowed dramatically in late 2008, but in the preceding four years we completed numerous acquisitions. Since late 2006 our annual capacity to produce downstream value-added products has more than doubled to over 4.5 million tons through acquisitions of a steel decking producer, fabricators of rebar, cold finished bars and steel grating, a manufacturer of metal buildings and a wire mesh fabricator. The acquisition of DJJ in the spring of 2008 was a key part of our strategy to better manage the supply of ferrous scrap metal, the primary raw material used by our electric arc furnace steel mills.

In 2008 we grew internationally, by opening a European office and entering into a joint investment with Duferco S.A., Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l., which operates a one million tons-per-year steel melt shop with a bloom billet caster in Brescia, Italy and four rolling mills located throughout Italy. The customers for the products produced by Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. are primarily steel service centers and distributors located in Italy, southern Europe and North Africa.

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In 2010, we entered into an agreement with Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) to form a newly created company, NuMit LLC, in which we own a 50% economic and voting interest. NuMit LLC owns 100% of the equity interest in Steel Technologies LLC, which operates 23 sheet processing facilities located throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in three segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings (loss) before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three fiscal years in the three-year period ended December 31, 2010 are set forth in Note 22 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Nucor’s 2010 Annual Report, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The steel mills are Nucor’s dominant segment representing approximately 69% of the Company’s sales to external customers in the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010.

Principal Products Produced

In the steel mills segment, Nucor produces sheet steel (hot and cold-rolled), plate steel, structural steel (wide-flange beams, beam blanks and sheet piling) and bar steel (blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing bar, merchant bar and special bar quality). Nucor manufactures steel principally from scrap steel and scrap steel substitutes using electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. In the steel products segment, Nucor produces steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, light gauge steel framing, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. In the raw materials segment, the Company produces DRI; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal.

Markets and Marketing

The steel mills segment sells its products primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers located throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and, increasingly, elsewhere in the world. Nucor produces hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel in standard grades and to customers’ specifications while maintaining inventories to fulfill anticipated orders. In 2010, approximately 40% of our sheet steel sales were to contract customers. These contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs and typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months. The balance of our sheet steel sales was in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale.

Our plate, structural, reinforcing and merchant bar steel come in standard sizes and grades, whereby we maintain inventory levels to meet our customers’ expected orders. In addition, our bar mill group manufactures hot-rolled special bar quality products to exacting specifications primarily servicing the automotive, energy, agricultural, heavy equipment and transportation sectors. Almost all of our plate, structural, and bar steel sales occur in the spot market at prevailing market prices.

In 2010, approximately 87% of the production by our steel mills segment was sold to external customers. The balance of the steel mill segment’s production went to our downstream joist, deck, rebar fabrication, fastener, metal buildings and cold finish operations.

In the steel products segment, we sell steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck to general contractors and fabricators located throughout the United States that we make to their order. We do not maintain inventories of these finished steel products. The majority of these contracts are firm, fixed-price contracts that are in most cases competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer term supply contracts may permit us to adjust our prices to

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reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. We sell fabricated reinforcing products only on a construction contract bid basis. These products are used by contractors in constructing highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. We manufacture cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh in standard sizes and maintain inventories of these products to fulfill anticipated orders. We sell cold finished steel and steel fasteners primarily to distributors and manufacturers located throughout the United States and Canada.

We market products from the steel mills and steel products segments mainly through in-house sales forces. The markets for these products are tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in general economic conditions.

In the raw materials segment, the Company processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal for use in Nucor’s steel mills and for sale to various domestic and international external customers. The Company also brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals and scrap substitutes, supplies ferro-alloys, and provides transportation, material handling and other services to users of scrap metals. The primary external customers for ferrous scrap are electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries that use ferrous scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. External customers purchasing nonferrous scrap metal include aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. We market scrap metal products and related services to our external customers through in-house sales forces. In 2010, approximately 13% of the ferrous and nonferrous scrap tons processed and sold by the raw materials segment were sold to external customers.

The Company’s other operations include international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products that Nucor and other steel producers have manufactured.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.64 billion and $1.04 billion at December 31, 2010 and 2009, respectively. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $1.02 billion and $954.6 million at December 31, 2010 and 2009, respectively. Order backlogs for the steel mills segment include orders attributable to Nucor’s downstream businesses. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. Order backlog within our raw materials segment is not significant because the majority of the raw materials that segment produces are used by internal divisions.

Sources and Availability of Raw Materials

The primary raw materials for our steel mills segment are ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes such as pig iron, DRI and HBI. As of December 31, 2010, DJJ operated 59 scrap yards, and the Company’s annual scrap processing capability was approaching five million tons. DJJ acquires ferrous scrap from numerous sources including manufacturers of products made from steel, industrial plants, scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers and demolition firms. We purchase pig iron as needed from a variety of sources. Nucor operates a DRI plant in Trinidad with a capacity of 1,800,000 metric tons of DRI annually. The primary raw material for our DRI facility in Trinidad is iron ore, which we purchase from various international suppliers. Nucor has announced plans to construct a second DRI facility in the State of Louisiana at a location on the Mississippi river with a capacity of 2,500,000 tons of DRI annually. During the second quarter of 2010, Nucor entered into an agreement with a natural gas exploration and production firm that will involve drilling and completing on-shore natural gas wells in U.S.-based proven reserves over a seven-year period that began in June 2010. Natural gas generated by this working interest drilling program will be sold to offset our exposure to the volatility of the price of gas consumed by our planned Louisiana DRI facility.

The primary raw material for our steel products segment is steel produced by Nucor’s steel mills.

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DJJ generally purchases ferrous and nonferrous scrap for sale to external customers from the same variety of sources it purchases ferrous scrap for use as a raw material in Nucor’s steel mills. DJJ does not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The availability and price of ferrous scrap are affected by changes in the global supply and demand for steel and steel products. Ferrous scrap and scrap substitutes are our single largest cost of products sold. A key part of our business strategy is to control a significant portion of the supply of high quality metallics needed to operate our steel mills.

