Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from John Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets.
John Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
My first question is with regard to interest, Ken you mentioned once the Hunter plant project is stopped you won’t be capitalizing interest but can you give us some guidance on what interest expense might be for the February quarter will look like, for this current quarter you just reported and then what it might be like for Q4?
Kenneth R. Allen
Interest expense in the current quarter was $9.3 million and interest expense incurred was about $12 million. The difference was the amount capitalized. So, if interest expense incurred doesn’t change too much, maybe it steps up just a tad, in the third quarter capitalized interest will move up a little bit as well so you’ll see interest expense maybe be equal to or a little lower in the third quarter.
Then, it’s just a matter of when the exact timing occurs in the fourth quarter as to when we begin to cease capitalizing interest. It’s a little difficult to time that. But, we’re running interest expense before capitalized interest of $12 to $13 million right now.
John Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
Mel, you mentioned in your comments that you were happy with the pricing of your products, in particular aggregates pricing is stable but, can you tell us in Texas are there price increase announcements for aggregates for calendar ’09?
Melvin G. Brekhus
No, there aren’t price increases for calendar ’09 at this time.
John Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
Had there been any that you thought would be out by this time and they have been deferred to the spring or had we always thought it might not be until the spring?
Melvin G. Brekhus
There were some price increases that took effect and some of that work is still to be done and so you might see some incremental increase in prices but, generally speaking those price increase in Texas in aggregates are in the spring.
John Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
The California plant during the second quarter, can you tell us what the utilization rate of the plant was during the quarter?
Kenneth R. Allen
Jack, it was around 50% to 60%.
John Kasprzak – BB&T Capital Markets
Going back a few months a sort of national cement price increased $15 a ton, that was announced by a lot of the major players. I take it that’s off the table, I guess that’s generally assumed at this point. With what you guys experienced in California in the quarter with prices down so obviously there’s no price increase out but what sort of – do you think this is the sort of level of pricing that we’ll see or is the situation still too difficult to predict with regard to California pricing? Could there be further pressure?
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