United States Steel Corporation (X stock) price rebounds after a prolonged slide

NYSE:X has enjoyed a nice resurgence since President Biden announced a focus back on American manufacturing with the steel industry as one of his targets. But 2021 has not been as friendly to the stock, after briefly touching a new 52-week high of $24.71 earlier in January, shares of X have tumbled back down to its closing price on Thursday of $16.50. The week-long slide has brought the price of X back below its 50-day moving average, as investors have rejected some of the decisions made by management. 

One of the issues that investors had was with a public stock offering announced last week as the United States Steel Corporation tried to take advantage of its higher valuation. Companies will often offer these to raise capital when the stock price is high, and while in the short-term investors experience a dilution of the stock price, the capital that is raised usually benefits everyone in the long run. The United States Steel Corporation also announced that it would be paying shareholders a dividend of $0.01 per share with an ex-dividend date of February 8th and to be paid out on March 9th. 

X stock forecast

As major markets like automotive, aviation, and construction continue to pick back up as the economy slowly begins to open up, the steel industry should flourish with higher demand. The U.S. Steel Corporation announced its quarterly earnings last week and the uptick in demand was already evident as the company was actually able to generate earnings, rather than the losses from the two previous quarters. Sales also fell year-over-year but overall the market gauged the improvement as a sign that the industry was bouncing back.