Energy Consumption and Costs

Our steel mills are large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Our DRI facility in Trinidad is, and the DRI facility we are planning to construct in Louisiana will be, a large consumer of natural gas. Consequently, we use a variety of strategies to manage our exposure to price risk of natural gas, including cash flow hedges and a working interest agreement with a leading natural gas production firm to drill on-shore natural gas wells in the United States.

Historically, manufacturers in the United States have benefitted from relatively stable and competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly global marketplace. The availability and prices of electricity and natural gas are influenced today, however, by many factors including changes in supply and demand, advances in drilling technology and increasingly, by changes in public policy relating to energy production and use. Because energy is such a significant cost of products sold for Nucor, we are continually striving to make our operations in all three of our business segments more energy efficient. We also monitor closely developments in public policy relating to energy production and consumption. When appropriate, we work to shape those developments in ways that we believe will allow us to continue to be a competitive producer of steel and steel products in an increasingly competitive global market place.

Competition

We compete in a variety of steel and metal markets, including markets for finished steel products, unfinished steel products, and raw materials. These markets are highly competitive with many firms participating and as a result of this highly competitive environment, we find that we primarily compete on price and service.

Our electric-arc furnace steel mills face many different forms of competition, including integrated steel producers (who use iron ore converted into liquid form in a blast furnace as their basic raw material instead of scrap steel), other electric-arc furnace mills, foreign imports and alternative materials. Our unfinished and finished steel products face domestic competition from both integrated steel producers and other electric-arc furnace mills. Large integrated steel producers have the ability to manufacture a wide variety of products, but they face significantly higher energy costs and are often burdened with higher capital and fixed operating costs. Electric-arc furnace mill producers such as Nucor are sensitive to increases in scrap prices, but tend to have lower capital and fixed operating costs compared with integrated steel producers.

Competition from foreign steel and steel product producers presents unique challenges for us. Imported steel often benefits from government subsidies, either directly or indirectly through government-owned enterprises or government-owned or controlled financial institutions. Foreign imports accounted for approximately 21% of the U.S. steel market in 2010. In particular, competition from steel imported from China, which accounts for more than 40% of the steel produced annually in the world, is a major challenge. Chinese producers, many of which are government-owned in whole or in part, continue to benefit from their government’s manipulation of foreign currency exchange rates and from the receipt of government subsidies, which allows them to sell their products below cost. These distorting trade practices are not only widely recognized as being unfair but also have been challenged successfully as violating world trade rules in some recent instances. One of many recent examples occurred when the United States International Trade Commission mandated an antidumping duty order on imports of certain oil country tubular goods from China because it determined that those products are sold in the United States at less than fair value.

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The Chinese unfair trade practices seriously undermine the ability of the Company and other domestic producers to compete on price when left unchallenged. China’s artificially lowered production costs have significantly contributed to the exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States. When such a flight occurs, Nucor’s customer base is diminished, thereby providing us with fewer opportunities to supply steel to those shuttered businesses. Rigorous trade law enforcement is critical to our ability to maintain our competitive position against foreign producers that engage in unlawful trade practices. Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements and address the jobs crisis in the United States.

We also experience competition from other materials. Depending on our customers’ end use of our products, there are sometimes other materials, such as concrete, aluminum, plastics, composites and wood that compete with our steel products. When the price of steel relative to other raw materials rises, these alternatives become more attractive to our customers.

Competition in our scrap and raw materials business is also vigorous. The scrap metals market consists of many firms and is highly fragmented. Firms typically compete on price and geographic proximity to the sources of scrap metal.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and be innovative. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. Only 90 employees are located in our executive office. The majority of Nucor’s 20,500 employees are not represented by labor unions.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation was incorporated in Delaware in 1958. Nucor and affiliates are manufacturers of steel and steel products, with operating facilities and customers primarily located in North America and, increasingly, internationally. In February 2008, Nucor acquired The David J. Joseph Company (“DJJ”) and its affiliates. Through DJJ, Nucor also brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron (“HBI”) and direct reduced iron (“DRI”); supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap. Additionally, the Company’s operations include international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary material in producing our products. In 2009, we recycled approximately 13.4 million tons of scrap steel.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in the following segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings (loss) before income taxes and noncontrolling interests, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2009 are set forth in Note 22 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements of the 2009 Annual Report, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Principal Products Produced

Principal products from the steel mills segment are hot-rolled steel (angles, rounds, flats, channels, sheet, wide-flange beams, pilings, billets, blooms, beam blanks and plate) and cold-rolled steel. Principal products from the steel products segment are steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, light gauge steel framing, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. The raw materials segment produces DRI from Nucor’s facility in Trinidad; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, HBI and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap.

Hot-rolled steel is manufactured principally from scrap and scrap substitutes, utilizing electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. Cold-rolled steel, cold finished steel, steel joists and joist girders, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, grating and expanded metal, cold drawn wire and steel fasteners are manufactured by further processing of hot-rolled steel. Steel deck, light gauge steel framing and wire mesh are manufactured from cold-rolled and cold drawn steel.

Markets and Marketing

In the steel mills segment, hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel are produced to customer orders. In addition, other hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel are manufactured in standard sizes and inventories are maintained. In 2009, approximately 86% of the steel mills segment production was sold to non-affiliated customers; the remainder was used internally by the steel products segment. Hot-rolled steel and cold-rolled steel are sold primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers throughout the United States and, increasingly, internationally. In 2009, approximately 30% of our sheet steel sales were made to contract customers with the balance of sales made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. These contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs and typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months.

In the steel products segment, steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck are sold to general contractors and fabricators throughout the United States. Substantially all work is to order and no unsold inventories of finished

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products are maintained. The majority of sales contracts are firm fixed-price contracts and are normally competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer term contracts may permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw materials costs. Reinforcing products are sold on a construction contract bid basis. Product applications include highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. Cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh are manufactured in standard sizes and inventories are maintained. Cold finished steel and steel fasteners are sold primarily to distributors and manufacturers throughout the United States and Canada.

