Item 1. Business

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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.