Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions)
Our first question will come from the line of Liam Burke of Janney Montgomery Scott.
Liam Burke - Janney Montgomery Scott
Thank you. Dave, Stan, how are you this morning?
Stan Hasselbusch
Doing good, Liam. How are you?
David Russo
Thanks, Liam, good.
Liam Burke - Janney Montgomery Scott
Good, thank you. You touched on through the course of your discussion, initiatives you’ve been taking to take costs out of the business in anticipation of an uncertain 2009. Could you give us some detail? I know you touched on the concrete points that serve the UP business, but could you go in a little more detail there?
Stan Hasselbusch
Yeah. I guess first to make these cost reductions meaningful, it needs to start with me. I’ve asked our board for a temporary 10% reduction of my salary, which was accepted and became effective January 1st. We put a wage freeze, a temporary wage freeze on all salaried employees. We’ve mandated an across the board reduction of T&E, not to lose face time with our customers, but to spend our T&E smarter and better. This includes cancellation of our annual operations meeting and sales meeting and cancellation of our annual out-of-town board of directors meeting.
We will have no new hires or replacement hires without my approval. As David talked about in the CapEx, we’ve reduced that $2.5 million from our original plan. No expenditures in this area with the exception of repairs and maintenance without the approval in the plant level of John Kasel who manages all of our plants or myself.
We really, as we talked about free cash flow, under this time we’re taking strict inventory management and control, was imposed in the fourth quarter. I think it led in part to the reduction of nearly $18 million. But we’ve got further, further way to go and over the course of the year, we will continue to drive our inventory levels lower.
We’ve looked at elimination of all overtime at the administration positions. We understand that at the plants, that particularly at our concrete plants, that we will be working overtime, ?cause the shift, we’ve cut down from two shifts to one, but the one shift is a longer shift as we go with extended cures. And, we’ve really cut back on our advertising and trade shows.
Head count from an individual standpoint, I believe in December of ’07, we were at around 750 and I think David mentioned we’re down around 600 right now and most of those have been in the plant levels, there have been some in the white collar salary area, but the bulk of them have been at the plant. I guess to hit the major ones, Liam, that’s what they were.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
