Cascade Corp. F2Q10 (Qtr End 07/31/09) Earnings Call Transcript

  • download
  • Print
  • Recommend
  • 0

2009-09-03 18:10:46.0

Tags: Europe, Utilization, Call Transcript, Earnings, Cascade Corp., Sales Strategy, Financial Accounting, Sales, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities.

Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities

My first question is a mechanical question on the back of your press release. Your goodwill this quarter jumped by almost $12 million. Can you comment on that given the goodwill impairment charge that you took?

Robert Warren

That was all currency. It was our Canadian and goodwill in Europe. The Canadian dollar and the Euro created all of that gain. There was nothing else.

Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities

Utilization in the last quarter you had been running about 35% which makes it virtually impossible to do very well. Can you give us a feel for where we stand now on utilization and based on backlog what your best view is over the next few months in terms of utilization?

Robert Warren

Clearly as we haven’t really reduced capacity in the U.S. we are not going to see too much better utilization out of the North American market. The increase in some of the business out of Asia which seems to have taken most of the global increase we saw sequentially on shipment is helping their utilization. I don’t have an exact figure for Asia. Europe is still going to see a better utilization only because we have been shutting down those facilities.

Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities

Taking a step back one of the goals I think you discussed previously was you thought you might be able to achieve profitability by the end of the year or in next year. Do you still feel given all the actions you have taken that is a reasonable assumption?

Robert Warren

We are still anticipating at the levels of business we now see we should be profitable with our sales next year in Europe.

Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities

Can you give us any feel for your inventories finished goods versus work in process?

Robert Warren

We are scrambling for that. We will come back and give you that in a second.

Arnold Ursaner – CJS Securities

When you do that also some sense of the costs of your raw materials within that inventory versus selling price. In other words where are you in terms of things like steel which has had a lot of variability versus current market price?

Robert Warren

We probably still have a higher, we have as you have seen an inventory write down in Europe based on some of the selling prices we had in Europe compared to our inventory costs. I would say while we are still holding inventory globally on some of our rolled steel products at above current market, not enough on our price to cause any write down.

 

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Please add your comment:

  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  2.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)

advertisement
advertisement
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
advertisement
Click Here