Weyerhaeuser Company Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-05-05 17:02:15.0

Tags: Weyerhaeuser Co., Call Transcript, Financial Performance, Earnings, Housing Start, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Yes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of George Staphos with Banc of America-Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

George Staphos - Banc of America-Merrill Lynch

Thanks, hi, everyone, good morning. A few questions maybe on wood. First off, if we can look at the SG&A run rate that you're targeting, I think you said $250 million earlier in the formal remarks, when do you expect to get to that level in terms of the quarter? And if we hold pricing and volume relatively constant, I realize that's a big assumption, when would you, therefore, expect to get to breakeven either on EBIT or cash flow basis or for the wood products business? Then I had a couple follow-ons?

Tom Gideon

Well, George, just to ramp the size, the $250 million of annualized savings that we have it's a combination of reductions in manufacturing costs as well as SG&A. So it's a total cost reduction that we have done.

George Staphos - Banc of America-Merrill Lynch

I understood.

Tom Gideon

Quite frankly, we're not focused our business on operating at about 350,000 single-family housing starts, and so it's going to be very difficult for us to get to cash breakeven at those levels. Having said that, we've made substantial progress to enable breakeven status at these low demand levels and we're going to continue to adjust the levers that we have available to us to get there.

We're going to decide what we offer in terms of the volume and mix that we present to the marketplace, where we produce it, continuing to ensure that we operate our core operations at higher efficiencies and lower costs and also at the price at which we offer our products to the marketplace to ensure we're contributing to being cash neutral.

So we're constantly evaluating and we'll be making continual adjustments to ensure we're operating our financial performance and improving our financial performance in reducing our cash position.

George Staphos - Banc of America-Merrill Lynch

Tom, I guess a quick follow-on. Again I realize if you don't want it necessarily to be pinned down to this but if 300,000 housing starts isn't where you can be cash breakeven, given the actions you've taken what level of activity would you need to see in terms of starts to get to cash breakeven?

 

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