Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Carlos De Alba from Morgan Stanley. Your line is live.
Carlos De Alba: Yes. Hi, good morning, Theresa, Mark. Just maybe continuing with the discussion. The long steel volumes declined quite sharply or meaningfully year-on-year. Can you maybe provide more color as to the different end markets within construction and infrastructure that may be leading to this decline? Clearly the backdrop for the coming years for sure is quite solid. But at least in the first quarter, the numbers just weren’t there. So any color on the different construction markets would be great.
Barry Schneider: Carlos, I would say, as you look at the mix across line products, as we make sections that are lighter sections that’s more responsive to what the marketplace is right now. So we’ve had a pretty robust level of order input. And structural rail has performed pretty well. We tend to balance between our rail production and our structural production. And I think in general, I would say the market space has changed from one of where a lot of more fabricators were directly going to mills to more of a service center type relationship. And that’s, again, a more historical way to go into the market, after the busy years for the last several years with construction spending. So we see a good response from our customer base, and we have healthy backlogs in our long products right now.
Carlos De Alba: Got it. Thank you, Barry. And if I may ask another one on the aluminum project. Have you been able to already secure contracts with some of your customers or that still undergoing in terms of discussions with them?
Mark Millett: Carlos, that’s still on a discussion. Obviously, it’s a — we’re a new mill. And so there’s a balance between them making sure that they feel confident that the volume is going to be there. But as I said earlier, we have commitments in place that will support in large part, support the first 12 months to 18 months of our ramp-up.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Timna Tanners from Wolfe Research. Your line is live.
Timna Tanners: Hey, good morning, guys. I’m going to ask Carlos’ question a different way, if you don’t mind, on the long product side. The volumes, as I see them, were sharply down from last year and the year-ago period in the first quarter. So I guess, it sounds like from the answer, you’re still seeing quite strong demand. So I guess should we expect that this was a blip and that maybe there were some weather-related reasons and the rest of the year could be more consistent with past years? Or is there something that’s changed in your outlook for the long products across structural bars, those all those divisions would be really helpful. Thanks.
Mark Millett: Well, I think it’s in large part, sort of the seasonality and just the weather-related issues, Timna. The — and you saw some price adjustment here in the marketplace, whatever that was, two months ago, six weeks, eight weeks ago. And again, that wasn’t necessarily market pressure that was just absorbing sort of some discounting that leaked into the marketplace over the prior month, two months. We feel confident moving forward for the rest of the year in that space.
Timna Tanners: Okay. So maybe particularly challenging first quarter and rest of the year looks solid, it sounds like. All right. And my other question, if I could was just, if you could remind us about the cadence of contribution from the four new lines, the paint lines and the galv lines and how to think about increasing volume and profitability would be great. Thank you.
Barry Schneider: Yes, Timna, the — all four of the process lines at this point have actually run product. We staged the start-up to best utilize our teams and also to really focus on improving the start-up process for the other lines. So a paint line in Tahoe is up and running well, shipping prime product. We expect that that ramps up through second quarter, third quarter, getting up closer and closer to what the final production will be. On the converse, the new galvanizing line down in Sinton actually started up very well. It started up in January is solidly contributing at a very high rate already, which, as Mark said, the team has done a fabulous job getting that line making quality like that so quickly. We have an all hands on deck approach.
So all the other mills are supporting the team. And we’re continually moving people through to keep the energy high. So I see the second galvanizing line in Tahoe coming up Q2 into more operational status and progressing to the end of the year. The paint line through Q2 through Q3 at Tahoe. And then the new paint line in Sinton, Texas will actually be maturing to the end of the year, so all four units will be contributing soundly in second quarter. And progressing through the third, fourth quarter.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Katja Jancic from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is live.
Katja Jancic: Hi, thank you for taking my question. On Sinton, can you provide a bit more color how we should think about the utilization rates in the rest of the year?
Barry Schneider: As we had talked, we’re about 70% through first quarter. We did take some time for a significant outage in April that was planned to among other things, address the power problem we had with the primary side voltage at the plant. So we see a really good path to 80% progressing through operational by the end of the year, getting up in the capacity. In front of us, we see better and better performance, routine performance every day. So as the team encounters challenges, they work through them quicker. And through all this, they remain a very safe operation, which is so important during start-up. So the team is in place, the new assets will allow us to provide the best mix possible upstream so that the efficiency of the plant can really be explored further. So we continue to be very robust on where we’re going and the success of the team.
