The Manitowoc Company, Inc. Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-07-28 12:38:16.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Earnings, Downturn, Manufacturing, Seeking Alpha, Manitowoc Co. Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions) We will take our first question from Charlie Brady with BMO Capital Markets.

Charlie Brady -- BMO Capital Markets

Good morning, guys.

Glen Tellock

Hey, Charles.

Charlie Brady -- BMO Capital Markets

With respect to margins, first on Cranes, you know, you have talked previously about margins, this down cycle not getting to the level of the last cycle, when we were down to very low-single digits. Give your comments on sort of the unprecedented speed and how down things are going. Do you still -- is that payment still in effect, do you expect it to still be above that and you know, are we -- have we kind of bottomed out from a margin standpoint, if we are going to have more of these cost savings kicking in?

Carl Laurino

Hey, Charlie, I think obviously a difficult question to ask in the context of where we stand from a guidance standpoint, but I think there should be an ability to improve how we perform at the bottom of the costs bill. Obviously, the speed and magnitude of this downturn has made it difficult to adjust quickly -- as quickly as you could, if it was maybe a little less abrupt. But as we look at the -- kind of the levers that we can pull, the global manufacturing opportunities that we have, coupled with our reasonable expectations of where these markets take us, we still believe we can perform better than that low single-digit margin in Cranes than we did in the last trough.

Charlie Brady -- BMO Capital Markets

Has the velocity of the downturn in Cranes subsided at all in the past three months?

Glen Tellock

Charlie, this is Glen. I think we see a little bit of that. I mean, I think the first, when you go back to November, December of last year and on the first three or four months of this year, I think that is where the majority, you saw that speed of the downturn.

Now I think it is managing that, but to also answer your last question, I think when you look at it strategically, many of the investments that we made during the upturn, whether it be in Italy or Portugal or Slovakia or China, I mean many of those things were done with the anticipation that the crane markets are cyclical; and so the strategies that we have in place, it is just a matter of employing those -- whether it is moving products to different factories or bringing things from that were outsourced insourced, we have to do it faster. I mean, we knew we were going to do these things, we have plans for them, it is just a matter of when do you pull the trigger on those plans. So, comfortable that we're doing all those things, but yes, you have the volumes going down faster than the benefits that we have out there. So that is why we are a little bit comfortable on some of the things that you see in the back half of the year, but again, the volumes are the key, as you can imagine.

 

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