Products from the steel mills and steel products segments are marketed mainly through in-house sales forces. The principal competitive factors are price and service. The markets that Nucor serves are tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in economic conditions. Considerable competition exists from numerous domestic manufacturers and foreign imports.

In the raw materials segment, ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal is processed and sold to domestic and international consumers. Additionally, brokerage of scrap substitutes, supply of ferro-alloy, and transportation, material handling and other services are provided to users of scrap metals. The primary customers for ferrous scrap are steel mills and foundries that use scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. Nonferrous customers include aluminum can companies, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. Scrap products and services are marketed through in-house sales forces. In 2009, approximately 18% of the ferrous and nonferrous scrap tons sold by the raw materials segment were to non-affiliated customers.

Additionally, the Company’s other operations include international trading companies that buy and sell steel and steel products manufactured by Nucor mills as well as other steel manufacturers.

Due to the global economic crisis that began in the second half of 2008 and continued through 2009, there has been a widespread weakening of global economic conditions resulting in decreased capital spending. Because of this deterioration, the related demand for our products has diminished. Looking forward into the first quarter of 2010, we believe that steel market conditions will remain extremely challenging. One indicator of general economic conditions is the unemployment rate. In December 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the U6 real unemployment rate of 17%. The U6 rate includes total unemployed plus workers who want to work full time but are employed part time for economic reasons. Another indicator of market conditions for our industry is the capacity utilization rate. According to the American Steel Institute, industry capacity utilization rates for 2009 were 51% compared to 81% in 2008 and 87% in 2007. As a result, we believe that any increased demand in the North American steel markets will be part of a long, slow recovery.

We anticipate that global demand in 2010 will bring the steel industry close to production levels experienced prior to the current economic recession, with North America and Europe trailing behind growth in other parts of the world. Any sizeable increase in demand in North America will primarily come from replenishing inventory following the destocking that occurred in late 2008 and early 2009. Additionally, we expect moderate growth in global demand over the next five years, primarily related to the continued building of infrastructure in China, India and other industrializing nations of the world.

In the midst of this economic crisis, Nucor has been active in calling on policymakers to enforce global trade agreements and address the jobs crisis in the United States. The illegal trade practices of some of our trading partners, particularly China, continue to be an important concern for the company. In mid-2008, in response to the global economic crisis, China returned to its practice of pegging its currency to the dollar. Chinese currency manipulation has contributed to huge U.S. trade deficits and the shrinking of our country’s manufacturing base. The Obama Administration has begun to take positive steps toward enforcing trade agreements. The Commerce Secretary and U.S. Trade Representative have both stated that enforcement of trade agreements is essential. The President has also acknowledged the role that the currency policies of our

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competitors can play in creating competitive disadvantages. The Administration put this acknowledgement into action when it imposed duties on tires and oil country tubular goods from China during November 2009.

In order to jump-start economic growth, Nucor has urged lawmakers to increase spending on our country’s outdated and deteriorating infrastructure. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need $2.2 trillion in spending over the next five years to repair and update our infrastructure in order to keep the nation globally competitive. The stimulus package passed in early 2009 allocated only $110 billion out of the total $787 billion package for infrastructure, of which less than half of the funds allocated to infrastructure have actually been spent at the date of this filing. We have also encouraged efforts to replace foreign sources of energy with domestically-produced energy as a way to reduce our trade deficit and secure reliable, affordable sources of energy. Traditional and energy-related infrastructure projects would help create the jobs needed to offset the 8.4 million jobs lost during this recession.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.55 billion and $1.42 billion at December 31, 2009 and 2008, respectively. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was approximately $954.6 million and $1.38 billion at December 31, 2009 and 2008, respectively. Order backlogs for the steel mills segment include orders attributable to Nucor’s downstream businesses. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. The decrease in backlog orders in the steel products segments is due to the economic downturn, which was particularly severe in the non-residential construction markets. The construction markets represent a significant percentage of sales for our steel mills and steel products segment. Due to the nature of our raw materials business, order backlog within the raw materials segment is not significant.

Raw Materials

The primary raw material for the steel mills segment is ferrous scrap, which is mostly acquired via DJJ’s brokerage service from numerous sources throughout the country, including our DJJ scrap processing facilities. The primary raw material for the steel products segment is steel, which is almost entirely purchased from the steel mills segment. In the raw materials segment, we purchase ferrous and nonferrous scrap from the following primary sources: (i) manufacturers and industrial plants or other sources that generate or recycle steel scrap, aluminum, copper, stainless steel and other nonferrous metals; and (ii) scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers, demolition firms and others who generate steel that they collect from a variety of sources. We do not purchase a significant amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The primary raw material for our DRI facility in Trinidad is iron ore, which is purchased from various international suppliers.

The average scrap and scrap substitute cost per ton used has decreased by 31% from the historically high levels of $438 in 2008 to $303 in 2009. During both years, Nucor used a raw material surcharge as a component of our product pricing to help offset the impact of volatile scrap prices.

Changes in scrap prices are based on changes in the global supply and demand for scrap, which is tied to the global supply and demand for steel products. From late 2003 until third quarter 2008, demand for scrap and other raw materials rose sharply in response to increased demand, both domestically and internationally, for a wide range of products made from steel without a corresponding increase in the global supply of those raw materials. Although steel demand has weakened recently causing a decrease in scrap pricing, the surcharge mechanism to offset raw materials pricing changes is still in place. Our surcharges are based upon changes in widely-available market indices for prices of scrap and other raw materials. We monitor those changes closely and make adjustments as needed, but generally on a monthly basis, to the surcharges and sometimes directly to the selling prices, for our products. The majority of our steel sales are to spot market customers who place their orders each month based on their business needs and our pricing competitiveness compared with both domestic and global

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producers and trading companies. We also include in all of our contracts a method of adjusting prices on a periodic basis to reflect changes in market pricing for scrap. Contract sales typically have a term ranging from six months to two years. There will always be a timing difference between changes in the prices we pay for raw materials and the adjustments we make. We attempt to manage the risk associated with this timing difference via the surcharge mechanism, which our customers understand is a necessary response by us to the market forces of supply and demand for our raw materials.

