Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Kuni Chen - Banc of America Securities.
Kuni Chen - Banc of America Securities
I guess this first question on the pig iron issue. What would you say is the minimum utilization rate that you would need to run at in the third quarter to completely workdown these excess inventories?
Daniel DiMicco
Ladd, do you want to answer that?
Ladd Hall
Well, around 50%.
Kuni Chen - Banc of America Securities
So 50% gets you completely worked through this quarter?
Ladd Hall
That’s correct.
Kuni Chen – Bank of America
I guess just one other sort of strategic question. On the M&A front, obviously there is a lot you can do given your cash position. Can you just talk about whether or not you are seeing opportunities developing in the market and kind of where your priorities would be whether that’s sort of upstream, downstream, other mills, international? Just give us some perspective there, please?
Daniel DiMicco
I can summarize with the one word answer, yes. Two, as we said several times, way too early based upon the success that the industry had prior to this financial collapse and economic crisis to be thinking about actually moving forward with acquisitions. We think that we are set all along, and that would be 12 to 18 months, kind of time out period between when this collapse took place and when you started to see that kind of activity.
We have really changed our opinion on that. We are maintaining our contacts with everybody that we were talking to before the economic and financial collapse in last call, and those discussions they’re alive and as we’ve mentioned back then we had somewhere between $1.50 billion to $2 billion in acquisitions that we’re looking at, yesterday’s prices.
Those conversations are keeping the doors open, why everybody feels more comfortable and one thing start to show that the economy truly is on demand, which we have not seen yet. So as far as any sense of urgency to do to anything, we have none, and we will act when we feel a lot more comfortable and what we see out there with respect to our economy in the direction that the country is going.
Operator
Your next question comes from Michael Gambardella - JP Morgan.
Michael Gambardella - JP Morgan
Dan, I just have a question with something that you and a few of the other executives have mentioned in terms of your view of the market being fairly restocking and I don’t know how you can say that when the automotive production numbers that people are talking about are up over 40% in the second half versus the first half.
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