Trinity Industries Inc. Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

  • download
  • Print
  • Recommend
  • 0

2009-10-29 12:06:11.0

Tags: Operating Margin, Operating Profit, Backlog, Call Transcript, Earnings, Trinity Industries Inc., Keybanc, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you, sir. (Operator instructions) And just give us a few moments to go ahead and queue this up. And our first question comes to us from Steve Barger with Keybanc. Go ahead, please. Your line is open.

Steve Barger – Keybanc

Hi, good morning.

Tim Wallace

Good morning.

Steve Barger – Keybanc

I’m not sure I heard this correctly. Did you say a $9 million to $12 million operating loss or operating margin – negative operating margin next quarter on the rail deliveries of 1,300 to 1,500?

Tim Wallace

Bill, why don’t you take that?

Bill McWhirter

Yes. Steve, we said a $9 million to $12 million operating profit loss, not a margin or dollar loss.

Steve Barger – Keybanc

Okay. So that, I think, implies better operating margin certainly at the low end than what you just put up. Is that a function of just further cost right-sizing or is a mix of deliveries?

Bill McWhirter

Yes. Well, I think at this level of production, there is a lot of cost of that slate in our facilities related to burden in fixed costs. So that’s why we give a little bit of a wide range between $9 million and $12 million, but certainly could be better based on product mix or a little worse based on performance.

Steve Barger – Keybanc

Right. Well, that would – I think that would be a pretty good outcome. Now, shifting to the wind business for a second, GE took $1.3 billion in turbine orders in the quarter. Another company I cover that reported today in the wind supply chain had a pretty good book-to-bill. Can you talk about what you are hearing from customers in terms of order expectations looking into 2010?

Tim Wallace

Yes, this is Tim. As far as order expectation in the wind industry, there is a lot of anticipation on the part of the OEMs that we supply our towers to that things are looking more positive than they were six months ago. Keep in mind that we have a large backlog and a lot of the orders that we have in our backlog are for business that they plan to deliver in the next – in 2010 and 2011. And so when the orders actually will come to us for towers, we are still a little bit unclear on.

Steve Barger – Keybanc

Okay. And one on the lease side of the business. Are the cars you putting on lease right now generally a shorter term than the 3.9 year fleet average or are you having to put anything out there with longer term just to generate some demand given – ?

 

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