Nucor’s margins and overall profitability are affected by the global balance of supply and demand for steel. We believe our variable cost structure, combined with our financial strength and liquidity, allowed us to survive the severely depressed steel industry market conditions of 2002-2003 and 2008-2009 as scrap prices fell dramatically and our incentive pay system reduced our hourly and salary payroll costs, helping to offset lower selling prices. We recognize that the steel business is cyclical in nature and expect to see future changes in the balance of supply and demand impact our margins and profitability.

Energy Consumption

The steel mills are also large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Nucor uses cash flow hedges to partially manage its exposure to price risk of natural gas that is used during the manufacturing process. Historically, U.S. based manufacturers have enjoyed competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on equal footing in what is becoming more and more a global market. While we support policies promoting expanded drilling for natural gas, our country also needs to pursue the construction of new coal-fired and nuclear power plants. Although our government has prevented access to some of the most promising areas for natural gas exploration, continued advances in drilling technology (particularly shale gas recovery) have resulted in increased proven reserves. As a result, natural gas prices have been volatile, increasing from less than $2.00 per mmbtu in the 1990’s (NYMEX Henry-Hub pricing) to a peak of more than $15.00 per mmbtu in December 2005 and then declining beginning in mid-2008 to prices below $4.00 per mmbtu in the summer of 2009. Forward contract prices for 2010 are currently averaging less than $6.00 per mmbtu due to increased reserves, the weak economy and reduced industrial demand. Any form of greenhouse gas legislation is likely to further increase the share of electricity generated by natural gas, thereby increasing costs for consumers of electricity. Nucor actively supports several organizations that are promoting a more rational energy policy. We believe this is critical not only for our future business success, but also for the future of the U.S. economy. Supplies of raw materials and energy have been, and are expected to be, adequate to operate our facilities.

As a carbon steel producer, Nucor will likely be impacted by legislative and regulatory efforts in the U.S. Nucor is also the largest recycler in the U.S. and, as such, has significantly contributed to the steel industry’s 29% drop in Greenhouse Gas (“GHG”) emissions over the last two decades. Nucor and the rest of the steel industry are continually singled out as already having made the right choices and being models for other industry sectors. The growth of Nucor has in large part been one of the drivers of this reduction.

At present it appears that legislative efforts directed at climate change are correctly being focused on the negative impact that “cap and trade” type legislation would have on manufacturers and the jobs they represent. It is difficult to evaluate the impact of any legislation that at present is only theoretical, but it is possible to make some general statements about the overall concept, particularly as climate change legislation or regulation would apply to Nucor’s cost of operations.

Most versions of climate change “cap and trade” legislation treat the steel industry favorably with respect to allowances for emissions that will facilitate production. However, it is the indirect, increased costs for energy resulting from climate change legislation or regulation that are Nucor’s primary concern. Climate change legislation or regulation will have a negative impact on utilities that will result in an increase in the cost of energy that Nucor consumes at its operations. Higher energy costs would make Nucor and other U.S. based

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manufacturers less competitive with other producers in the increasingly global market for steel and steel products. For this reason, Nucor believes it is critical that the U.S. should increase the supply of economical nuclear power and natural gas instead of relying on production of electricity from more expensive alternate sources such as solar and wind.

The severity of the impact on Nucor’s operations of increased energy costs will depend upon the specifics of any climate change legislation or regulation. For this reason, Nucor has for some time been actively involved in efforts, both internally and externally, to improve energy efficiency at all levels of its operations. These efforts include participation in Climate Vision, the World Steel Sector Initiative and the Asia Pacific Partnership. Nucor also tracks energy intensity internally and provides the managers of its various operations with targets for improvement.

The Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes to regulate GHG’s under the Clean Air Act. Because most of Nucor’s operations are already subject to the EPA’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (“PSD”) and New Source Review (“NSR”) rules that were also promulgated under the Clean Air Act, complying with any new rules regulating GHG’s should not present significantly new challenges beyond the already cumbersome permitting process. The EPA’s authority to adopt rules regulating GHG’s has already been challenged in court by several states, and the rules themselves when they are adopted will be subject to legal challenges. Therefore, we do not expect the proposed rules regulating GHG’s will be implemented for some time.

Strategic Growth Initiatives

Nucor employs a multi-pronged growth strategy allowing for flexibility and the ability to capitalize on growth opportunities at any point in time. The objective of our strategy is profitable growth that will allow for maximum shareholder returns. The four prongs include:

• Optimization of existing operations

• Greenfield growth that capitalizes on new technologies and unique marketplace opportunities

• Acquisitions

• International growth with an emphasis on leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies

Inherent in our growth strategy and our business model is our culture. It is a culture based on teamwork, continual improvement and long-term strategic thinking. Over the years, our culture and philosophy have enabled us to operate in a downturn the same way we operate during periods of economic strength. In fact, Nucor has a long history of taking advantage of economic downturns to grow stronger and expand our long-term earnings power. It is worth noting that a healthy portion of the profits realized for several years leading up until 2009 were generated by assets that we built or acquired during the last economic downturn experienced during the 2001 to 2003 time period. These highly successful growth initiatives included our entry into the plate market, and the acquisitions of Auburn Steel, Birmingham Steel and Trico Steel.

While the current economic downturn presents a number of risks to Nucor and the steel industry, we also believe that such an environment will present unusually attractive growth opportunities to a company that is in Nucor’s position of strength. We believe our strong balance sheet and disciplined approach will enable us to capitalize on these opportunities and continue to build Nucor into a better and more profitable company well into the future.

Optimization of existing operations

Nucor emphasizes optimizing existing operations in order to keep them state-of-the-art and globally competitive. Capital expenditures are currently projected to be approximately $400 million in 2010, which is

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consistent with capital spending levels in 2009. As discussed in further detail below, several of our greenfield projects were substantially completed in 2009, including our special bar quality mill in Memphis, Tennessee, our Castrip® facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, and our galvanizing facility in Decatur, Alabama. We began work on a new heat treating facility in Hertford County, North Carolina, and on expansion of capacity at our Nu-Iron DRI plant in Trinidad. However, the majority of the projected capital expenditures for 2010 will be used to enhance the productivity and efficiency of our existing facilities.

