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Back of Napkin

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. CLF

Three-pass checkedFiled since 2026-07-23

Written 2026-05-19. The company has filed a quarterly or annual report since, on 2026-07-23, so figures here predate its latest disclosure.

Cleveland-Cliffs is the only fully integrated flat-rolled steel producer in the United States, mining its own iron ore in Minnesota and Michigan and selling steel to the Detroit Three, the appliance OEMs, and the housing supply chain, leveraged at 3x EBITDA with cyclical earnings volatility that ranges from $3 of EPS at the peak to $3 of loss at the trough.

The setup is a deep-cycle trough in steel pricing that appears to be flexing higher, Q1 2026 ASPs up $68/ton YoY plus $55/ton sequentially with management guiding margin and FCF improvement through H2; the equity is a high-beta call on auto restart plus housing reflation, where the rate-cut transmission runs through the customer base rather than the cost line.

Key data

Sector / industryBasic Materials / Steel
FYE / countryDecember / US
Price / 52w range$10.15 / $5.63 to $16.70
Position vs MA50d SMA $9.44, 200d SMA $11.45
Market cap / EV≈$5.8B / ≈$12.5B (debt dominates EV)
Revenue (TTM)≈$18.7B
EPS (TTM, GAAP)≈$(3.00) (loss)
Beta2.01 (highest in this batch)

CLF · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$4$9$14$19$24 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jun '25Jan '26Aug '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Cleveland-Cliffs is the only fully integrated flat-rolled steel producer in the United States, mining its own iron ore in Minnesota and Michigan and selling steel to the Detroit Three, the appliance OEMs, and the housing supply chain. It is leveraged at roughly 3x EBITDA with cyclical earnings volatility that ranges from $3 of EPS at the peak to $3 of loss at the trough, and roughly 25% of its volume goes to the Detroit Three on annual contracts. The Stelco acquisition is now fully integrated and contributing Canadian operating leverage.

Q1 2026, reported April 20, posted revenue $4.9B, up $600M sequentially, with a GAAP net loss of $229M, $(0.42) per diluted share, narrower than the $(0.44) consensus loss. Adjusted EBITDA was $95M inclusive of an $80M one-time energy cost impact from extreme cold weather, without which EBITDA would have run ≈$175M. The pricing read is the headline: average selling prices were up $68/ton year-over-year and $55/ton sequentially, on steel shipments of 4.1 million net tons, 338,000 above the prior quarter. Management explicitly guided to both pricing and EBITDA improvement in Q2 and Q3, with shipments above Q1's 4.1M tons and a return to positive free cash flow.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04The linchpins
  5. 05Closing
  6. 06Methodology

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