Earnings Call Excerpt
Insituform Technologies, Inc. (INSU)
Q1 2008 Earnings Call
April 25, 2008 9:30 am ET
Executives
Alfred L. Woods – Chairman of the Board
J. Joseph Burgess – President and Chief Executive Officer
Thomas E. Vossman - Chief Operating Officer
David A. Martin - Chief Financial Officer
David F. Morris – Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Administrative Officer
Analysts
Debra Coy – Janney Montgomery Scott
Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities
Chip Moore – Canaccord Adams
Dan Levine – Robert W. Baird & Co.
Jeffrey Beach – Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Presentation
Operator
Good morning, and welcome everyone to the Insituform Technologies First Quarter 2008 Conference Call.
Any financial or statistical information presented during this call, including any non-GAAP measures, the most directly comparable GAAP measures and reconciliation to GAAP results, will be available on our website, insituform.com.
During this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are inherent and subject to risks and uncertainties. Our results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors described in the SEC filings and throughout this conference call. We do not assume the duty to update forward-looking statements. Please use caution and do not rely on such statements.
I will now turn the call over to Mr. Al Woods, Chairman of the Board and Mr. Joe Burgess, President and CEO.
Alfred L. Woods
Good morning and thank you for joining us for Insituform’s conference call on our first quarter 2008 results.
I am Al Woods, Chairman of the Board and former Interim CEO of Insituform Technologies, Inc. Joining me on today’s call are: our new CEO, President, and Board Member, Joe Burgess; Tom Vossman, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; David Martin, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and David Morris, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer.
Joe will have remarks following my opening comments and then we will address your questions.
We are pleased to report significant improvements in profitability to this quarter compared to last year. We made great progress on our strategic initiatives. As you may recall from previous quarterly calls, we are measuring our progress against several goals. These include restoring growth and earnings stability to our North American CIPP business unit, geographic and product diversification, and cost reduction.
With regard to the North American CIPP business, during the first quarter we dramatically improved our profitability despite relatively flat revenue. This profitability improvement resulted primarily from continued optimization of crude resources, improved product execution, and a greater than 8% reduction of direct administrative support costs. As we look to the future, what is really exciting is that backlog in North America improved by 8.9% since year end 2007 and by 14.4% year-over-year. Margins in backlog remained stable during the first quarter.
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