Greenfield growth

We continue to increase our presence in the steel mills segment through greenfield projects such as our special bar quality (“SBQ”) mill in Memphis, Tennessee, which has an estimated annual capacity of 850,000 tons. Complementing our mills in South Carolina and Nebraska, the Memphis mill positions Nucor to provide the most diverse, highest quality and lowest cost SBQ offering in North America. At the start of 2009, we began shipping SBQ from the Memphis mill to our customers.

Another greenfield project is the Castrip facility in Blytheville, Arkansas, which began production in late 2009. Nucor began operations of its other Castrip facility in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 2002. These facilities use the breakthrough technology of strip casting, to which Nucor holds exclusive rights in the United States and Brazil. Strip casting involves the direct casting of molten steel into near final shape and thickness with minimal hot or cold rolling, allowing lower investment and operating costs, reduced energy consumption and smaller scale plants than can be economically built with current technology. This process also reduces the overall environmental impact of producing steel by generating significantly lower emissions. We continue to explore potential new joint ventures utilizing the Castrip technology.

In November 2009, we commissioned the previously idle Kingman, Arizona, rolling mill that we acquired in 2003. Operations will begin in the second quarter of 2010 with initial output of straight-length rebar, coiled rebar and wire rod slated for production of more than 100,000 tons with the ability to increase annual production to 500,000 tons. Also during 2009, we commenced operations at the new galvanizing facility at our sheet mill in Decatur, Alabama. The addition of the Decatur galvanizing line will increase Nucor’s value-added coated flat rolled products annual capacity by one-third to two million tons per year.

Nucor also began construction on a plate heat treating facility at our plate mill in Hertford County, North Carolina. The heat treat line will have an estimated annual capacity of 120,000 tons and will have the ability to produce heat treated plate from 3/16” to 2” thick.

We recently began a project to expand the capacity of our Nu-Iron DRI production facility in Trinidad. This project will increase Nu-Iron’s production capacity of high-quality iron units. The project is expected to be complete in late 2010. The Trinidad site benefits from a low-cost supply of natural gas and favorable logistics for receipt of Brazilian iron ore and shipment of DRI to the U.S.

In May 2008, Nucor applied for a permit to build an iron-making facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana. This project has been significantly delayed while we continue working through an extended permitting process and monitor the status of proposed climate change legislation. We remain committed to our goal of controlling one-third of our iron inputs via pig iron, direct reduced iron or other iron-making technologies and have several options under development to complement or replace our Louisiana blast furnace project if the consequences of climate change legislation makes that project unviable.

Acquisitions

Nucor’s acquisitions over the past few years have strengthened our position as North America’s most diversified producer of steel and steel products. This diversity has been a significant factor in Nucor’s increased

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profitability through 2008 and added market share across multiple product categories. Although our acquisition initiatives were put on hold in late 2008 because of the economic crisis, we did add to our rebar fabrication footprint with the acquisition of Free State Steel in 2009. We continue to meet with potential acquisition targets and joint venture partners as we evaluate opportunities in the economic downturn to grow Nucor’s long-term earnings power for our shareholders.

The annual capacity of Nucor’s downstream value-added products has more than doubled since late 2006 to over 4.5 million tons. We have done this with our very successful acquisitions of Verco Manufacturing Company in steel decking; Harris Steel Group Inc. in rebar fabrication, cold finished bars and metal grating; LMP Steel & Wire Company in cold finished bars; Magnatrax Corporation in metal buildings; and Nelson Steel, Inc. in wire mesh. Harris Steel has been a growth platform for Nucor over the past three years, having completed numerous acquisitions in the months following Nucor’s initial acquisition in 2007. With the acquisition of Ambassador Steel, Inc. in 2008, Harris increased our rebar fabrication capacity to over 1.5 million tons.

In February 2008, Nucor announced the acquisition of SHV North America Corporation, which owns 100% of DJJ and certain affiliates. Since scrap is our largest single cost, this strategic investment provides an ideal growth platform for Nucor to expand its direct ownership in the steel scrap supply chain and further our raw materials strategy. By the end of 2008, Nucor added approximately one million tons of scrap processing and 23 locations via four scrap processing acquisitions executed by DJJ’s management team. Although the economy precluded our team from pursuing acquisitions in 2009, we expect to add additional scrap capacity in 2010. Nucor’s total scrap processing capacity is now approaching five million tons. Additionally, DJJ brokers ferrous scrap, ferro-alloys and non-ferrous metals and internationally sources scrap, pig iron and scrap substitutes. The DJJ Mill and Industrial Services business provides logistics and metallurgical blending operations and offers on-site handling and trading of industrial scrap. The DJJ Rail Services business oversees a large private fleet of rail cars dedicated to scrap movement and offers complete railcar fleet management and leases for third parties. All of these businesses have strategic value to Nucor as the most diversified North American steel producer.

International growth

In 2008, Nucor opened a European office and entered into a joint investment with Duferco S. A. In July 2008, Nucor acquired a 50% equity interest in Duferdofin Nucor S.r.l. for approximately $671.3 million (including $4.3 million paid in 2009 as an adjustment to the purchase price). Duferdofin Nucor operates a one million ton-per-year steel melt shop with a bloom/billet caster in Brescia, Italy. The Company also operates four rolling mills located throughout Italy—two beam mills, one track shoes/cutting edges mill and a new merchant/rebar mill. The rolling mill capacities include 1 million metric tons for beams, 55,000 metric tons for track shoes/cutting edges and 450,000 metric tons for bar. The new merchant/rebar mill was commissioned in late 2009. Duferdofin Nucor’s customers are primarily steel service centers and distributors located in Italy, Southern Europe and North Africa.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and be innovative. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. Only 90 employees are located in our executive office. The majority of Nucor’s 20,400 employees are not represented by labor unions.

