Barbara Smith, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Commercial Metals Company
Nathan, I think thatI would still, at the current moment. stay with the $13 million that we have guided. M&D has very lumpy quarters and we had a really good quarter this quarter. The nature of the business is to take advantage when the markets are available and hot, and we certainly saw that in the first fiscal quarter. Right now, I would not be comfortable given all the global uncertainty with raising that, maybe with time we would get more comfortable.
Nathan Littlewood, Credit Suisse Group
Okay, no problem. Thanks very much, Barbara. I will turn it over.
Operator
Our next question comes from Brian Yu at Citi.
Brian Yu, Citigroup
Thanks and Happy New Year, Joe, Barbara.
Barbara Smith, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Commercial Metals Company
Thanks, Brian.
Joseph Alvarado, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO, Commercial Metals Company
Happy New Year and good morning.
Brian Yu, Citigroup
We did notquestion on rebar pricing. I know you touched on this earlier in the call and commented how rebar imports are coming in at a definitely healthy clip. Yet, we have seen prices be fairly resilient here, which is very different than what we are seeing in hot rolled coil. A couple questions along these lines. One, any insight you could share with us on what is driving this divergence? Then two, going back to a question earlier about the fab, is there some cross subsidy between the two businesses or are these sales between the mills and your fab business occurring at market prices?
Joseph Alvarado, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO, Commercial Metals Company
Let me take a stab at both the questions. The first is on the rebar pricing and the strength that we see. We priced according to what market will accept. We also have a downstream fabrication business which is not subsidized by the mill operation. There isn’t a subsidy going either way. It is basically all at market prices. So when we see initiatives from Turkey, in particular, to move a lot of product. I think that is without regard to the market. That is more based on a cost plus pricing formula. That is my opinion. We do not understand why someone would come into the market, global market pricing other than they are moving to dump steel. We made our case and the case was reviewed and was found to be negligible or almost to minimus.
There is nothing we can do about that but we certainly don’t understand the economics of buying scrap from North America, taking it to Turkey and bringing it back and selling at well below market prices. It is what it is. Better to ask that question of them than us. We don’t know how they price their product. As far as that second component on subsidy, there is no subsidy. We see strong demand for construction products and consumption is up overall and the overhang is what I will call marginally priced rebar in the market that comes in flows, it ebbs and flows, but it is not a nuisance.
Brian Yu, Citigroup
Yes. I guess I’m still kind of confused why it’s not having the same type of impact on the U.S. market like what we are seeing in hot rolled coil because we are seeing volumes coming in, especially with where you guys are located towards the south. I would figure that imports would have a greater impact, but obviously, not the case. I’m not sure if you can shed any light on that.
Joseph Alvarado, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO, Commercial Metals Company
I don’t know if there is much more I can share than what I just shared with you.
