In its earnings release, issued before the opening bell Thursday, Nucor said it expects the "second quarter to be an improvement over our first quarter results."

Still, the company, whose key products include rebar and I-beams, continues to suffer from a depressed housing market and an almost total lack of construction projects. "The most challenging markets for our products continue to be those associated with residential and non-residential construction, which continue to show little, if any, strength," Nucor said.

Nucor reported a profit of $31 million, or 10 cents a share, on revenue of $3.65 billion.

By comparison, analysts were calling for a bottom line of 6 cents a share and a top line of $3.6 billion.

A year ago, in the throes of the downturn, Nucor lost $190 million on revenue of $2.65 billion.

The company has struggled with pig-iron inventories and the high cost of raw materials -- in Nucor's case, scrap metal. The electric arc furnace operator uses recycled material as its primary feedstock.

In March, the company told Wall Street to ratchet back its target for the quarter, calling for a bottom line anywhere between a loss of five cents and a profit of five cents. But Nucor also said that orders from customers were trending higher, up more than 20% from a year ago. 

The company, in turn, has boosted production. Operating rates at its mills around the country jumped to 73% of their total capacity in the first quarter, Nucor said, a far busier level than the doldrums of the year-ago period, when the steelmaker was using only 45% of its capacity. Operating rates also improved sequentially from the fourth quarter's 58%.