Additional Information Incorporated by Reference

Additional information on Nucor’s business is incorporated by reference to Nucor’s 2009 Annual Report, pages 8 through 19.

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Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.

Overview

Nucor Corporation was incorporated in Delaware in 1958. Nucor and affiliates are manufacturers of steel and steel products, with operating facilities and customers primarily located in North America. In February 2008, Nucor acquired The David J. Joseph Company (“DJJ”) and its affiliates. Through DJJ, Nucor also brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron and HBI/DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap.

Nucor is North America’s largest recycler, using scrap steel as the primary material in producing our products. In 2008, we recycled approximately 20 million tons of scrap steel.

Segments

Nucor reports its results in the following segments: steel mills, steel products and raw materials. Net sales to external customers, intercompany sales, depreciation expense, amortization expense, earnings before income taxes, assets and capital expenditures by segment for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2008 as well as geographic information for the two years ended December 31, 2008, are set forth in Note 22 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements of the 2008 Annual Report, which note is hereby incorporated by reference.

Principal Products Produced

Principal products from the steel mills segment are hot-rolled steel (angles, rounds, flats, channels, sheet, wide-flange beams, pilings, billets, blooms, beam blanks and plate) and cold-rolled steel. Principal products from the steel products segment are steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, metal building systems, light gauge steel framing, steel grating and expanded metal, and wire and wire mesh. The raw materials segment produces direct reduced iron (“DRI”) from Nucor’s facility in Trinidad; brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron and HBI/DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; and processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap.

Hot-rolled steel is manufactured principally from scrap and scrap substitutes, utilizing electric arc furnaces, continuous casting and automated rolling mills. Cold-rolled steel, cold finished steel, steel joists and joist girders, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, grating and expanded metal, cold drawn wire and steel fasteners are manufactured by further processing of hot-rolled steel. Steel deck, light gauge steel framing and wire mesh are manufactured from cold-rolled and cold drawn steel.

Markets and Marketing

In the steel mills segment, hot-rolled and cold-rolled sheet steel are produced to customer orders. In addition, other hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel are manufactured in standard sizes and inventories are maintained. In 2008, approximately 89% of the steel mills segment production was sold to non-affiliated customers; the remainder was used internally by the steel products segment. Hot-rolled steel and cold-rolled steel are sold primarily to steel service centers, fabricators and manufacturers throughout the United States. In 2008, approximately 40% of our sheet steel sales were made to contract customers with the balance of sales made in the spot market at prevailing prices at the time of sale. These contracts permit price adjustments to reflect changes in prevailing raw material costs and typically have terms ranging from six to twelve months.

In the steel products segment, steel joists and joist girders, and steel deck are sold to general contractors and fabricators throughout the United States. Substantially all work is to order and no unsold inventories of finished products are maintained. The majority of sales contracts are firm fixed-price contracts and are normally competitively bid against other suppliers. Longer term contracts may permit price adjustments to reflect changes

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in prevailing raw materials costs. Reinforcing products are sold on a construction contract bid basis. Product applications include highways, bridges, reservoirs, utilities, hospitals, schools, airports, stadiums and high-rise buildings. Cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating, wire and wire mesh are manufactured in standard sizes and inventories are maintained. Cold finished steel and steel fasteners are sold primarily to distributors and manufacturers throughout the United States and Canada.

Products from the steel mills and steel products segments are marketed mainly through in-house sales forces. The principal competitive factors are price and service. The markets that Nucor serves are tied to capital and durable goods spending and are affected by changes in economic conditions. Considerable competition exists from numerous domestic manufacturers and foreign imports.

In the raw materials segment, ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal is processed and sold to domestic and international consumers. Additionally, brokerage of scrap substitutes, supply of ferro-alloy, and transportation, material handling and other services are provided to users of scrap metals. The primary customers for ferrous scrap are steel mills and foundries that use scrap as a raw material in their manufacturing process. Nonferrous customers include aluminum can companies, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors and consumers of various nonferrous metals. Scrap products and services are marketed through in-house sales forces. In 2008, approximately 20% of the ferrous and nonferrous scrap tons sold by the raw materials segment were to non-affiliated customers.

Due to the global liquidity crisis that has resulted in the rapid weakening of global economic stability, capital spending and the related demand for our products remains depressed. In response, the United States Congress has recently enacted economic stimulus legislation that includes funds for infrastructure that should help capital spending in the months and years to come. This spending package includes “Buy America” language that should benefit our industry. The timing of this stimulus spending is uncertain, however, and we are preparing for a long period of depressed demand.

In the past, unfairly traded steel imports have had a devastating effect on the U.S. steel industry and its workers. We have continued the aggressive trade case work in which we have engaged over the years with our participation in the current statutory five-year sunset reviews of existing duties. In late 2006, the United States International Trade Commission chose to remove the duties that were in place on many of the countries involved in dumping these products into the United States. As a result, more foreign steel has continued to enter our borders with negative effects on several segments of the steel industry. The current economic crisis brings with it a renewed concern that illegally traded steel will once again become a major issue in our market, the world’s most open trading market. The past history of illegally traded steel imports has forced Nucor to become a realist regarding global trade. We will continue to fight illegally dumped foreign steel in support of both free and fair trade.

In 2008, Nucor aggressively supported the adoption of a Chinese Currency bill that would identify the mercantilist practices of currency manipulation that result in distorted trade, an insurmountable trade deficit and the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Several bills were generated in the House and Senate, but none were enacted into law. Our coalition supporting these bills was broad, reaching across multiple industries, and ultimately drew attention to the domestic manufacturing job loss issue. In 2009, we hope that newly proposed legislation will unite Congress in an effort to maintain and enforce laws ensuring free and fair trade. The current Treasury Secretary has said informally that China manipulates its currency. This is a more positive step than anything accomplished by the prior administration. Nucor actively supports several organizations that promote free and fair trade and oppose currency manipulation.

