Company: ZEUS
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001437749-25-004742
Chunk: 100

Company: OLYMPIC STEEL INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 100
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 6
     %

     1
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      All others <5% 

     18
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     17
     %

     18
     %

While we ship products throughout the United States, most of our customers are located in the Midwest, South and Northeast regions of the United States. Most customers are located within a 250-mile radius of one of our processing facilities, thus enabling an efficient delivery system capable of handling a high frequency of short lead time orders. We transport our products directly to customers via a dedicated carrier fleet, which further supports the just-in-time delivery requirements of our customers, and third-party trucking firms.

We process our metals to specific customer orders as well as for stocking programs. Many of our larger customers commit to purchase on a regular basis at agreed upon or indexed prices for periods ranging from three to twelve months. To help mitigate price volatility risks, these price commitments are generally matched with corresponding supply arrangements, or to a lesser degree by commodities hedging. Customers notify us of specific release dates as processed products are required. Customers typically notify us of release dates anywhere from a just-in-time basis to one month before the release date. Therefore, we are required to carry sufficient inventory to meet the short lead time and just-in-time delivery requirements of our customers.

Raw Materials

Our principal raw materials are carbon, coated, and stainless steel and aluminum, in the forms of pipe, tube, flat-rolled sheet, coil and plate that we typically purchase from multiple primary metals producers. The metals industry as a whole is cyclical and at times pricing and availability of material can be volatile due to numerous factors beyond our control, including general domestic and global economic conditions; domestic and global supply and demand imbalance; competition; quickly changing lead times and late deliveries from metals producers; fluctuations in the costs of raw materials necessary to produce metals; import duties; tariffs and quotas; and currency exchange rates. This volatility can significantly affect the availability and cost of raw materials to us.

Inventory management is a key profitability driver in the metals service center industry. Similar to many other metals service centers, we maintain substantial inventories of metals to accommodate the short lead times and just-in-time delivery requirements of our customers. Accordingly, we purchase metals in an effort to maintain our inventory at levels that we believe to be appropriate to satisfy the anticipated needs of our customers based upon historic buying practices, purchase forecasts and commitments with customers, supplier lead times and market conditions.

Our commitments to purchase metals are generally at prevailing market prices in effect