Backlog

In the steel mills segment, Nucor’s backlog of orders was approximately $1.42 billion and $2.74 billion at December 31, 2008 and 2007, respectively. Nucor’s backlog of orders in the steel products segment was

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approximately $1.38 billion and $1.51 billion at December 31, 2008 and 2007, respectively. Order backlogs for the steel mills segment include orders attributable to Nucor’s downstream businesses. The majority of these orders will be filled within one year. The decrease in backlog orders in both segments is due to the economic downturn that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008 and has continued into 2009. This downturn is severe in the construction markets, which represent a significant percentage of sales for our steel mills and steel products segment. Due to the nature of our raw materials business, order backlog within the raw materials segment is not significant.

Raw Materials

The primary raw material for the steel mills segment is ferrous scrap, which is primarily acquired via DJJ’s brokerage service from numerous sources throughout the country, including our DJJ scrap processing facilities. The primary raw material for the steel products segment is steel, which is almost entirely purchased from the steel mills segment. In the raw materials segment, we purchase ferrous and nonferrous scrap from the following primary sources: (i) manufacturers and industrial plants or other sources which generate or recycle steel scrap, aluminum, copper, stainless steel and other nonferrous metals; and (ii) scrap dealers, peddlers, auto wreckers, demolition firms and others who generate steel which they collect from a variety of sources. We do not purchase a material amount of scrap metal from a single source or from a limited number of major sources. The primary raw material for our DRI facility in Trinidad is iron ore which is purchased from various international suppliers.

The average scrap and scrap substitute cost per ton used remained at historically high levels in 2007 and 2008, increasing 13% from $246 in 2006 to $278 in 2007 and increasing an additional 58% to $438 in 2008. During both years, Nucor used a raw material surcharge as a component of our product pricing to help offset the impact of volatile scrap prices.

Changes in scrap prices are based on changes in the global supply and demand for scrap, which is tied to the global supply and demand for steel products. From late 2003 until third quarter 2008, demand for scrap and other raw materials rose sharply in response to increased demand, both domestically and internationally, for a wide range of products made from steel without a corresponding increase in the global supply of those raw materials. Our surcharges are based upon changes in widely-available market indices for prices of scrap and other raw materials. We monitor those changes closely and make adjustments as needed, but generally on a monthly basis, to the surcharges and sometimes directly to the selling prices, for our products. The majority of our steel sales are to spot market customers who place their orders each month based on their business needs and our pricing competitiveness compared with both domestic and global producers and trading companies. We also include in all of our contracts a method of adjusting prices on a monthly basis to reflect changes in scrap prices. Contract sales typically have a term ranging from six months to two years. Although there will always be a timing difference between changes in the prices we pay for raw materials and the adjustments we make, we believe that the surcharge mechanism, which our customers understand is a necessary response by us to the market forces of supply and demand for our raw materials, has until recently been an effective means of maintaining our margins.

In the fourth quarter, Nucor experienced a rapid fall-off in sales due to weaker market conditions. Since pig iron and certain grades of scrap have lead times of four to six months, dramatically reduced sales volumes resulted in the accumulation of increased tons of inventories (primarily at our steel mills) ordered at peak market prices. Our margins will be reduced until we work through this high priced inventory.

Nucor’s margins and overall profitability are affected by the global balance of supply and demand for steel. Our margins have been much stronger since 2002 and 2003 when most domestic and global steel companies reported operating losses and many filed for bankruptcy. We believe our variable cost structure allowed us to survive those severely depressed market conditions as scrap prices fell dramatically and our incentive pay system reduced our hourly and salary payroll costs, helping to offset lower selling prices. We recognize that the steel business is cyclical in nature and expect to see future changes in the balance of supply and demand impact our

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margins and profitability. We also recognize that the global demand for steel has been growing at close to 6% annually since 2000 reflecting the building of infrastructure in Brazil, Russia, India, China, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and other parts of Asia. We believe this growth in steel consumption is likely to resume once the global economy emerges from the current severe recession.

The steel mills are also large consumers of electricity and natural gas. Nucor uses cash flow hedges and natural gas purchase contracts to partially manage its exposure to price risk of natural gas that is used during the manufacturing process. Historically, U.S.-based manufacturers have enjoyed competitive energy costs that have allowed them to compete on equal footing in what is becoming more and more a global market. In recent decades, our government has allowed a growing over-reliance on natural gas for the generation of electricity, while delaying or halting the construction of new coal-fired and nuclear power plants. At the same time, our government has prevented access to some of the most promising areas for natural gas exploration. As a result, natural gas prices have increased from less than $2.00 per mmbtu in the 1990’s (NYMEX Henry-Hub pricing) to a peak of more than $15.00 per mmbtu in December 2005. Forward contract prices for 2009 are currently averaging less than $5.00 per mmbtu due to the weak economy and reduced industrial demand. Any form of greenhouse gas legislation is likely to further increase the share of electricity generated by natural gas, thereby increasing costs for consumers of electricity. Nucor actively supports several organizations that are promoting a more rational energy policy. We believe this is critical for not only our future business success, but also for the future of the U.S. economy. Supplies of raw materials and energy have been, and are expected to be, adequate to operate our facilities.

Strategic Growth Initiatives

Nucor employs a multi-pronged growth strategy allowing for flexibility and the ability to capitalize on growth opportunities at any point in time. The objective of our strategy is profitable growth that will allow for maximum shareholder returns. The four prongs include:

• Optimization of existing operations

• Greenfield growth that capitalizes on new technologies and unique marketplace opportunities

• Acquisitions

• International growth with an emphasis on leveraging strategic partnerships and new technologies

Inherent in our growth strategy and our business model is our culture. It is a culture based on teamwork, continual improvement and long-term strategic thinking. Over the years, our culture and philosophy have enabled us to operate during periods of economic strength the same way we operate in a downturn. In fact, Nucor has a long history of taking advantage of economic downturns to grow stronger and expand our long-term earnings power. It is worth noting that a healthy portion of the profits realized over the past five years have been generated by assets we built or acquired during the last economic downturn experienced during the 2001 to 2003 time period. These highly successful growth initiatives included our entry into the plate market, and the acquisitions of Auburn Steel, Birmingham Steel and Trico Steel.

While the current economic downturn presents a number of risks to Nucor and the steel industry, we also believe that such an environment will present unusually attractive growth opportunities to a company that is in Nucor’s position of strength. We believe our strong balance sheet and disciplined approach will enable us to capitalize on these opportunities and continue to build Nucor into a better and more profitable company well into the future.

Optimization of existing operations

Nucor emphasizes optimizing existing operations in order to keep them state-of-the-art and globally competitive. Capital expenditures are currently projected to be approximately $400 million in 2009, a decrease of

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approximately 61% from 2008. This decrease is in part due to the substantial completion of several of our greenfield projects and also reflects the weakened business conditions resulting from the U.S. financial crisis of late 2008. The majority of the projected capital expenditures for 2009 will be used to maintain the productivity and efficiency of our existing facilities.

Greenfield growth

We continue to increase our presence in the steel mills segment through greenfield projects such as our special bar quality (“SBQ”) mill in Memphis, Tennessee, which has an estimated annual capacity of 850,000 tons. Complementing our mills in South Carolina and Nebraska, the Memphis mill positions Nucor to provide the most diverse, highest quality and lowest cost SBQ offering in North America. Production start-up began in the second half of 2008.

Another greenfield project is the Castrip® facility under construction in Blytheville, Arkansas. Nucor began operations of its 100% owned Castrip facility in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 2002. This facility uses the breakthrough technology of strip casting, to which Nucor holds exclusive rights in the United States and Brazil. Strip casting involves the direct casting of molten steel into final shape and thickness without further hot or cold rolling, allowing lower investment and operating costs, reduced energy consumption and smaller scale plants than can be economically built with current technology. This process also reduces the overall environmental impact of producing steel by generating significantly lower emissions. The Arkansas Castrip facility is expected to begin operating in the first half of 2009. We continue to explore potential new joint ventures utilizing the Castrip technology.

In 2008, we announced the opening of the previously idle Kingman, Arizona, rolling mill that we acquired in 2003, with operations ready to begin in the second quarter of 2009 subject to market conditions at that time. During the year, we substantially completed the construction of a galvanizing facility at our sheet mill in Decatur, Alabama, and commenced operations at our building systems plant in Brigham City, Utah. Nucor has also announced plans to install a plate heat treating facility at our plate mill in Hertford County, North Carolina. The heat treat line will have an estimated annual capacity of 120,000 tons and will have the ability to produce heat treated plate from 3/16 “through 2” thick. Production start-up is expected to begin in the second half of 2010.

In May 2008, Nucor applied for a permit to build a state-of-the-art iron-making facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Sites outside of the United States are still being considered, and the site selection and capital investment are subject to approval by Nucor’s board of directors. When completed, the first phase of the facility is expected to produce three million tons of pig iron, employing the latest technologies to reduce emissions. If the project is ultimately built in the U.S., it would be the first domestic greenfield pig iron facility built in more than 30 years.

Acquisitions

Nucor’s acquisitions over the past few years have strengthened our position as North America’s most diversified producer of steel and steel products. This diversity has been a significant factor in Nucor’s increased profitability and added market share across multiple product categories.

The annual capacity of Nucor’s downstream value-added products has more than doubled since late 2006 to over 4.5 million tons. We have done this with our very successful acquisitions of Verco Manufacturing Company in steel decking; Harris Steel Group Inc. in rebar fabrication, cold finished bars and metal grating; LMP Steel & Wire Company in cold finished bars; Magnatrax Corporation in metal buildings; and Nelson Steel, Inc. in wire mesh. Harris Steel continued to be a growth platform for Nucor in 2008, having completed numerous acquisitions in the months following Nucor’s initial acquisition in 2007. With the acquisition of Ambassador Steel, Inc. in 2008, Harris increased our rebar fabrication capacity to over 1.5 million tons.

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In February 2008, Nucor announced the acquisition of SHV North America Corporation, which owns 100% of DJJ and certain affiliates. Since scrap is our largest single cost, this strategic investment provides an ideal growth platform for Nucor to expand its direct ownership in the steel scrap supply chain and further our raw materials strategy. By the end of 2008, Nucor added approximately one million tons of scrap processing and 23 locations via four scrap processing acquisitions executed by DJJ’s management team. Nucor’s total scrap processing capacity is now approaching five million tons. Additionally, DJJ brokers ferrous scrap, ferro-alloys and non-ferrous metals and internationally sources scrap, pig iron, and scrap substitutes. The DJJ Mill and Industrial Services business provides logistics and metallurgical blending operations and offers on-site handling and trading of industrial scrap. The DJJ Rail Services business oversees a large private fleet of rail cars dedicated to scrap movement and offers complete railcar fleet management and leases for third parties. All of these businesses have strategic value to Nucor as the most diversified North American steel producer.

International growth

In 2008, Nucor established an international growth platform by opening a European office and executing a joint-venture investment with Duferco S. A. In July 2008, Nucor acquired 50% of the stock of Duferdofin—Nucor S.r.l. Duferdofin—Nucor operates a steel melting and bloom/billet caster in San Zeno, Italy as well as rolling mills in Pallanzeno in the Piedmont region and Giammoro in Sicily. A new merchant bar mill is under construction at the Giammoro plant and is expected to be fully operational by mid-2009. The new mill at the Giammoro plant is expected to produce approximately 450,000 metric tons. The new company also includes the distribution companies of the former Duferdofin, enabling Duferdofin—Nucor to supply steel across Southern Europe and North Africa.

Employees

Nucor has a simple, streamlined organizational structure to allow our employees to make quick decisions and be innovative. Our organization is highly decentralized, with most day-to-day operating decisions made by our division general managers and their staff. Only 85 employees are located in our executive offices. The majority of Nucor’s 21,700 employees are not represented by labor unions.

Additional Information Incorporated by Reference

Additional information on Nucor’s business is incorporated by reference to Nucor’s 2008 Annual Report, pages 8 through 19.

Available Information

Nucor’s annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to these reports, are available on our website at www.nucor.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after Nucor files these reports electronically with, or furnishes them to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Except as otherwise stated in these reports, the information contained on our website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or other documents we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.